Having a content strategy is a very important part of any marketing plan. People are likely to completely ignore you if all you do is advertise and promote yourself. What’s in it for them? By providing valuable and interesting content (media), you’re giving people a reason to check out what you do. Think you can’t produce media that’s interesting? Well even a yarn company has had success….
Our website is visited 22 million times each year. The most popular of our four newsletters, The Weekly Stitch, has a circulation of 1.2 million, more than the circulation of all of the magazines we advertise in combined. As a result, when we announce a new product in the newsletter, people go to thousands of stores nationwide that sell Lion Brand yarns and ask for it. When we opened a one-of-a-kind retail showplace in New York City to display our products in an environment that reflected our brand, we would have loved for it to be featured in the local media, but we used our own media to promote it and the day it opened there were 50 people standing in line waiting for the door to open. – When Marketing Becomes Media, Millions Follow by Ilana Rabinowitz | Social Media Explorer
How? They provided valuable media for free. First starting with patterns and then a newsletter and it grew from there. Their philosophy is simple and one that can be altered to serve any company:
Our intention from the beginning was to be of service, to provide inspiration and education, and to support and enhance the crafting lifestyle of the people who might be interested in our products. It was this motivation that informed all of our marketing initiatives.
If a yarn company, which may be as far away from technology as possible, can effectively use social media and produce content that’s valuable to their audience, so can you! Check out the Social Media Explorer article for more details about what The Lion Brand did for ideas on what you can do for your company.
Thoughts?
(image by hello-julie, on Flickr)