#google garage band

Before we begin, I think it’s vitally important that I pose the following question: do you fully understand what content marketing is? Prior to starting this blog post, I thought I did but having completed Google’s Digital Garage module on content marketing, I was surprised at how many layers there truly is to it. 

Below is a little screenshot of what the lesson looks like - it’s super easy to follow with videos talking you through content marketing and then a short test at the end to make sure what you just watched sunk in!

To have a look at the Google Garage module, click here

Content marketing a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material, which isn’t necessarily there to explicitly promote a brand but rather to stimulate interest in a brands products and/or services. From my research into the topic, it became clear really quickly that content marketing is a really important part of every brand and their growth strategy.

Content marketing is a fantastic and soft marketing approach to creating more awareness about a brand and recognition with a brands target audience.

Now that we’ve touched on how important content marketing is for brands, we are going to shift our focus onto how we as business owners or bloggers (or whoever) get stuck into creating a content marketing strategy.

1. Get to know your audience: This is so important. Take time to get to know your audiences likes and dislikes, understand when they are most likely to consume data, understand things like what age group your audience belongs to and how they spend their time on your website. A super useful tool that I learned about on the Garage Band module was their ‘consumer barometer’ – this is a coloration of loads of information from various surveys that Google conducted to help business owners (or bloggers etc) understand online consumer’s shopping and consumption behaviours. It’s a fantastic way to help you understand how online audiences use the internet in relation to your product and services so that you can create better and more tailor content.

2. How to communicate with your audience: Second top tip is knowing how to actually best communicate with your audience. The internet is so saturated with information, I think it’s vitally important that we as marketers know what form of communication is best to communicate with our target audience – whether that’s a blog post, an eye-catching infographic or a video – we need to know this inside out and upside down. Successful content doesn’t have to go viral or reach millions of people. Focus on the creating content should be tailored to your audience, and design it so that it moves customers towards a specific goal or action. Identify the purpose of your content, and then select the formats best suited to that goal – whether that’ll be a funny GIF or a super informative written post, you decide. Also, another thing to highlight is that language and style of writing you’re using when posting. In your writing style, you should be consistent so that you audience can immediately recognise your brand from your tone and style. Users also have a shorter attention span online, so keeping this in mind is really important. Putting a CTA (Call To Action) within your content is also a great hook at getting people to engage with your content, as well as a really good title to a blog post, social media post or graphic – generating that ‘hook’ to lure people in to read and engage with your content.

3. Be ‘seen’: So, you’ve created really amazing content while understanding your target audience – YAY! Our final step is actually ensuring that your amazing content is seen. Google Garage gave fantastic resources when it came to ensuring your content should be seen – breaking down this strategy into three different ways we should be promoting our content. The first was promoting on owned media (meaning our social media platforms and websites that we own explicitly), secondly by earned media (meaning third parties sharing our content, like friends or fellow people in our industries, earning us credibility and boosting our overall reach) and finally paid media (meaning paid advertisements on online platforms which are going to be released based upon who we will reach in our target audience). All three of these should be staggered throughout each month via a content calendar. That way you are consistently posting content which should boost your views to your web pages and/or social media platforms.