Queens Are The Key To Any Strategy

In chess, queens are the key to any strategy. They are often described as the most powerful piece with the ability to move in any direction. Players must use their queens smartly and nimbly to achieve a winning strategy.

In digital marketing, content is queen. Content is a key component of any channel’s paid or organic strategy. The digital marketing team must react smartly and nimbly to create the best content for brands that will stand out among all the other media out there. Without content, as without a queen in chess, your game is sunk!

Creating a good chess strategy requires intelligent use of your queen. You shouldn’t just move the piece around without forethought and study of the board. In digital marketing, before implementing a plan, we have to fully understand the client’s brand and determine the best ways to use content.

Studying The Board With The VAST Methodology

In order to “study the board,” the NetElixir Content Team uses the VAST methodology to determine the best path forward. V stands for voice and brand knowledge. We analyze each client’s voice and tone used on their website and social media. If they don’t have any content yet, we work with the client to understand their brand and how they want to represent themselves. Are they casual and fun, like a close friend, or are they business-like and serious, providing no-nonsense facts and information?

A stands for audience understanding and development. We have to understand who we’re speaking to in each brand’s voice. We analyze all the potential groups this brand could reach, including those that the client themselves might have missed. Who could possibly benefit from this product and how? These are the people we want to connect with.

S stands for storytelling. This is where we put voice and audience together and share content that expresses what the client wants to say and how they want to say it. Here, we also consider trending topics and tangential keywords to find new avenues for sharing the brand’s story.

Finally, T stands for testing. Any strategy needs to be tested in order to determine its success. Testing leads to insights about what methods work best for each client’s brand and what resonates with their audience. With these insights, we make revisions and adjustments to optimize results — and then we test again.

Once we’ve analyzed all of these factors, the content team is ready to make a move and create differentiated copy.

One Team With One Key Element

Ultimately, a digital marketing strategy is built of many different parts with different functions. Like on a chessboard, these disparate parts make up one team, and they all must be used together to succeed. Regardless of whether your strategy includes paid search, paid social media, or SEO, you need strong, well-developed content to implement it successfully. In chess, whether your strategy begins with a knight defense or sacrificing a pawn, your queen is likely to be the crux of your game. If you don’t use your queen enough or you take too many risks, your strategy is likely to fail. Similarly, if you don’t create and utilize your content strategically, you won’t be able to pull off a successful marketing strategy.

Content is queen.

The post Forget ‘Content Is King’ — Content Is Actually Queen appeared first on NetElixir.

Linqia Survey Results on Content Performance

Convenience is the word of the day. At this time, companies are now working remotely and everyone is adjusting their lives every day. But this doesn’t mean marketing has been put on hold. Now more than ever, it is important to be active online. However, many new challenges have arisen as we work from home, especially for new product launches, content creation and photography. Companies should be reassured, however, that creative solutions are producing excellent and easy results.

Linqia Survey On Influencer Marketing Budgets

In addition to strong performance, influencer generated content can be much cheaper to produce compared to professional photography. There’s no need to rent a studio and typically the photographer/model is the influencer themselves. Three different charges are consolidated into one flat fee! Even better, if you are working with nano-influencers (influencers with 5K followers and below), they are typically more receptive to product only payment. They also have the highest engagement rate, with 3.9% compared to micro-influencers who sit at 3.0% (Linqia).

Finally, the days of poor-quality content from influencers are long gone. Smartphones are able to produce high-resolution images that are comparable to entry-level stand-alone cameras. You no longer need a thousand-dollar camera in order to create stunning work. Brands benefit from broader and more diverse options. 

Influencers bring word of mouth marketing to the next level. Not only can they advertise your product but they can also provide content that can be reused across all of your marketing channels. In challenging times such as these, brands can smartly use influencers to get the most bang for their buck, without sacrificing quality or quantity. If convenience is the word of the day, influencer marketing is the natural solution for brands. 

Resources

https://www.linqia.com/insights/the-state-of-influencer-marketing-2019/

https://www.linqia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-State-of-Influencer-Marketing-2020.pdf

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