4 Brands Getting Content Marketing Right. On the flip side, there are the brands that are getting content marketing right: they understand it’s a long-term game; they write for their audiences, not themselves; and they dedicate adequate resources; and they’re still seeing the results. GE has emerged as a storytelling brand. GE couldn’t do this better. Kintigh stresses in many interviews he gives how important it is to build loyalty and give people a reason to come back. Intel’s writers not only describe the tech – it is a tech company after all – but, like GE, they know how to craft a larger story that draws readers in. By that, I mean the team respects its audience. The focus remains on building an audience and forming a relationship with that audience – the team writes as they would speak to a friend or colleague. When you hear someone say long-form content is what makes great content marketing, First Round is an exemplar of that success. Find ways to draw people in and keep them coming back.
The majority of marketers have made content marketing a pillar of their marketing strategies, and for good reason. Brands can point to strong ROI after building their content strategies and many have been able to keep growing audiences engaged.
If you couldn’t sense it, there’s a “but” coming.
When everyone starts doing something, the game changes. Consumers are inundated with content everywhere they turn, and a lot of it contains cheap attempts to win page views or likes. In other words: it’s boring, it’s self-serving, it’s not thoughtful and it’s not helpful.
On the flip side, there are the brands that are getting content marketing right: they understand it’s a long-term game; they write for their audiences, not themselves; and they dedicate adequate resources; and they’re still seeing the results.
Here are some of the masters we can learn from:
1. GE
GE has emerged as a storytelling brand. The company is driven by all the possibilities afforded by its technology and the stories it has started to craft align perfectly with its “imagination at work” slogan. GE takes complicated, technical ideas and manages to tell cool stories (often through video, another win) that resonate with the nerdiest geek to the average viewer.
Its content ranges in form, publication channel and target audiences. Take its “Breakthrough” series with National Geographic and Hollywood stars, which shares scientific breakthroughs from GE’s labs and compare it to the “Fallonventions” series with youngest viewers of “The Tonight Show.” Meanwhile, GE’s “Unimpossible Missions” series is a great demonstration of creativity, debunking idioms like “a snowball’s chance in hell” and “like talking to a wall” using GE technology. Ad Age reports the videos are published to YouTube, Vimeo, GE’s owned and social channels, and in paid channels. GE also launched a live mission on Periscope.
Speaking at Inbound 2016, Ed Heil, president of video production agency StoryTeller, said videos – or any content – must be informative, helpful, entertaining or engaging to keep viewers’ attention. GE couldn’t do this better.
2. Intel
Created four years ago, iQ by Intel has quickly grown into a popular tech magazine. Luke Kintigh, global content and media strategist at Intel, says that success is owed to Intel’s focus on content…
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