What is content marketing?
Content marketing is when businesses, organizations and campaigns create stories and resources that people actually want to read, watch and engage with.
It can take many digital and analog forms, like a blog post, a published article, a listicle, a video, an Instagram post, or a brochure. People might come across it because they’re Googling the answer to an urgent problem, because someone they trust shared it, or they grabbed it off of a table at an event.
The most important thing is that the resource or story has to be useful and interesting to people, and it has to be consistent with the brand and mission of the organization publishing it.
When done effectively, it has the power to make people think differently, drive people to take actions like voting, buying a product or service, signing up for updates, or attending an event. For organizations putting out content, it can feed an ongoing narrative about the work that they’re doing and how it ties back into their core values.
What are some examples of our work?
Why do we offer content marketing?
If completing a branding project or launching a website is like building a house, content is the electricity that keeps the lights on. Everyone we work with has ongoing needs that content can serve:
- Help a target audience learn about things that matter or can help them
- Keep supporters and customers updated on latest news
- Create convincing narratives that people want to share on social media
- Offer a resource or e-book that acts as a lead magnet
- Attract media coverage and links
- Build search engine optimization for competitive keywords over time
- Deepen relationships with other entities that serve the same audience
- Position a brand as a leader in a certain market or space
- Tell stories about successes and challenges
How do we start a content marketing project?
If you’re wondering how to approach us about a content marketing project, here are some of the questions that we’d ask first:
- What is your target audience that you’re trying to reach?
- What have you been doing already to reach them?
- What metrics do you have in place to measure the effectiveness of your marketing?
- Do you have a website or platform for your content to live?
- Do you have any goals in mind for what you’d want to accomplish with content marketing?
- What efforts are you already making in the area of content marketing, whether in-house or with other agencies?
- Do you have ongoing content marketing needs, or a specific timeframe for a campaign?
- Do you have a budget in mind? We can structure projects to meet your needs and budget.
Once we talk about these questions and learn more about you, your business, or your cause, we can map out a strategy that lays out how much content we’ll be creating, what form it’ll take, the frequency of it, a budget, and a timeframe. Contact us today to get started.
What mediums are best for content marketing?
We’ve created content across every possible platform and medium. To provide the most value, we try to create things that can be re-purposed several times, and are as accessible as possible to people with different preferences for content.
For example a blog post can be shared on social media, come up in search results, have several graphics in it that could be shared on Instagram and Pinterest, and also can warrant coverage and links from other blogs and newspapers. Depending on your budget, information in a blog post can also be in a shareable video, an e-book or podcast form.
In our experience, listicles and articles that have visual elements have gotten great results. We try to have as much quality written content as possible, but to be accessible, we try to combine that with visuals and headings that people can skim and still understand the gist of the content.
Do we only offer local, Hudson Valley content marketing? Or can we also work with national clients?
We’ve done a lot of content marketing that’s specific to the Hudson Valley. We live in the Hudson Valley (Kingston, NY, specifically), we know what people in the area respond to, and we’re very confident in getting results when we create stories that involve our region’s people and places. However, we also have lots of experience creating content that moves the needle in other local markets or across the globe.