Content Marketing is all the rage these days, mainly (we guess) because there are so many outlets and platforms for good, quality content these days. There are a lot of different vehicles for content—video, podcasts, blogs, whitepapers, infographics and more—but the longest standing medium is the presentation.
In a sense, you might say that “content marketing” is no different from the way marketing has always been. You have a vehicle (a billboard, a TV) and a message. But what drives this Content Marketing obsession is really more about the way consumers utilize the content than the way marketers distribute it. The emphasis with really great content today is interactivity, engagement and educational value. Sure, there’s a murky divide between advertising through social channels and content marketing through social channels, but at the end of the day it’s not super important to make a distinction.
Most professionals are more advanced in creating presentations than in shooting and editing video, designing infographics or coding online lead generation tools. So how can you use the skills you have to put presentations to work in your Content Marketing Strategy? We’ve got a few ideas:
1. Presentation 2.0: PowerPoint allows you to organize great animations and transitions, add voiceover and even export the recording as a video. This means that bank of presentations you already have on hand can be tweaked and enhanced to fulfill the same role as video online. When you don’t have to be there, your presentation can deliver itself.
2. Interactive Slides: Articulate software (and several competitors) offers PowerPoint+ solutions that allow you to embed buttons into your decks and export the deck as an HTML5 product. That means you can incorporate questionnaires, contingencies and all kinds of interactive storytelling elements into your decks, making them more personalized and helping you deliver targeted content in otherwise generic online environments.
3. Templates: These days, prospects and customers need more than education; they need help putting together business cases for new investments and strategies. If you’re in sales, why not develop a customizable business case template your prospects can download and fill in to shorten the sales cycle? After all, in a lot of cases you probably find that you depend on an internal point-of-contact to sell your solution to senior management on your behalf. Make it easier by giving them the tools and logic they need to do it.
Whatever you decide to do, remember that the art of Content Marketing depends on consistent engagement. It’s not a one-time deal to market this way; you need to be out there, constantly, with new and fresh ideas and content. Finding a role for presentations in your strategy can go a long way to helping you generate content quickly and cost-effectively, while still preserving the interactivity, engagement and educational value.
Question: How have you used presentations in Content Marketing?
