When it comes to content marketing, many people assume it’s simply down to the blogs on your website. However, creative content can provide you with more website visitors and help to increase your rankings.
When we say ‘creative content’ we’re talking about alternative forms of information such as; whitepapers, games, eBooks, infographics, and videos — anything outside of the written word.
By harnessing this type of content to promote your brand, you can gain press in established publications as well as niche magazines or websites that your target audience may read.
You may be well-aware of the importance of high-quality backlinks to your website, which means you need to create content that can feel ‘at home’ on another website, and provide you with a good referral link that leads those readers back to your website.
Old-fashioned PR, where you cosied up to the journalists with some freebies, is dying a death. Journalists are now at the mercy of their readers, who are now far more aware of a publicity stunt when they see one.
Modern PR is now about going above the ‘sell’ and showing how your brand differs from your competitors.
Creative Content can help you to do this. So let’s give you some real-life examples of what creative content looks like, and how it can get you that desired PR.
It Provides Thought-Leadership
As a B2B brand, you probably think creative content can’t work for you. But you couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, using creative content as a B2B brand can truly set you apart and provide often dull topics with a truly interesting way to gain exposure.
After all, B2B PR can often be quite boring in itself. Does anyone care who’s moved roles, or which location you’ve moved to, or that you’ve won an award? – Not really.
Journalists of B2B publications also find this type of news merely company information. There’s no real story.
Instead, utilising your brand mission, or the industry you reside within, can help you to create truly insightful pieces that allow your brand to sit above the noise.
Thought-leadership pieces – where you show your target audience how knowledgable you are about a topic, can enable you to gain strong brand awareness in your PR campaign.
Take, for example, this Diversity Timeline we built for a recruitment client.
They have a collective mission as an organisation to increase diversity within the recruitment process; this includes supporting both BAME individuals, LGBTQ and women into senior roles.
With this in mind, we decided to generate a historical piece that would show how diversity has improved in some areas but is still vastly lacking in others.
The timeline provided a resource that clearly outlines the historical changes in UK politics and society, around the core areas of diversity, giving people a visual reference.
This timeline not only generated a significant amount of coverage for our recruitment client but also gave them the exposure to be involved in larger projects, including Black History Month.
It Generates An Emotion
Content that generates a reaction is something journalists love; after all, this means they’ll also get a reaction from their readers. And the more visitors and shares, the more readers they’ll gain. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Therefore, creating content that can generate an emotion, be it shock, laughter, or the wow factor, can all help to make your piece a success.
It’s human psychology to want to share or engage with something that has a high emotional level. We like to share things that are funny – because we want to look funny to our peers.
We like to share shocking things – because we want to look like we’re knowledgable and worldly.
A piece that we helped create for the ‘fun factor’ was this fitness quiz for a sports nutrition client.
This quiz would take users through a series of fun questions until they reached the answer – revealing which super-fit film character they would be.
The piece was designed to not only engage with their target audience of gym buffs but also to provide an engaging piece of content that could be placed on their target publication list — places such as Women’s Health and Men’s Health.
It Serves A Purpose
At Trusted Media, we’re a firm believer that content should also serve a purpose. While this stands without a doubt when it comes to blog posts and whitepapers, it can be tricky to see how this fits into the role of creative content.
However, understanding your target audience, and their worries, fears and questions can all help you to stimulate a useful piece of creative content, that not only helps them in the long run but also secures you relevant PR.
Our finance client mainly works with SME’s, who are international businesses. In order to both help their target audience and gain business and financial press, we built a cost calculator that would give them an average guide of how much it would cost to move their business abroad.
By using a key problem of their target audience, and a well-branded design, we not only helped them to engage further with their audience but enabled them to gain press for the tool.
As you can see from these examples of creative content, there are no limitations to what can be achieved. No matter your industry, product and target audience, you can gain PR with strong creative ideas. Sometimes it’s just coming up them, but that’s where we come in.
