On 26 March 2019, the EC201 class on Content Management, held at the Selangor Digital Creative Centre in i-City, Shah Alam, saw a turnout of 126 people.
Defining Content Marketing
Coach Goay Chia Chia started off the session by first defining content. She identifies ‘content’ as ‘any information or experience that your brand directs to the audience’, and can come in formats such as text, pictures, sound or music, videos, or even events. Using the Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) campaign, she highlighted various examples of content used to promote education of the disease, including text, images and the highly successful Ice bucket viral video challenges.
For the class, her focus was mainly on two forms of content channels, Social Media and Digital Videos. Before delving deeper into both content channels, Coach Chia Chia first elaborated on what is content management.
According to her, content management is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium and at its core are Content Strategy, which covers the what, and Content Marketing, which covers the how.
She then goes on to elaborate first on Content Marketing and why it improves conversion. Content allows businesses to connect with their customers, allowing theme to feel engaged. This in turn should increase brand loyalty which will help boost conversions as well as increase sales.
To further back up her what she said on the trend towards digital content marketing, she shared data to support the claims including:
- 78% of users of consumers preferring to know a company through articles rather than ads
- 70% of consumers believing that tailored or custom content shows that organisations are interested in building a good relationship with them.
- 57% of surveyed marketers have stand-alone budgets for content marketing
- 4.37% of surveyed marketers have dedicated budgets for influencer marketing
- There was a 325% plus increase in search for “influencer marketing” on Google over the last 12 months
- It’s one of the fastest growing online customer acquisition method over the year, making up for 28% compared to other methods.
The whys of video
The course then proceeded on to why videos should be a crucial form of content for engagement. Coach Chia Chia shared six reasons as to why video plays an important role in content management strategy and they are:
- Increases engagement
- Adds personality to a brand
- Provides video explanation
- Showcases a product better
- Raises retention rate on websites
- Increases customer conversions and returns
Starting on content marketing
Coach Chia Chia proceeded to highlight how one can start on content marketing by sharing the content management cycle and how the process works (see illustration below).
In each process, Coach Chia Chia highlighted the methodologies that can be used like what sort of content types that should be looked at in the creation stage, whether to grow through organic or paid boost in the choosing stage, up to the post campaign analysis in the conclusion stage.
To further explain how to get started on content management, Coach Chia Chia said that content should follow a content pyramid that consists of:
- Document Pillar Content
- Repurpose into micro content
- Distribute across social media
The pillar content takes the form of a long from video content that could either be a vlog, live video or talkshow. This long form content can then be repurposed to what is called micro content, which are shorter pieces of content that are easily read or consumed. They can take the form of short articles, pictures, meme’s and a few others. After that, it’s time to distribute them across the various social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
Optimising content
One important aspect about content management according to Coach Chia Chia, is optimising content. This is especially true for videos, especially those on Facebook. According to Chia, square videos for facebook take up 78% more space in the News Feed and gets 45% more engagement compared to normal landscape videos.
Other optimisation strategies shared include, subtitling and titles for videos, the inclusion of text in videos, attractive thumbnails as well as vibrant, contrast & good looking pictures.
She also shared other optimisation strategies for that can be applied to non-video content including a good description for content being posted on social media channels like Instagram, inclusion of call to action, the use of hashtags and consistency.
At the end of her coaching session she also provided tips and tricks on how to manage content strategy together with the kind of tools that can be used for one to start, including using a social media idea calendar and using the Canva web service to start off designing more image driven content.
Near the end of the course, of Adlina Nadirah, Founder of Velvet Vanity shared her content strategies for growing business and while Maverick Foo, Marketing Strategist of Authority Institute was also on hand to share strategies for Stumble Upon marketing.
