So why is this important to membership organisations? The bottom line is that the digital revolution has changed your members’ expectations of how organisations interact with them. Where, in the past, an advert in a magazine, a hard-copy newsletter every so often, and even a static, “brochure” website would suffi ce as communication, the movement of people’s attention to an array of online destinations has opened up the possibilities of new communications formats and methods.

This, however, doesn’t equate necessarily to more communication; rather, it’s the right communication in the right places: one phrase arising from the digital era that sums up the approach is “fi shing where the fi sh are”. In other words, rather than expecting your audience to come in search of you, you have to go in search of them – whether they’re on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or the photo sharing network, Pinterest – and be able to provide what they’re looking for.

The combination of being where your ubiquitous consumer is and creating materials they wish to consume is online content marketing.

Planning Your Content Marketing

As the diagram below shows, the benefi ts to be gained from content marketing are many and varied. However, it’s important to develop and plan a content marketing strategy that works.

Your content can include a range of elements – blog posts, video, audio, infographics, white papers, research reports, etc. – but your content strategy and plan needs structure:

Don’t wait for resources to appear

With your team, brainstorm content topics which might involve new product or service updates, interesting community engagement or something which is already creating “chatter” in your industry. All of it offers potential content.

Create structure out of chaos

Decide what type of content will support your vision and set specifi c content goals – in other words how regularly will your

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Whether you’re a brand selling a product, the Government persuading the public about the concept of local police commissioners or a membership organisation communicating with its members, you’re up against a multiplicity of interests and distractions that your audience is navigating on a daily basis.

Long gone are the days of reaching your chosen public in between them fl icking between a paltry three channels on the television and reading a daily, printed newspaper; moreover, your audience isn’t necessarily gathering in one location at a particular time where they remain a passive, stationery target for your marketing communications materials.

The advent of smart phones, tablet devices and widely available internet access away from the traditional home or offi ce space means the consumer is absorbing multi-channel and multi-format media wherever they are. And adding to that complexity (for you, the organisation), is the proliferation of online social and professional networking, whereby people are engaging with their friends, fellow professionals and brands with a degree of conversational intimacy that belies the fact that it’s not happening face-to-face.

Online content marketing – reaching your members throughdigital communications channelsThe competition for your audience’s eyes and ears has never been fi ercer. This think piece considers what the digital content revolution means for your organisation and the way you communicate with your members using online content marketing. Along with looking at how you should plan your content marketing, the piece focuses on a number of potential activities including blogging, podcasting and video.

Jon ClementsFounder of Metamorphic PR

More Long Tail SEO

Higher OrganicSearch Rankings

More Direct &Bookmarking Traffi c

Stronger SocialFollowing

More ReferringLinks

HigherConversion Rate

More Brand Visibility

Bigger Fanbase& Community

Content

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content appear. Test the effectiveness of your content over – wait for it – several months to understand how it resonates with the audience.

Use guest post authorsThey can come from a range of sources – even your membership community – as long as they are clear on the preferred topics, work to your guidelines and maintain a distinctive, individual voice that feels authentic.

Test and gather dataMeasure content analytics, including the number of social shares, thumbs up and down, comments, traffi c sources and page views.

Evaluate and improveStick to your voice and strategy, but be fl exible enough to grow with your audience and respond to their wants and needs. Digital marketing is focusing increasingly on retention of audience interest, so it’s essential to produce the right kind of content for your existing audience.

Content marketing to consider

Blogging

Though your organisation might well have a website with a news section, this will tend to deliver organisational information with an overlay of traditional “corporate-speak” that – in the new digital world – tends to be trusted less by the consumer. Conversely, a blog provides a forum for the organisation to demonstrate personality, authenticity and a certain informality which typifi es today’s online communications.

In practical terms, a well-run blog can, over time, build a loyal following and help you appear more prominently in search engines for chosen topics.

To get the best out of a blog, you need to:

Have a regular blogging scheduleBlogging at least once a week is better than not at all. A regular, high-quality blog post increases your visibility as knowledgeable in your area of expertise and gradually builds an audience. It also increases the potential for other online sites to reference your blog, as readers recognise and reward your authority with inbound links, which is one factor in how search engines rank your site. If you can, create a blogging team to ensure a regular output.

Optimise your blog post for search enginesBlog software, such as Wordpress, has in-built functionality to help optimise your blog for search engines. But you need to consider for what you want to be found in search. Using keywords in blog post titles and opening paragraphs are important for

search recognition, but be wary of stuffi ng your blog post with keywords, which is not just tedious for the reader but is also downgraded by Google in search.

Providing downloadable contentTextual content in a downloadable PDF format carries high value in search and encourages your reader to take action as a result of reading it. It also gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your organisation’s depth of your knowledge and expertise in the fi eld.

Add variety with multi-mediaEmbedding video or audio content gives your site visitors a more varied blog experience and allows your experts’ personalities to come through.

DistributionEven if you don’t wish to use social media platforms for direct engagement (i.e., two-way conversation) they can be effective channels for sharing blog content. And so, building a following or connections on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and participating in Google+ Communities and LinkedIn Groups can be an avenue for your blog posts. Be mindful, though, of online community rules, whereby wholesale promotion of your organisation can be contrary to the group’s ethos.

Podcasting

Podcasts are, essentially, short audio clips made available regularly online.

A study of American online audio habits by Edison Research in 2012 suggested that nearly 20% of people were listening to podcasts on a monthly basis, were more likely to own a mobile device and a quarter of them were listening to their podcasts while driving. Edison also found that:

• Podcasts continue to be effective ways to reach affl uent consumers who avoid advertising.

• The dramatic rise in smartphone ownership is a tide that has lifted the “podcasting boat”.

• The mass availability of the mobile web has changed the “out-of-home” podcasting dynamic from “subscribe and download” to “listen on demand”.

• The term podcasting has hits its cap, but the listening behaviour hasn’t.

Podcasts can be effective content marketing, but how?

Expert inputWhat do your members want to know? It’s your organisation’s expertise – or that of its members – that brings to life the value of audio content you produce. And, certainly, you need to make the time for your own team or member volunteers to dedicate the required energy and enthusiasm into regular podcasting.

An authentic listening experience Whether recording podcasts in a studio (the more costly but premium quality and highly controlled option), your premises or another relevant location (quality is still possible without a studio with the recording technology available today), you should aim for as natural and unscripted a listening experience as you can muster. The sound of real, interesting and engaging people talking on a topic close to your members’ hearts needs to be authentic to persuade them to listen again.

Calls to actionTo encourage more that just listening, you can combine your podcasting with complementary content for customers and prospects to download, or online response forms to complete and send as a result of what they’ve heard.

Video

The latest report by B2B Marketing into technology marketing trends suggests that video is the “most powerful to capture buyer interest”, with almost one-third (27%) of IT marketers deeming it “very important”.

But video is not only a valuable tool in selling B2B and consumer technology products. The fact that it’s a highly effective medium for generating an emotional response in the viewer means it works well with any living, breathing human being!

The YouTube factorUsing video to demonstrate expert knowledge is ideal when your audience is searching for an answer through a search engine. Relevant videos are displayed among search results and the right video material, offering answers and accessible via a YouTube channel, helps your organisation to be located online.

The video testimonialVideo testimonials, discussing the benefi t a member may have derived from the organisation, are very powerful. It’s diffi cult to introduce words into members’ mouths that they don’t fully believe in and – when they do believe – it is unmistakeable in their facial expressions and emotional response.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jon Clements is a Chartered Public Relations practitioner and founder of Metamorphic PR, with more than 20 years’ experience in public relations, communications and journalism. He has been one of the regular bloggers for PR Media Blog since its inception fi ve years ago.

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