The phrase “content marketing” has become synonymous with blog posts, slides, and infographics, but there is no law that says content must live and die in a CMS.
As a content and community director at a venture capital firm I have talked to a lot of entrepreneurs about the power of content marketing and the biggest problem I have is when they understand it on a conceptual level but struggle with the implementation.
In most cases, founders come from a technical background and aren't comfortable with writing. The process of establishing an accessible voice, setting an editorial schedule, and delivering work is like a distraction from their core business. Content seems like a time-consuming, hit, and unreliable gamble.
However, instead of watching content marketing As the mother of all reporting terminology, companies should see it as a byproduct of their business model. Here are some stories of how successful content marketers have gone beyond words to bolster their bottom line using toys, puppets, and even cereal boxes.
Content production
Image source: i fix it
You may not be familiar with iFixit , but if you've ever seen one of those "tears" when a new gadget comes out, you know it works. The company's business model is built on sell kits and replacement parts for anyone who wants to fix their smartphone. iFixit provides a visual guide step by step to shred iPhone and Apple Watch.
For the uninitiated, creating these diagrams will be a cost center. Where others see waste, iFixit founder Kyle Wiens saw a marketing channel. He knows that tech publications want the scoop on how the latest gadgets work, but since most don't have the budget — or expertise — to do a proper autopsy, He started sharing helpful photos his team created with them.
Now, every time a new Apply extension launches, iFixit earns PR mentions in industry pubs like Wired , TechCrunch, Venturebeat and The Verge. Think of it as a new form of thought leadership.
Table toys
Image source: Tam Tribe
Thanks The Graduate , talking about plastic in a general sense still has some cultural relevance. But on a more detailed level, creating content about injection molding, the production process that gives us LEGOs, will bring tears to most audiences.
Import ProtoLabs , this feature is for plastics like VistaPrint for business cards. Basically, if you have a credit card and a CAD file, the company can make small plastic parts in a few days compared to conventional manufacturers that take weeks or months. And instead of relying on a series of blog posts explaining the wonders of coincidence, the company designed cheap plastic table toys and send them engineers as reference tools.
These products are attractive enough to proudly display on a desk, but are also designed to educate customers about the possibilities and limitations of the creative process. Instead of using images, ProtoLabs illustrates key concepts with physical artifacts created by their production tools.
Like any good marketer, ProtoLabs still uses lead-gen forms for customer tracking and sales, but its main “content” is made of polypropylene, not prose. The move appears to be working — the company currently has a market cap of $1.5 billion.
Cereal box
Image source: Airbnb
Before Airbnb was valued at over $25 billion, it was an attention-hungry startup. The unusual idea of regular tenants went unnoticed and the founders desperately needed attention. Instead of just writing posts praising the virtues of being with strangers or developing field guides to foreign cities, they created cereal boxes — complete with animated mascots. pictures and jingle birds — which they can give to the hosts and sell to the public. The creativity that got them airtime on CNN and thanks from Katy Perry and became the company's lucky charm as it climbed the unicorn club.
CAD file
Image source: Jason Krieger
Unless you have thousands of hours of training and access to a top-notch CAD program, producing 3D models is quite complicated. MakerBot the company that makes low-cost 3D printers, has recognized this barrier and has built a library of downloadable designs called Thingiverse . It acts as a kind of “iTunes for plastic” and makes it easy to assemble functional robotic arms the scale model of Winterfell and controlled by radio waves Koopa Shells .
Toy
Photo: West Side Design Lab
Before MailChimp Become a hipster star as a sponsor for the first season of Serial , it's a content marketing machine. The company follows the traditional B2B play by publishing smart e-book targeting certain audience segments like online sellers and design studios, but it doesn't stop there. MailChimp has also created a series collectible vinyl toys outstanding, apart knit hat , socks and playing card all of which are a great reminder that there are ways to get competitive beyond blog posts.
Puppets
Adafruit, NYC-based DIY electronics supplier, has probably done more than anyone to broaden the definition of what “content” can be. Its tutorials are spiritual cousins to white books, but to coloring books and a web series like SNL For soldering, Adafruit has disappeared above and beyond writing into a whole new class of multimedia content marketing.
A series of puppet videos inspired by Avenue Q Its is arguably the company's most impressive marketing achievement. Thanks to Adabot, a helpful puppet robot, the educational videos have racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exlRjDKHGRg[/embed]
Slightly gimmicky R & EASY
Terms " flaunt R&D "posed by Washington Post reporter Lydia DePillis to describe product development programs designed to generate PR rather than profit.
For example, Amazon is thinking about how drones will affect its business, but it is almost certain that Jeff Bezos has focused on that project, at least in part, to wow. a majority of the audience is not tech-savvy .
Similarly, in 2013, Uber integrated a feature into the app that allowed users to order an ice cream van to their location. The revenue was tiny, but this small engineering effort resulted in a big PR score. Outside of Apple product launches, you rarely see PC World , Parenting , CNN and the Huffington Post all covered the same story. If there is a part of your product roadmap that has strong narrative content, then you should explore how it can be exaggerated to create a good audience.
Blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts never go out of style — you can't build a brand without them. But before finishing your next blog post, take a few minutes to think outside the box, or maybe, think about creating something that fits inside.
Joe Flaherty is the Content & Community Director of Founder Collective , an early-stage VC firm that has backed startups like Uber, BuzzFeed, PillPack, SeatGeek, and Contently. Before working in VC, Joe wrote about design for Wired .
Post a Comment
Post a Comment