Content Strategy is Just one Part of your Social Media Strategy

Back in 2001 Forrester Research asked people why they returned to a website and the overwhelming answer was ‘content.’ It’s still true today.

Success in online PR and social media depends on the quality of your content. It’s about engaging people and the key to engagement is discovering what your audience thinks is good content. It's not up to you to decide what to publish. Your content strategy should be based on what your audience needs and wants.

In social media people are creating, reading, saving, tagging and sharing content. If you don’t produce the kind of content they value, it won’t get re-published or shared.

How do you know what kind of content to create? Listen and observe.

In the past we had to rely on agencies to have a ‘bright idea.’ But when you really listen to your audience, content opportunities easily spring to mind.

Example: A mortgage company discovered that young mothers in their first home were very concerned about the housing market and the sub-prime mortgage fiasco. They were looking for information in language they could understand. The company saw that they could write articles and do video interviews with their experts in a way that would answer the questions of concerned young mothers.

Example: A natural soda company that makes ginger products saw lots of discussion on Twitter about the health benefits of ginger. Immediately ideas started to flow about how to participate in this conversation – studies, recipes, articles, videos.

Example: a non –profit involved in drug rehabilitation found out that women turn to blogs for information, advice or recommendations. (2009 BlogHer Social Media study.) And what they value most is a review or comment from someone who has used that product or service. Since women are the ones who most often call the rehab centers – a wife, mother or sister of the addict - it was obvious that they needed to create content around the stories of women who had saved their families with this program and get it to women bloggers.

Telling your story online in the right place to the right people gets results. But you need a well-thought out content strategy based on solid research to get those results.

Online PR




One of the best business books is The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR by Al Ries.

In this book Ries explains how PR starts the fire - brands are built with PR. However the media landscape has changed so radically over the past few years, and people are finding information and news differently, so the practice of PR has had to adapt and change too.

It's all about online PR today.

Newspapers are losing readership in their print editions, but visitors to online news sites are up. Yahoo News has the biggest news audience in the world. CNN.com and MSNBC.com are close behind.

People go to social networking sites like Facebook and ask their friends for recommendations prior to purchase. and you can see the increase in the need for online PR in Google search trends - since 2007 the number of searches for online PR has skyrocketed.

If you want to reach your audience today you have to be online.

There are two sides to the story:

1. People are using social media sites and they are in active conversations with others about brands, product, ideas and causes
   
2. When they want info about a company they find the website the most authoritative source.

So make sure you have both aspects covered. Have a powerful social media presence and engage with your customers online. But remember to keep your website up to speed and offer Web 2.0 features. Add all your content to news feeds and make it easy for your site visitors to find you elsewhere online.