Mastering The Art of Content Marketing
Shradha Sharma on Creating Engaging Content for your Start-Up
We are constantly surrounded by tsunami of content, all struggling to grab our limited attention and time. But often only a handful of content makes its way to our cognitive spheres and even fewer are able to initiate an action from our side. This makes creating an effective content marketing strategy far more difficult yet critical, in order to establish communication between Startups and customers.
We had the pleasure to welcome Shradha Sharma, CEO and Chief Editor of YourStory Media, on the Building it up with Bertelsmann Podcast. Often referred to as one of the biggest storyteller of India’s digital space, she is your go-to-person when it comes to understanding the challenges and strategies of modern content marketing. Here are some of the insights she provided us with:
Go Beyond Clicks, Get Engagement
When Shradha Sharma initially started out, content creation in a business context for startups played a very minor role in India. She was one of the pioneers, having gained experience through her stints with Times of India and CNBC, where she “met people along all spectrums and they all had something to say”, so she decided to give these stories a platform.
Today innumerable companies on all kind of different platforms are fighting for our attention every minute of the day, leading to a sheer overflow of information and impressions. It is pivotal for a start-up to stand out.
But just how?
Several companies aim to generate the most clicks and views on their articles and videos, by creating rather superficial content and promoting it with measures such as gripping headlines and contests. But according to Shradha, this is the wrong path and its important for the communicator to ask “how am I going to remain consistently in touch with the consumer?”.
It is about creating a “long-term relationship”, in which measures like number of views and clicks are not as important as the level of engagement between the company and its followers.
How many comments do we receive? Do we receive feedback? Is anyone calling us to get in touch? Those are signs for a healthy and enduring connection between the company and its fans that will set you apart from the rest of the pack.
Be Authentic
A major mistake is trying to anticipate what the consumers want to hear and then setting up artificial content that we think the audience expects from us. According to Shradha “we undervalue the audience” and that the customer really just wants to see the “authentic you”. One example of someone who has major success with this strategy is Elon Musk, fascinating people all around the globe with his eccentric personality and ingenious ideas.
Once you have internalised this idea, you will realise that content creation and storytelling aren’t that hard and are basically all about “your brand being authentic” and “telling your own story”.
For more on measuring engagement, building long-term connections and content framing, listen to the complete conversation with Shradha Sharma, by clicking here.
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