Why Content Marketing Is Critical To Your Business Strategy

October 19, 2016

“Content is King”

Today that phrase is thrown around marketing magazines and articles left and right. Everyone loves a good story, and every consumer wants to be wooed, entertained, and engaged when they’re eyeing brands and companies. Consumers are inundated with millions of ads, information, and marketing materials, and content marketing is key for businesses looking to distinguish themselves from the enormous competition that exists in today’s marketplace. Furthermore, content marketing allows you to convey your brands personality and offering to the consumer in a highly tailored and specific way.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is exactly as it reads: it’s focusing efforts on developing thoughtful, engaging, and informative content that is going to draw in the right consumers to a particular product. It falls under the Inbound Marketing umbrella, which works by intriguing and alluring consumers through posts and materials that particularly appeal to them. Gone are the days of blindly bombarding consumers with Outbound Marketing and newspaper ads.

Content marketing includes website copy, social media posts, video content, blogs, and articles. It’s not just the words on a page, either. It’s the total content that consumers can absorb by visiting a company’s website, social media profiles, and video streaming platforms. In a perfect world, all of this content would be working in harmony to push your business.

Quality is Key

Successful content marketing is the combined efforts of creative, energetic, and passionate writers and designers. Unique and eye-catching content has the ability to take any brand out of the shadows and into the consumer spotlight in a matter of months. Social media and other inherent aspects of the Information Age allows consumers to have an immense amount of online control and choice, and there expectations for quality marketing is incredibly high. The better the content marketing, the more your message will resonate with your consumer.

It’s Only Going Up From Here

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2016 Content Marketing Budgets Benchmarks and Trends, 76 percent of marketers use content marketing in their campaigns, but less than half have a documented strategy. The study also found that businesses plan to expand their content marketing initiatives over the course of the next year.

Additionally, this year, B2C companies are allocating roughly 32 percent of their budget into content marketing compared to 25 percent from last year.

What should this tell you? Content marketing is here to stay. When done creatively and thoughtfully, it is a great way to differentiate your brand or product and engage your target audience in a meaningful and memorable way.

Our content marketing experts can help you. LET’S GET STARTED.

How To Integrate Video Storytelling Into Your Social Media Marketing

October 13, 2016

Video storytelling and marketing are the hottest, most influential avenues of advertising in today’s social media marketing realm. Whether on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, or Snapchat, users overwhelming prefer absorbing information and entertainment through a brief, eye-catching video.

In 2016, video will account for 55% of internet traffic. It’s projected that in 2017, video marketing will account for 74% of traffic. That’s a pretty astounding growth rate! Major social media marketing platforms are taking notice and providing you with valuable tools for reaching new consumers and online community members.

Facebook

Though YouTube was the king of video marketing, Facebook has undoubtedly solidified its place as the #1 platform for video viewing and sharing today. As the most widely used social media site, video reach on Facebook is incomparable to any other platform. Facebook knows how important video marketing is, and they’re rewarding users who natively upload original content to their platform as opposed to reposting links from other sites.

Not using Facebook Live yet for your business? You should think again.

Twitter

Rolled out in January, Twitter users can now Tweet and reply to Tweets using video recordings and gifs. Twitter joined the video marketing wave as a way to keep communication between users more personal as its platform numbers continue to swell.

Snapchat

Over 2 billion Snaps are sent and watched every single day. More than 60% of 13 to 34-year-olds are Snapchatters and they’re addicted to it. Snapchat enables users to post content of only 10 seconds on accounts – and it lasts just 24 hours. Marketers may wonder if it’s worth it to be on this platform and the answer is a resounding: yes. Snapchat’s interpersonal, fleeting nature has young consumers obsessed.

Instagram

Bought by Facebook, Instagram is placing tremendous weight on video postings and video ads today. To put it plainly: videos are being favored so more users are inspired to post videos themselves. On Instagram, you can post short and long videos on your profile, and even utilize a Snapchat-like feature called Instagram Stories for quick, 24-hour postings.

YouTube

Last but not least, there’s YouTube. With 4 billion daily video streams, it’s hard to ignore YouTube’s prominence today. The only problem is that with over 1 billion users now, it’s hard to break through the noise. Our solution? Up your content game, incorporate humor, and be sure to share your profile to all other social media platforms.

Van West Media can elevate your brand’s reach and revenue with video.

Let’s Get Started.