Quantcast
Channel: Fancorps
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

Content Marketing for Startups. Get to Work

0
0

A year ago we at Fancorps made a conscious decision to become experts in our field. Not just experts of our own product, but of every product that relates, and all of the news and overflow of information that pertains to it. We knew, that in order to be the best, you have to beat the best...or at the very least know exactly what the best is doing, and how they're doing it.

We often get questions about social media in general, or about a specific technology or competitor in our space. These questions come from all sides. It might be a current client asking how they should more effectively utilize Facebook's Promoted Posts feature. Maybe it's a future prospect asking how our technology compares to Wildfire or Buddy Media. Or they come from a potential investor that wants to know the scope of the word or mouth marketing industry in regards to market share and budget allocations from fortune 500 brands.

These are all questions we can and have answered, because we've done our homework. But stopping at that point is a mistake. 

So, in addition to become experts we also made a concerted effort to take everything we're learning and produce valuable content from it. Essentially, we wanted to not only learn but to also share.

This solved another problem at the same time.

When you're a startup there's a pretty good chance you're lacking in resources. Those might be money, expertise, or experience. In our case, one of the things we've always lacked is marketing, because let's be honest...it isn't cheap to do. It's one thing to attend a few events and conferences each year. It's a whole other thing to sponsor those events, have a booth or presence, and produce collateral and staff the event to make a big splash.

Our answer was content marketing, and it has worked.

We've taken everything we've learned and turned it into great content, and it's had a great impact on our business. The best part is, it's essentially free, other than your time spent creating it of course.

Our focus has been on our blog (yes, the one you're currently reading) and syndication through our social channels. In addition we've created presentations and slide decks and even branched out into speaking at local events and meet ups.

If you're an entrepreneur and/or startup company and you're not focusing on content marketing you're truly missing out on an enormous opportunity. Anything you can create that validates yourself as an expert in your field is valuable, and when it's published online it will live forever in the world of search.

An expert on the subject, Brian Clark, says it best:

(1) Give Your Readers a Cookie
(2) Position Yourself for Success
(3) Sell Smart

With content marketing even a tiny one man shop can position himself as an industry leader. Don't try to "sell" your products or yourself. Simply produce meaningful content and let the buyers make a choice. If you're good at what you do, and have a quality product to sell that part will take care of itself.

Here's a few of the pieces of content our team has produced over the course of the last year that have all gotten great feedback from our clients, friends, and followers. 

Infographic: What in the World is Chilihead Nation?
Blog: Play by Play from the Word of Mouth Crash Course
SlideShare Presentation: Word of Moth Marketing - Past, Present & Future
Guest Blog: Innovation Runs Deep in the Dallas Tech Scene
Blog: Entertainment Industry Leads the Way for Today's Biggest Brands

In addition, we've created an entire blog series entitled Brand Advocacy Tech Review where each week during a lunch-n-learn seesion one person on our team presents and reviews a technology in our space. It's been a huge success publically with many of the companies we've reviewed acknowledging their inclusion and created an ongoing brainstorm internally of everything we could and should be doing to improve our product.

@gisanders

 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images