Company information strategy and content marketing

Content is any structured information that carries a message (message) for the target audience. Content marketing is an area of Internet marketing that is based on the creation and distribution of content. It can be texts, videos, audio or presentations.

A content strategy is an ordered and planned system for introducing advertising, information or entertainment materials into the information space.

The goal of a content strategy can be anything, for example, selling a product, promoting a brand, popularizing an idea, changing public opinion. A synonym for the concept of “content strategy” is “information strategy“.

Content marketing was structured and released to the world by John F. Oppedal in 1996 (“Roundtable: Content Marketing”. asne.org. Archived from the original on September 21, 2013.).

Two years later, the largest IT company at that time, Netscape, established the post of director of online and content marketing, which was taken by Jerrell Jimerson. Well, the first serious book on this subject was published in 1999 by Jeff Cannon “Make Your Website Work for You”.

It was already real, albeit a little naive, content marketing. This is what the definition says: “In content marketing, content is created to provide consumers with the information they are looking for.”

At that time it was progressive, but now its tasks have changed radically. Content marketing works to show people the most attractive side of a brand, product or service. Set yourself apart from competitors or form the needs of the target audience.

In essence, in marketing, content works as a promotion of ideas and achievements. It also provides useful information and helps solve audience problems. At the end of the 2000s, when social networks gained momentum, promotion through content moved to a new level.

Dr. 1. Content Marketing Trends 2014

Joe Pulizzi and Ann Handley of the Content Marketing Institute back in 2014 conducted a study of the trends and development of this direction of the economy in the United States. The findings say that 93% of marketers in America were using content marketing back then, and its use was rapidly expanding into B2B and B2C.

Already then they wrote about the tactics and strategy of this phenomenon. The specialists of the Institute counted 27 channels for introducing content.

Dr. 2. Tactics or content distribution channels

Pay attention to the fact that under the strategy and tactics of marketing they meant exactly the channels for promoting content. Data from 6 years ago illustrates well how content marketing has changed over this time, and how approaches to promotion strategy have changed.

Here is a link to another article by the Institute for 2013, now directly about strategies: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/11/documented-content-marketing-strategy-benefits-brand/

It says that in order to create a strategy, you need to perform preliminary steps:

• set a marketing budget;
• set goals;
• develop a portrait of the target audience;
• determine what content and promotion channels will be relevant;
• write the story of your brand;
• write a content plan.

This approach has become a classic content strategy, the Institute released a manual: 36 Question to answer, which gained immense popularity and became the source for hundreds of similar publications.

In principle, it has not lost its relevance even now, only new requirements, channels, tools and opportunities have appeared.

Let’s go back for a moment to content marketing in the 00s and early 10s. According to the same “Institute”, purely advertising tendencies prevailed. Companies with sufficient budget “bombarded” the target audience with content on the maximum number of channels.

This approach is reminiscent of offline advertising campaigns, when the goal is to increase awareness of a product or brand, and banners are pasted over all the pillars. Already in 2014, Joe Pulizzi and Ann Handley warned against this and recommended not to “shoot on the squares”, but to manage the budget more efficiently.

A lot speaks against the strategy of “massive content attacks”, and by our year 2020, it has lost its relevance.