Start Thinking Like a Publisher
With over 70% of organizations increasing their spend on content marketing this year, it’s imperative that they’re able to start acting like publishers. It’s becoming more and more apparent that marketing “out” with banners, emails and ads provides businesses with a very low engagement rate. Pushing out promotional messages to buyers just isn’t cutting it.
Michael Brenner explains his reasoning for the publisher mindset in his recent blog post on B2B Marketing Insider. He uses the example of American Express’ Open Forum, where they created a site to support small businesses in their quest to get more business.
They did this by hiring professional writers and experts in small business who wrote about the things that would be helpful to small business owners – to give them the information they needed.
The site quickly became their largest source of new card members. Not because they beat their readers into submission. But because they added value first. They earned the attention of their future customers. They provided helpful information. And their own business grew as a result. New business has to be earned. Publishing is the cost.
Providing value for readers should be the number one focus of your publishing strategy. Content marketing is about creating quality content, supporting it with curation, promoting it appropriately and tending to your communities’ needs to drive conversation.
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