What Are the Current 4 Key Goals in Content Marketing?

It was predicted as far back as 2008 that digital media would dominate by 2020. This momentum is accelerating and content is fast moving out of the offline closet and onto a digital screen near you.

This has been confirmed by new research from the Isobar/Carat global report that digital media will consume 80% of media usage. The explosion of numbers in this digital and increasingly mobile media consuming world are headlined by these facts:

- On Christmas day, 6.8 million smart phones were activated

- In the last week of 2011, 1.2 billion apps were downloaded

- The Guardian Newspaper gets 1 million page views per day via Facebook due to its Facebook app which  was downloaded 5 million times with half of those being under the age of 24

- In 2011 YouTube had over 1 trillion video views

4 Key Goals for Creating Content

The ultimate goal of content marketing is to be so engaging that your customers will eventually buy, but before you get that far you need to achieve one of these 4 foundational objectives to attract interest, increase page views and maintain reader loyalty.

1. Educate

This type of content is often prefaced by a headline that starts with “How” . People’s thirst for knowing how to start a blog, market their business or solve a problem that is consuming their attention will always be content worth creating and sharing.

 

 

 

2. Inform

Keeping people up to date with the latest news was the domain of the  newspaper, trade magazines or television. Today the blog or social network such as Twitter or Facebook is the source.

Remember with this type of content it will quickly become old news and only has a certain shelf life.

3. Entertain

Entertainment is quite often best done by video and you only have to view a Coca Cola ad or a funny video to appreciate the marketing power of entertainment. It doesn’t have to be a video and entertainment can also be a media type that informs and entertains.Infographics can also be included in this category. Humour is one of the vital components in this category.

4. Inspire

So educating, informing or entertaining when creating content is vital in your mix of content but one often overlooked goal is to provide “Inspiration“.This can be a challenge but inspiring people to be better, to push their limits or to be successful should be woven into your content. This content can be examples of other successful people that have overcome adversity people or creative examples that showcase others achievements.

And what about you? What’s your content marketing strategy?