Why It Is Important For Brands To Connect With Publishing Sites For Content
This story is originally published on THE REVOLUZIONNE.
As the rise of content marketing continues, brands are looking for new ways they can reach their audiences thru content. Though social media advertising has been proven effective, branded content is now a new way to connect to audiences.
In an interview by Barry Feldman to Paul Shirer, co-founder and CTO at PowerPost, they talked about the essence of publishing to brand awareness. Though blogging is important, what publishers do with branded content, stories about your brand that are placed on their sites, is it makes the stories more “serious.” Shirer even advises brands to create a mini publishing team to surround their content plan with.
At the same time, publishers can provide a fresh new approach on your content since they integrate it with their in-house editorial team. This makes your content a lot more appealing and informative to the audience.
Shirer also emphasizes on the importance of the supply of content. Since for content marketing, stories are the foundation of your efforts, it is necessary to have majority of the streams of content to go back to the site. When you do promoted content, it also increases the SEO ranking, back-linking and search visibility of your site.
LEVERAGING EXPERTISE
Publishing platforms live and breathe storytelling. You may have your own marketing and blogging team, but leveraging someone’s else’s decades of experience will empower your brand.
Quality storytelling and narrative matter more than ever, and must be first and foremost in your mind when approaching “branded” content. — AdWeek
Because of the term “branded,” businesses move away from this idea of advertising because the benefits are quite limited, or so they say. According to AdWeek, the traditional measurement of the success of a content (branded) like traffic or any other metrics is not the sole purpose of doing branded content.
Content is content. Good content is good content. If a story is moving, no one is going to care that it’s brought to you by a brand. Rather, they’re going to be happy the brand brought it to them.
It’s all about giving more value than your traditional blog or event updates, but reaching out to a wider range of audience and working together with the publishing site to create a story that matters to them.
Brands must believe that a story is worth telling and that people care about it and want to hear it, but most of all that their brand should be the one to tell it.
HUMAN STORIES VS “VIRAL” HEADLINES
Contrary to popular belief, your consumers want to read. This is why sites that rely on “viral” headlines eventually fail. They fail to understand that readers are looking for value and information and not some click-bait shenanigan.
Stories that relate to your audiences drive the virality not the other way around. You can’t create a bogus headline and expect people to trust your brand.
In our sharing culture, people are inclined to share the content they find value in whether this be a video, an article or a podcast.
Attaching your brand with branded content will enable the people who share the article “ambassadors” of your brand.
This works in a brand’s favour because, of course, great content gets shared. When people share content that has been created for advertisers, they are in some way acting as a brand ambassador and influencer, telling their network that what they are sharing is of value. An article from a fashion brand on “How to get ahead in your career by dressing for success” will be the type of article that is shared among young professionals who will lean towards the brand at time of purchase to achieve that look.
Finding stories that are humane and interactive is the best way to approach branded content. Instead of seeking out likes or shares or retweets, the priority should be the content’s ability to reach the audience’s heart.
