Why you should be creating content even if you're busy
Working at home is awesome, but it does have its drawbacks. For one, there is only one person. Me. Most of the time I’m by myself so at the end of a busy week I like to go out for a drink and some nice food. That’s not too much to ask, right?
Therein lies my problem, I always forget about the nice places in town. Here in Yellowknife we do have options for dining out, but often times I only remember the common ones. You know, the most popular pubs, the ones everyone always goes to. It annoys me that the other options don’t come to mind, especially when I prefer some of them over those popular places.
It got me thinking, why can’t I remember these places that I enjoy so much? The answer is simple, they are never top of mind. I simply do not interact with these places when I’m not inside their establishment.
Obviously the popular places come to mind because they are being talked about constantly. That’s where events take place, that’s where wing night is, and that’s just where most people go.
How can these not so common places become top of mind?
Create awesome content. That’s it. Don’t go the traditional advertising route, please! I’m all for integrated campaigns, but don’t. People like myself block out ads like they are the plague, don’t waste your money.
Instead, make yourself a content plan. Figure out where you are going to produce content, who you are targeting and what your spin on the content will be. The Internet is a big place, make sure you are producing the right content. Informative content that will draw people in.
If I were a lounge based here in Yellowknife I would profile the shit out of my bartenders, drinks, food, atmosphere and community. I would write up how-to articles for specific drinks only served in the north, drinks a person could make at home. The same with northern cuisine. Anyone can bake a whitefish at home, why not collaborate with your chef and show people how to do it. People won’t stop coming to your joint because you’ve told them your mystical secret sauce, no (for starters no business actually has a secret sauce). They are still going to come to your establishment because people like to unwind and not cook for themselves, and that is what you offer.
The devils advocate in me challenges this notion with a situation where maybe these unknown places to me are actually too busy and don’t need new customers like myself. Maybe they are happy with their status quo.
That got me upset though because I see this as missing out on building relationships with brand ambassadors. Like I said earlier, some of these places that I commonly forget about, I actually prefer over any other place. So why should they produce content online that gets in front of me? Because if they do, then I will interact with it, they will become top-of-mind for me and I, along with others, will visit them more often and encourage others to do the same.
And because not trying to expand your customer base constantly is stupid, but I digress.
You have no time, you say? This always baffles me, because content marketing is not a free alternative to traditional marketing. Your marketing budget should still be the same. The difference is instead of spending money elsewhere you're spending the money internally on your time or on someone else’s time to create this content and then to push it out through different channels to the people that are interested in it.
The Content Marketing Institute, a company based around content marketing in the US, put out a study that says 33% of marketing budgets are now being spent on content marketing, with that number growing exponentially.
As a side note I’m eventually going to write an whole article on how content marketing doesn’t save you any money, but rather spend your money more accurately.
And if that still doesn’t make sense to you, I’ll tell you another little bit of information here. Look up Facebook Dark Posts, this is paid advertising on Facebook to a very, very specific audience of your choosing. There is no catch all with the hopes that someone bites, this is directed advertising to the people who are in your demographic.