If You Want Your Creator Collaboration to be Great, Ask Creators to Participate.
Participation Marketing is at the Intersection of Content and Content Creator Collaboration
With ubiquitous internet connectivity and billions of people empowered to create and publish online, digital marketing competition is greater than ever. Companies are increasingly challenged to create quality content that can stand out to attract and engage new customers.
How can businesses grow their reach and improve content quality in such a market?
Through participation marketing with industry relevant content creators.
Over the past year, the expression “influencer marketing” has exploded in popularity and many marketing communications professionals are continuing to see collaborating with creators in the light of “celebrity endorsements”.
There’s more to content creator collaboration than advocacy.
But there’s more to creator collaboration than advocacy and all creators are not created equal. With participation marketing, companies can take a view of working with creators of different types to produce a variety of benefits — all through content.
What kind of benefits? The investment in co-creation of content between brands and creators enables quality content at scale. With brands and creators working together, co-created content can reinforce mutual authority for all involved. In such a cooperative scenario, creators can gain exposure, brands can reach new audiences, and customers are “info-tained” and inspired to engage. Everybody wins.
Establishing a successful content creator program requires a framework for identifying, engaging, and managing relationships. Here’s a 5 step approach to do just that.
1. Set Goals for Marketing and Creators
In order for co-created content to be successful for marketing, specific audiences and goals should be identified.
Think about: What do you hope to achieve with a creator content program? How will creators benefit? More importantly, how will your customers benefit?
Think about the distinct audience that you’re after with the content being co-created and set goals specific to what your idea of success looks like. Quantify those goals as well, whether it’s to increase the reach and engagement of your brand to the creator’s community or to inspire more leads and sales by a certain percent.
Also, set goals for the creators. For short term projects, focus on participation quality. With longer term programs, focus on participation, marketing outcomes and the
2. Pick Your Theme and Focus Topic
You can start by asking, “What does your brand want to be known for?”
Themes facilitate planning content and also serve to focus the sourcing of the right creators. Themes that are meaningful to all parties involved: brand, creator and target audience will be far more successful. This is what is known by creator resonance.
In addition to branding goals, themes in co-created content programs are often driven by key customer questions that can be answered by brand marketing. Looking at distinct customer segments and buying experience at each stage should reveal the themes and triggers that your content program will focus on. What is the solution? How will it work for me? What do I do next?
Consider what questions your customers are asking at awareness, consideration and purchase stages. Then think about the themes that will drive asking and answering those questions through creator’s content.
3. Find, Qualify and Recruit Creators
Beyond the famous celebrity creators in your industry, consider niche experts that have an active and passionate following. Also consider subject matter experts within your own company.
To start, talk to executives, marketing, PR and sales to identify a seed list of creators. Then use an creator discovery tool like CatJira to filter them out and add new creators your team didn’t know about into a watch-list.
When reaching out to creators, be sure to accentuate the positive and the mutual value. Focus first on what’s in it for the creator. Whenever possible, find out what are their goals and see how working together can move them towards reaching those goals whether it’s overall exposure and being associated publicly with your brand or early and unique access to information.
Content creator participation pitches should be credible, succinct and offer a clear description of what is being asked.
Once a topical list of content creators is identified, they can be engaged in a variety of ways including:
- Share their status updates on social networks
- Comment on their blog posts or industry articles
- Follow on social networks
- Write about them
- Interview them
[Shameless plug] You do the above to profile them right? Well, let me tell you a shortcut. Have them create an account in CatJira as a creator and have profiling up-to-date all the time.
Creator participation pitches should be credible, succinct and offer a clear description of what is being asked. Pitches should also be very easy to act on. In other words, make it really easy to participate. For example, writing takes time, so offer to do a phone interview instead.
Other tactics that work include: humor, high degree of personalization, incentives and association with other creators who are already onboard.
4. Content Co-Creation is Participation Marketing
Content co-creation might best begin with small, easy projects that advance the relationship to more robust and substantial time commitments.
Any content type you can create in a content marketing program can be co-created with creators.
After content is collected from creators, assemble, edit and package in a audience-friendly format. Then share a preview to inspire their continued participation to promote. Be sure to set expectations by sharing your timeline for production, publishing and promotion.
Any content type you wish to create in content marketing program can be co-created with creators, from eBooks to videos to articles to social micro-content.
5. Promote and Measure
Provide creators with tools such as sharing images, pre-written tweets, embed codes and short URLs. Making it easy to participate and promote can substantially increase the success of your collaboration with creators.
Offer creators feedback on what’s working and what is not. Since they’ve invested in the creation of the content, it’s in their interest to see the collaboration successful.
You’ve Got This!
By partnering with creators, marketers can tap into a wealth of knowledge and a breadth of exposure for brand messages. These are not self-promotional messages though, they are the things that the brands’ customers care about.
The mutual participation in creating shareable and engaging content brings value for all involved. This is especially true for the boot-strapping marketer looking to scale content quantity, while not sacrificing quality. The icing on the cake are the relationships built that can fuel content collaboration, partnerships and even new business in the future.
