Strategies For Combining Content Marketing And Influencer Marketing
During my tenure at OpenView I have been responsible for utilizing content marketing and influencer marketing methods for both OpenView and our portfolio companies. Consequently, I have learned one critical lesson: If you intend for your strategies to be successful, you ought to be practicing both content marketing and influencer marketing.
However, you shouldn’t just take my word for it. Not too long ago, I participated in two conferences with our senior advisor Joe Pulizzi and two portfolio company marketing teams. We talked about quarterly goals and methods. Just like other developing tech companies, these companies are making use of content marketing approaches for the purpose of creating brand awareness and thought leadership. Both marketing teams cited the creation of blogs, articles, white papers, ebooks and participating in social media as elements in their marketing strategies for the coming quarter – all of which are intended to help move the needle on their goals. Joe stopped and posed the same questions to the two companies:
What do you do in terms of engaging with other influencers in the community?
On each call both companies quietly mentioned that they know they need to do more of that!
So why should content marketing and influencer marketing come as a package deal?
Most times, it is essential for these two new marketing approaches to go hand in hand. In one way or another, they depend on one another.
To be able to put into action a successful content marketing strategy many companies will have to take advantage of influencer marketing. By engaging with key bloggers or reporters, these influencers will be more likely to share your content and point you out as a thought leader in the space soon enough.
Want to begin immediately?
- Make a list of 10-20 key influencers (bloggers, editors, analysts, etc.)
- Share their content with your audience
- Post comments on their content
- Interact with them on social channels like Twitter and LinkedIn
To be able to establish a productive influencer marketing technique a lot of companies will have to participate actively in content marketing. Based on my experience I have found that content is vital to success for influencer marketing. Your pitches that simply shout ME ME ME, or our product this, our product that, will probably fall flat. In short, the lack of content will ensure that it will be more difficult to communicate your story and your brand.
So what content types do you need to look at if you are marketing to your influencers?
- Thought leadership pieces like articles or white papers
- Content that is easy to share (and encouraged to be shared) such as ebooks or infographics
- Valuable insights like a “State of the Industry” report
- Customer success stories to help show the value of your brand or product
How are you integrating your content and influencer marketing methods? What challenges do you face?
Amanda Maksymiw focuses on developing marketing and PR strategies for both OpenView and its portfolio companies.