The 10-Letter Secret to Content Marketing Success

Jul 14, 2015

Want to know the one thing that will make all of your content marketing efforts successful?

C-O-N-N-E-C-T-I-O-N

Connection is the secret to content marketing success. It’s really that simple…and that difficult.

Developing genuine connection in an increasingly distracted digital world is no easy task. Think of how hard it is to keep up with your far-flung friends on Facebook. (Thank goodness for birthday notifications, am I right?) Deep down we really do care about our loved ones, but too much physical distance and too little time to connect quickly disintegrates even the most rock-solid relationships.

True connection leads to trust.

Trust has always been the bedrock of human relationships, and that’s not going to change just because we spend so much of our time staring at tiny screens.
Do you want to experience true content marketing success? You’ve got to work for that connection and gain your audience’s trust.

3 stages of successful connection

Here’s what you need to do to connect with your clients and prospects in a meaningful way:

  1. Love: We’re not talking head-over-heels, let-me-get-down-on-one-knee love here, but there’s simply no getting around the fact that you have to have a certain amount of love for the people you’re serving (or want to serve). If you love your customers and potential customers, then you’ll want to provide them with products, services, and information that will enhance their lives, not just add to your revenue stream. It’s similar to the love you have for a really close friend; you want to do what you can to help them find success and fulfillment in life. Love for your target audience will provide you with the motivation necessary to move on to the next stage, which is…
  2. Listen: Email and social media have given businesses an incredible opportunity to gain insights into their customers/potential customers and respond to their pain points. But too many companies see social media as a megaphone that they can use to shout about their products and services from the top of the digital mountain, not as a microphone into which their customers are voicing their concerns. Let the audience that you love tell you what they want out of their relationship with you, then give it to them.
  3. Leap: Always search for innovative ways to engage with your audience—even if some of the ideas you come up with seem too extreme. Great content marketing requires a leap of faith.

The content marketing success equation

Developing relationships with your clients and prospects takes time, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t always distill successful content marketing down into numerical form. You can try. You can sift through Google Analytics, perform detailed ROI calculations, etc. but when we’re talking about human interactions, the value of numbers without the proper context is limited.

If this notion induces an uncomfortable squirming feeling inside of you, here’s something to make the idea a bit more palatable; the core message of this post as a series of equations:

Love + Listen + Leap = Connection
(Connection) Content Marketing = Audience Trust =Business Success

Anne-Marie Botek/Copywriter

IMPACT Marketing & Public Relations, LLC

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