Content marketing burst onto the scene a few years ago, and nowadays, it plays a role in nearly all of the major marketing trends. Content is a key part to any marketing strategy, whether you’re a law firm or a tech startup, but just creating content isn’t enough to call it successful. Sure, that’s an essential first step, but if you really want your content marketing to be effective, you need to take it a few steps further.
As the CEO of Influence & Co. — and human person living in 2018 — I spend a lot of time with content. I read blog posts, watch videos, and listen to podcasts all day long. My team and I are always thinking through what makes all this content work.
And after creating and distributing thousands of pieces of content over the years, there’s one thing we can say for sure: Successful brands know their audiences well and use their content across the company as a tool to build lasting trust with those audiences.
The brands that see the greatest successes with their investment in content don’t let it sit on their blog or another outlet more or less untouched. They’ve got employees within the company who use that content regularly to reach and engage their specific audiences and earn their trust. In other words, they use content the way it’s meant to be used: as a core tool for their entire business.
Here are three ways that you can ensure your content is a successful trust builder:
1. Understand exactly where content is needed.
I feel like I say this a lot, but I still see a lot of companies limiting the impact of the content they’re creating. Content is not just a marketing tool. It can be a recruiting tool, a sales tool, or a tool for seeking funding. Really, content can be used for any part of your business.
The first step is to find where content would be most helpful for your business. Are you having a hard time attracting great talent for a job posting? Are you having trouble retaining employees? Are you losing out on sales?
Once you’ve identified the problem area, learn as much as you can about the audience you want to reach. If it’s potential employees, think about who you want in the position. If it’s a potential client, consider the questions, concerns, and challenges that previous leads (both those who closed and those who didn’t) have shared with your sales team. Once you know the who and the what, it’s time to create the content.
2. Lend your thought leadership to the content creation process.
Content contributes to trust, but not all content is inherently great at building it. Certain types work better than others. Compare a flat, super-promotional asset created by Your Company to a personable, educational article created by an individual subject matter expert on your team. Which do you think is going to do a better job of earning trust?
Thought leadership content is helpful and valuable to your audience, and that makes it key to trust-building. So find the people in your company who know your different audiences and their needs best. They’re going to be the ones who can help create the kind of content that really fuels trust.
In addition, the people on your team who will be using the content should probably be active in its development. Not only does this improve the quality of the content and tailor it to that specific audience, but it also makes the associated departments more aware of (and invested in) what’s being created — all of which makes them more likely to put that content to use.
3. Actively share your content to build trust.
If you’ve tackled steps one and two, you’re already heavily invested in gaining your audience members’ trust. The only problem? They may not have gotten their hands on that content just yet. That’s why you have to actively distribute your content.
Building trust isn’t a one-time initiative. You have to continue to hit a series of touchpoints to move your brand into an audience member’s long-term memory as a resource he or she can trust. That means you have to keep using your content and proactively sharing it with the right people — not just cool your heels until they discover it.
Don’t wait for contacts to ask a specific question before you start sharing content with them. Obviously, you don’t want to overload people by sending every piece of content you’ve ever created all at once. But sharing helpful content allows your audience members to learn more about you right away and shows them that you know what you’re talking about. Sometimes, that content might even address some of the concerns they haven’t voiced yet. If you can alleviate those concerns, you’re already well on your way to a strong, trusting relationship.
Think about how impressive it would look if, for every question a potential customer, employee, or investor asked, you could provide a detailed answer right away. That’s what great content enables you to do. Granted, you won’t reach that level right away, but if you consistently follow these steps, you’ll find that your content will evolve into a robust and foolproof trust-building tool. No matter what you’re trying to achieve in your business, content can be the key to building trust and finding success.
