Content: 2 major issues for brands

Today, two ele­ments are cru­cial when com­pa­nies are work­ing on their dig­i­tal strat­e­gy: con­tent and data. From the con­sumer and inter­net user’s point of view, it is undoubt­ed­ly the con­tent that is the most impor­tant, both its cre­ation and any­thing that can fos­ter inter­ac­tion. Although the term con­tent can feel like a “port­man­teau word”, in which we put what we want, from adver­tise­ments to videos, through white papers and newslet­ters, we can still iden­ti­fy two key issues around this con­tent, two ele­ments that have to work togeth­er: the cre­ation of these con­tents and their logistics.

1. Creative con­tent creation

The first chal­lenge is a cre­ative chal­lenge: it is about estab­lish­ing what kind of con­tent is like­ly to gen­er­ate max­i­mum inter­ac­tion and engage­ment. By engage­ment, I mean a com­ment, a like, a shar­ing on social net­works, a pur­chase, the fill­ing out of a form or the cre­ation of some new con­tent. The key here is to cre­ate con­tent that will pro­voke some­thing from the Inter­net user, which will make him feel an emo­tion, or even give him some­thing unique and mem­o­rable to live. An expe­ri­ence that will dif­fer­en­ti­ate the brand and a con­tent that will ulti­mate­ly make you want to con­sum­mate this brand, to engage with it.

2. The logis­tics of content

The sec­ond issue is about logis­tics: how to offer this con­tent in the cor­rect ver­sion (lan­guage, device, etc.) to the right tar­get, how to dis­sem­i­nate it using the appro­pri­ate chan­nels to make con­tact with the cus­tomer. Because it is essen­tial to remem­ber some­thing obvi­ous: to pub­lish a con­tent isn’t enough to make it viral, far from it, or to ensure that it is shared or at least acces­si­ble to the brand tar­gets. It is there­fore essen­tial to iden­ti­fy each poten­tial inter­ac­tion point for this content.

There­fore, and in a com­ple­men­tary way, to analyse and fol­low the path of a con­tent is an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn more about the final con­sumer. It is then the com­bi­na­tion of “logis­ti­cal tools” (CMS, com­mu­ni­ty man­age­ment tool, cam­paign man­age­ment tool) and of the marketer’s intel­li­gence, knowl­edge of its mar­ket, of its audi­ences and its prod­ucts and ser­vices, that will make the difference.

And you, what do you think? In your opin­ion, what are the best strate­gies to be devel­oped around con­tent to make them live and to max­i­mize their effi­cien­cy? And how best to com­bine the cre­ation stakes and the chal­lenges of mak­ing sure the con­tent is acces­si­ble, whether on an app, on the web­site of the brand, or in store ? Feel free to con­tin­ue the dis­cus­sion and share your views on the sub­ject in the com­ments section!