This is a follow up to a previous post about confusing exposure with marketing. In the current environment, we are given a first row seat to a continuous stream of marketing tactics and initiatives, including the missteps. With so many people focused on the “latest fad” of content marketing (which is nether a fad nor recent!), this climate offers a chance to review what not to do.
My previous post focused on the Trump Marketing Machine, and how despite claims, his team is NOT proficient at it. Following the consistent theme, we’ll review his use of content marketing a bit more.
Consistent Talking Points
First off, to give kudos, his team’s talking points are consistent. The surrogates get questioned on every topic and incident and their consistency across individuals and stations is admirable, in their ability to deliver the same message and response.
That being said, the content marketing approach overall is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of marketing. The campaign develops an inordinate amount of content, some obviously deliberate (policy speeches, press releases, etc,) and some, arguably, unintentionally. The arguably unintentional content is often outrageous and attention-getting, and gets continued coverage because the media and the poublic (as witnessed on discussions on social media platforms) continue to discuss and react to it. The policy and formal content, however, is overshadowed.
Content Strategy
There isn’t one.
This week alone (beginning August 14, 2016) saw a release of an overflow of content from the campaign, including an economic speech, a foreign policy speech, and a crime and justice speech. These are all huge pieces of content that each deserves extensive coverage and use of the soundbytes and components within each to spread across platforms, channels, and media. Content is not to be dumped and then left there.
Content marketing is not once and done. You should reuse the content in different formats, across time, continually referencing, and intertwining with the overall marketing (or campaign) strategy, to deliver a consistent, cohesive conversation.
This isn’t being done
Each content dump is overshadowed by “inadvertent” content, true, but the message is never delivered consistently and continually across platforms. It’s not reused, only occasionally referenced.
The engagement with the content is not managed, either. The airwave surrogates manage the engagement with their talking points, but digitally, the surrogates there are largely organic, unmanaged, and unqualified.
There is no strategy, there is no plan, their is no coordination. The content is merely posted and then left there to hang, as if waiting for the SEO value to pick up on it’s own, without effort, without nurturing.
Content marketing isn’t just content development. It requires nurturing, managing, and strategy, and that includes timing of dissemination.