what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

what is
content
marketing?
a primer for the rest of us

for nonprofits, antiprofits, community groups,

socialdigital.ca
unions & NGOs - and locally-minded businesses

what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

what is content marketing?

What is content marketing?

Why should I care about content marketing?

What is content?

What is content strategy?

What are dierent kinds of content?

Who does content marketing?

What are content marketings prominent ideas?

Whats wrong with being useful, relevant and having a good

story?
7
Why should change-minded folks develop a critical
understanding - and practice - of content marketing?

Is content marketing harmful for my health?

But Im a hair salon/community group/union/freelancer/

NGO. Im not a publisher. Right?
9
Okay, Im a digital publisher. What do I do now?

But if I listen, connect, go mobile and optimize, doesnt that

make me a corporate tool?
10
What is Social Digital?

10

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what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the use of digital content to market something so people
buy it, support it or do it.
It could be a product, a service, a brand, a cause or an event. It could be a
politician, small business, awareness campaign, community group or major
corporation.

Why should I care about content marketing?

Because were soaking in all things digital.
For better or for worse, digital life is becoming the world and the way we
interact with the world. Marketings power to shape the world and the people in
this world has never been more potent.
We are shifting from the old broadcast model of one-to-many to a paradigm of
conversation in a digital technology that increasingly immerses us.
Shiny objects galore - influencing our expectations, our identities, our ways of
listening and ways of seeing. Your members, your constituents, your potential
supporters, your customers - are all immersed in this digital world.
While they be based on dierent goals, and lead to dierent outcomes
(purchasing, supporting, doing), todays digital pathways themselves are
increasingly similar whether youre a business or an organization.
These digital pathways are shiny; they are evolving; they leave data everywhere
in their wake; and they surveil everything in their sight. They create new cultures
of knowledge and communication, one intensely interested in metrics, data and
shiny flashes in the pan.
(Metrics commonly refers to the analysis counting the number of hits, views,
clicks, shares and likes that your content gets. Data is the recorded and
traceable entirety of all the information that exists digitally, including consumer
information, habits and preferences, ones online movements, and the popularity
of content. Its both the content of your email - and the time/date/place and
person you sent it to.)
The way we engage online, the digital content we create, the strategies we
employ - all of these are increasingly shaped by the digital marketing industry,
aka content marketing. Organizations of all kinds are, increasingly, reorienting
themselves around this shininess.

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what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

Content marketing by a grassroots group helps raise awareness and leads

(hopefully) to justice or another kind of social good. Content marketing by major
corporations - far more ubiquitous - crowds the field and grabs a
disproportionate share of eyeballs, thumbs, hearts and minds.
Were the little fishes swimming in this content marketing sea.
So, if were soaking in something, its a good idea to know what exactly were
soaking in.

What is content?
Digital content is anything that you can post or publish online, whether in text,
sound, image or video or in some combination, hopefully a strategic one.

What is content strategy?

Content strategy is the planned production, distribution and presentation of
digital content that people - your members, constituents or customers - want or
need.
Dierent kinds of content is used at dierent times, depending on your goal whether its to raise awareness, provide in-depth information, motivate towards
action or purchase, or inspire loyalty or association.
You might use light-hearted social media contests to raise awareness, rather than
a briefing document or white paper (or primer), which youd use to deepen
understanding. You might use video to emotionally connect, and a slideshow to
inspire. You might present case studies or profiles to demonstrate and share your
knowledge and that way gain credibility. And so on.

What are different kinds of content?

Content forms are diverse as the day is long. Think of pretty much anything you
can do or post online.
Think of:
Websites and webpages
Online articles and links
Apps
Games
Social networking and social media sites
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what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

Email newsletters
Webinars and online meetings
Online learning, interactive quizzes and tests
Pictures, images, graphics, posters
Videos of all kinds
Audio - podcasts, radio docs
Live-streaming of video or audio
Fact sheets, backgrounders, briefings, tips and tricks
Press releases
Poems!
Case studies
White papers
Blog posts
Micro blogging
Slide shows
Lists
Etc.

Who does content marketing?

Everyone from the local hair salon to freelancers everywhere to oil companies
to giant tech corporations. And you, probably.
Of course, giant corporations have vats more money, resources and hired talent
than nonprofits, unions, NGOs and community groups.
But we have way better stories.

What are content marketings prominent ideas?

Here are three things to look out for: utility, relevance and story.

socialdigital.ca

what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

Content marketing often tries to be useful. Creating marketing that

people can actually use is a major feature of content marketing.

The way brands see it is they are striving to provide relevant, useful information
that people want or need. This gets them ahead of need and positions
companies as trusted sources - as entities that just want to help people.
Youll start to notice marketing where the content doesnt necessarily talk about
the product or the service explicitly but rather provides answers to peoples
questions about the products context as a subject.
You might see content that provides some form of utility that has no direct
reference to the actual product. You might come across, for example, an app,
produced by a toilet paper company, that helps you find a washroom.
Why would a company want to be useful in its marketing? Because the Internet
has transformed how people explore the world, including the way they research
before buying. People are looking for information, so brands are providing the
information they are looking for, without necessarily tooting their own horns.
People also appreciate stu that is genuinely useful.
Why be useful? Because organizations are competing for attention with
everything on the web.

Real-time relevance. Digital means speed, for better or for worse. And digital
marketing moves at light speed or at least as fast as the electricity, fibre optic
cable and LTE networks. Thats pretty fast.

Digital speed has enabled marketing to connect instantly to whats going on and
respond to the context or to peoples needs or wants in the digital moment
second. When the power went out during the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo cookies
tweeted a nice joke. Thousands of people retweeted it, doing the companys work
for them.
Real-time relevance matters in a world where folks arent gathered round the
television to watch the Same Bat Channel at the Same Bat Time - theyre
(broadly speaking) out and about on their own screens and on-the-go. And
wherever we go online, no matter what device were on, marketers are sure to
follow - in real time.
This is a zoom-zoom world in which quick wit and sound judgment compete for
eyeballs and thumbs. Remember the good judgement part.

Psst! Hey buddy! Wanna hear a story? Story is a major marketing narrative
today. From a companys products and services to its founding mythology,

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what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

marketing flows clearly and consciously from an organizations brand story written by everything it does or says.
For good reason. From campfires to shiny screens, humans make sense of the
world through story and storytelling. Transnational corporations are fostering
customer engagement, association and loyalty through same.
For corporations, getting people to see their products, role and behaviour as a
story does two things.
First, it helps to mask or hide real-world power relations and abuses - depending
on which story youre telling about the corporation. Secondly, it helps
corporations connect more easily with people. Marketing stories hook into our
own stories that describe how the world is or how it works.
Content marketing is the foremost vehicle of corporate digital storytelling today.
And big business would like nothing more than to tell us some nice stories. And
who doesnt like a good story?

Whats wrong with being useful, relevant and having a

good story?
Nothing.
In fact, these are excellent goals to shoot for when developing your content
strategy.

Why should change-minded folks develop a critical

understanding - and practice - of content marketing?
1. To know how to connect
Social-mission organizations need to be able to use digital tools to connect with
members, constituents or the general public in the ways they have become
accustomed to through their own use of digital tools, including social media,
online networking, video and email.

2. To build digital capacity

Its vital to future-proof your organization by developing all-round capacity to
engage with digital tools in fully creative and subversive ways.

3. To know what we're really up against

socialdigital.ca

what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

Change-minded organizations need to promote a more critical embrace of digital

tools and technology. We want to connect, we want to build capacity - but we also
need to build digital literacy.
Critical digital literacy helps us counter the shiny methods of distraction and
control that people these days in our groups, in our communities, in our world
are being subjected to.
On a practical level, we want to know how to reach people to increase awareness,
garner support and mobilize towards action. Its likely not enough to rely on your
awesome 80-page handbook when your union local members are watching
YouTube.
Getting 1000 click-throughs is not the goal, however. Stopping bad things from
happening is the goal. We do not "own" the Internet for a day if we get 10,000
retweets. The only time we break the class ceiling on "what's trending" is when
there's a real movement of the people.
Knowing about content marketing and its values and discourse of "metrics" is
an important first step from stopping your group or organization from acting
like a commodified robot.
A good way to test your organization on the Robot Scale is to figure out if its
engaging its people in real-world action, or if its just harvesting data and baiting
for clicks. In short, does your online organizing support real-world
organizing? Put another way, is your digital work in service to your real-world
work? This is the test, and the answer will have a huge bearing on your chances
of actually changing the world.
We need to be watchful and guard against the uncritical adoption of content
marketing and content marketing approaches within social change organizations
themselves.

Is content marketing harmful for my health?

Taken uncritically, content marketing might lead you to think incomplete
thoughts about the nature of reality and the real state of the world and what to
do about it.
So, don't forget to use mental floss and regularly assess whether your
organization is maintaining healthy real-world relationships, sharing power
equally and fostering internal and external solidarity.
One thing for sure, though - weve got to raise our content game. Its publish or
perish - for all of us.
socialdigital.ca

what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

But Im a hair salon/community group/union/

freelancer/NGO. Im not a publisher. Right?
Wrong! You are a digital publisher. No matter what kind of organization you are,
you're also a publisher.
Actually, organizations of all kinds need to really take this in. You can be a union;
youre a publisher. You can be a business supplying HVAC components; youre a
publisher. You can be a bakery; youre publishing content, all the time. You can be
a community health organization, or a local farmer, or a therapist, or a
consultant; youre also a publisher.

Okay, Im a digital publisher. What do I do now?

Dont panic, as the old hitchhikers guide said.
Here are some handy tips:

Listen. Listening is now a central part of marketing strategies and thats a

switch, away from the broadcast era of one-to-many. This cultural shift applies
just as much to nonprofits as to businesses. When you listen to peoples concerns,
and answer them in your content, youll connect.
This is why blogs and blogging has become a huge part of marketing, for
example. A blog can become a rich source of informative content answering all
the questions a potential supporter or customer might have. Rather than
spending time coming up with irrelevant content, think like a person who wants
information. First you listen, and then you share the answers.

Connect. The best content is stu people want to engage with, where

engagement means reading or watching, sharing, liking and commenting. You

can increase your chances of connecting by listening and providing answers, no
matter what kind of organization you are.
For content marketers, these connections, these engagements, are the currency of
the trade. More precisely, the data from the humans doing the sharing, liking and
commenting on is the coin they seek.
But connecting is the zeitgeist. This is why its vital that nonprofits develop
critical perspectives on content marketing - as well as build the digital skills to
fully engage in the world wide digital web.

Go mobile. More and more of us are accessing the web through our mobile

phones and tablets. In fact, mobile devices are outselling PCs now, year over year.
socialdigital.ca

what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

Content strategies have to account for mobile, so for starters your website has to
be responsive. This means it adapts to whatever screen its on, making it easier
to view and interact with on a phone, a tablet, or computer.
Over time, you will see the need to add content and engagement strategies that
are intended for mobile devices and mobile audiences.

Optimize! Fire on all cylinders. Optimizing is simply making the best use

of resources. Its when you align your strategies for search engines, social media
campaigns and your own web content making everything work for you in
tandem.
This is when you take care that your digital content is mutually reinforcing - your
content creation and campaigns are highly integrated across teams or
departments, not produced in silos and not at cross-purposes in the public realm.
The term optimize initially referred to optimizing content for search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of configuring your website and
developing content that stands a higher chance of being found in search engines.
Youre already producing content - its a good idea to produce it using terms and
keywords that people use when they search for that kind of stu.
And its an even better idea to produce content that gets shared because it meets
a need, answers questions, provides useful information or is fun and otherwise
engaging.
Optimizing is a good practice, no matter what kind of organization you are.

But if I listen, connect, go mobile and optimize,

doesnt that make me a corporate tool?
No. It means youre making full use of digital tools. Thats a good thing. Just
watch out that all the shiny digital stu supports your work in the real world.
Carpe digital.

What is Social Digital?

Social Digital is a community education project started by David Robbins. It
aims to spread the idea that digital literacy is too important to be left to the

socialdigital.ca

what is content marketing?

a primer for the rest of us

marketers and the state. It believes that digital capacity is everyone's business to
learn and share in community.

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