Content marketing is one of the latest buzzwords to come up in every new business and planning conversation we have. And while the principles of content marketing – creating, distributing and sharing content that speaks to target customers without an overt sales pitch – are legit, they aren’t new to PR. Non-sales, educational, trend and thought leadership materials have always been crucial to successful PR. Byline articles, case studies, blogs, infographics, news releases, newsletters – all core PR elements – are also effective content marketing vehicles.
What has changed is the seemingly endless opportunities to publish, readdress and share that content. Whether a case study becomes the basis for a news release and speaking opportunity or a news release leads to a byline article and blog post, a single content topic can be leveraged across a variety of marketing and PR elements.
In addition to the corporate need, there is a very real media need for content. Online news organizations are consistently increasing the amount of content they publish and many also serve as news aggregators. Some re-publish corporate blog posts – in addition to accepting contributed articles and producing their own news – to help meet readers’ appetite for more content.
So, yes, collaborate with your PR team about content marketing but also get involved in developing the content strategy. Planning which topics to address when and how best to share are crucial pieces to getting the most visibility and mileage out of your content. Also, foster transparency across your marketing and PR team – including vendors – to ensure that the content topics are relevant to both the needs of the business and the customer and that the content developed can be shared and published across multiple marketing domains.