Creating Effective Content Marketing

Effective marketing communications inform and inspire consumers. It's messaging that creates product awareness and knowledge, and encourages positive brand attitudes and action. Traditional marketing, especially advertising, uses a “tell and sell” promotional approach that's unidirectional in presentation – from brand to buyer – and designed to persuade; it's hard marketing. Effective social media marketing is different. It's bidirectional conversation – from brand to buyer and buyer to brand – about the brand experience and designed to engage. This is soft marketing, the kind that target audiences seek as opposed to avoid. The key to social media marketing is connecting the customer with the brand through content that's informative, interesting, or entertaining; ideally, a combination of all three.

In this course, you will conduct a brand audit to identify the brand's pillars, tone, imagery, and personality. You will use these to create a clear brand voice for social media. You will then develop a content marketing social media strategy centered around a big idea and produce creative content that meets the business objectives of the organization as well as the needs and wants of the customer. Lastly, you will identify opportunities for user-generated content (UGC) that motivates the brand community and create a detailed content-posting cadence designed to meet the specific marketing goals.

Applies Toward the Following Certificates: Social Media Marketing