Adding Value With Content Marketing

Content marketing is when you provide relevant, valuable information to your audience. It is the opposite of direct sales. When you add value with great content, your audience will begin to view your radio station as a trusted resource. Ultimately, this type of relationship will take you and your station’s brand much further than inauthentic content. It could even inspire them to become ambassadors for your brand, sharing your content with their friends.

Today we’re sharing our tips for adding value with content marketing. Here are the best ways to go about it and the benefits you and your brand could enjoy by implementing a content marketing strategy.

Focus on content that makes people feel seen and heard

When you’re planning your content calendar, it’s important to put yourself in the mindset of your audience. Rather than thinking about what you want to tell them, think about what they want to hear. Do they need reassurance? Do they need practical tips for surviving lockdown at home with small children? Do they need some silly jokes to put a smile on their face during a stressful day?

This is the secret sauce to any good content marketing strategy. You need to provide real value to your audience. Whether you’re sharing photos, videos, text, or audio, your content should be incredibly valuable. Don’t take up their time with sales pitches or irrelevant information. Instead, reflect their reality back to them. Show that you understand their reality. Position yourself as a knowledgeable resource and try to help them solve their problems. 

You could do this with a segment that features short interviews with people who are struggling to get through the pandemic. Create a list of free online resources that your audience could utilize. Talk about your own experiences and make them feel seen and heard as real human beings.

When you show empathy with your content, you build trust with people

It’s simple. Show empathy with your content, and people will start to trust you. This translates to your radio station’s brand. If they trust you, they’ll trust your brand. Advertisers know this intimately, which is why they spend so much time and money on casting the perfect person to represent their bran nationally.

People don’t trust brands, people trust people. But this ultimately carries over into trust for the brand.

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Trust is often underrated by marketers. Trust can be lost in a moment if you mislead, belittle, or betray the integrity of your audience. But trust can also be regained with a meaningful apology and an honest invitation to join the conversation.

When they find your content useful, people will trust you. This means that they’re more likely to apply your tips in their own lives. How powerful is that? Great content marketing builds trust, which can strengthen your brand’s influence and actually inspire your audience to take action.

Don’t Be Distracted: Engaged audiences listen more, spend more, and share more 

Engagement looks like comments, likes, shares, call-ins, and reviews. Remember not to get distracted by vanity metrics, like the number of followers you have. Your engagement statistics are much more important because they describe the number of people who are actually paying attention to your content. 

Now, you have a content marketing strategy built on providing relevant information and it’s netted you an audience of trusting and engaged followers. This is when the real work begins. Content marketing is just the beginning of the funnel. Once people follow the trail of useful information into your brand’s online home, you can start to deepen your relationship with them. You can make bigger asks, like selling things. Engaged audiences are more likely to share your content. 

The proof is in the pudding (of your content marketing metrics)

Lastly, it’s important to measure the success of your content marketing strategy. Use data to corroborate your efforts (or work with us and we’ll do it for you). An SEMrush survey in 2020 found that the three of the best ways to measure your success are organic traffic, potential customers, and conversion rate. Write from the heart, but measure with metrics.

Ready to launch your content marketing strategy? We plan and execute digital marketing strategies that highlight authenticity. If you want to grow your brand and deepen your connection with your audience, reach out to Brian at Killer Bee Marketing.