Nurturing connections, not conversions
Your company or organization had a message. You put it out there. And you were off to the races.
That was how it worked then. Try to do that now and you’re riding a tortoise instead of a horse in the race for engagement.
With the advent of digital, traditional media is no longer the gatekeeper to messaging-based content. The landscape has been fully democratized, and anyone with a social media account or smartphone is able to put out their message without needing to go through another channel.
If you’re still thinking about your content and message from a top-down perspective, it’s time to flip that mindset and start producing meaningful content.
This has forever altered how we consume content. Across the digital universe, you’ll see an ad telling you to buy this, a blog educating you on this, a video telling you to try this and so forth. All this adds up to us spending, on average, nearly seven hours each day consuming content1.
With this revolution in content consumption has come a revelation for today’s communications and marketing experts: content has to be thought through from the audience up, not from the brand down.
If you’re still thinking about your content and message from a top-down perspective, it’s time to flip that mindset and start producing meaningful content. This is content that is rooted in forging a real connection that understands people’s underlying motivations and needs, thus leading to a more genuine presence that people can actually believe and get behind.
As a brand, business or organization, you offer value. That should be reflected in the content you provide. And by making data-driven insights and decisions, you can determine what message and what pieces of content to who, where, when, why and how.
When you’re diving into the data and trying to ascertain how to create meaningful content, keep in mind:
- Audiences want content that provides value to their lives. They don’t want to be pandered to.
- All audiences are not equal. Content needs to resonate with the person reading or viewing it at that time on that channel.
- Audiences want to form connections, not just be a conversion. Content is the foundation on which the relationship with your audience sits.
In 1996, Bill Gates wrote that “content is king.” Content still dominates, but a monarch is nothing without its people.
