What Content Marketing and Pottery Have in Common

Sometimes, in order to fully understand what a new trend or term refers to, we need to associate it with other common terms or situations from our life. Just like when we were kids and our teacher taught us that 1 apple plus 1 apple equals 2 apples. The teacher didn’t told me there are 2 numbers (1+1), but she showed me that if I had one apple and one apple, that would mean 2 apples; so if I have 1+1, it equals 2. Right? I know, it’s simple or maybe even stupid to talk about this now, but it’s something that normally happens.

It’s easier to understand new things when you assimilate them with some familiar situations. This is why I tried to find the common points between content marketing and pottery. Yes, content marketing vs. pottery. Even though I’m not in the pottery industry, I’ve figured out that sometimes you just need to read about an industry, make some research and here you go, you gain knowledge about it!

So after learning what pottery is and what common points there are between this domain and content marketing, I designed a Slideshare presentation for you with important tools you can use in your digital strategy.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach, focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content so as to attract and retain a clearly – defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

And Pottery is the ceramic material which makes up potterywares, whose main types include earthware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is called a pottery. The term also refers to a potter’s art of craft or to the manufacture of the pot (source).

Now that we have a definition for each term, I extract the 5 common points these industries have in common:

1. Research

Just like pottery, the content marketing needs to start with the research component. When a potter wants to create a pot, he needs to go out there and search for a good clay. Because not every ground is good and useful, he needs a specific one, a special clay. The same thing happens with the content marketing; you need to start with research on the Internet. You need that special “content” for your content marketing.

• Inbound.org – Find great content from the community of inbound marketing from other marketers.
• Alltop – Adds a human component to information and news searching on the Web.
• Flipboard – A social-network aggregation, magazine-format mobile app localized in more than 20 languages.
• Twitter – Search trending topics to see what is popular worldwide or in a specific region. Also you can use hashtags to look up for relevant topics.
• Quora – A question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users.
• Reddit – Stylized as reddit, is an entertainment, social networking, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links.

2. Curation

After the potter collects the good clay, he needs to “wash” that piece of clay he’ll use for his pot. I call this moment “the curation moment”. And just like pottery, there’s content marketing and the need for great content curators has never been more urgent.

• Pocket – The perfect place to start and get you in the habit of accruing content to use and share later.
• Swayy – Takes the work out of finding and tracking the analytics of content curation.
• Curata – Users can good quality, customize, and categorize content sources for review and then disseminate in one place.

3. Create

The creation of a pot is an important moment for the potter. It’s all about tools, experience and the purpose for which he is doing this project. Now back to content marketing, who’s creating your content? Why you are doing this? What tools do you use to create that piece of content?

• NewsCred – An enterprise content development platform that offers businesses 2,500 sources, millions of full text articles, images and video to help bolster their content strategy.
• Contently – Allows businesses to work with high-quality freelance writers that also handles the payment and management of the editorial process.
• Shareist – Editorial platform for small to medium size businesses that helps with the entire content marketing life cycle.
• Brafton – Ensure the content created on your brand’s behalf will perform well on the web and with the right target.

4. Design

Some pots have a beautiful design on them and others remain just with the natural color after they had been heated in the oven. So, after you create your content (even if it’s a blog post, magazine article, tweet, Facebook status, Medium article or whatever you are doing there), I recommend you to create a visual.

Use effective visuals to power up your communications, boost engagement, and spark up your social media. Here’s why you must integrate visual content into your marketing strategy and communications. Source

• Visual.ly – Interactive data visualizations are hand-coded by developers. Visual.ly is working on data visualization tools to help everyone be able to communicate visually.
• Bannersnack – A one stop shop for banner design and advertising designed especially for creating banners.
• UberFlip – You can optimize your PDF’s to add social widgets, video elements and audio to make the content measurable and interactive.
• Haiku Deck – The simple new way to create and share inspiring presentations. Anyone can create stunning, image-rich slideshows in a fraction of the time required by most presentation software.
• DaFont – Archive of freely downloadable fonts. Browse by alphabetical listing, by style, by author or by popularity.
• TheAdStock – High quality stock images especially created for commercial use.

5. Marketing

After a potter had finished his pot, he would put it on a shelf so as to sell it or he’d sell it directly to some dedicated stores. Likewise, content marketing without marketing is just content that nobody will see. Now, think about your marketing strategy before you create the content and after you’ve created it. Sometimes, just a tweet or a Facebook share are not enough, you need more than that. You invest so much time and so many resources in this project and you want everybody to see it, so invest some money to promote your content, as well.

• Viraltag – Marketing Platform for Visual Content. Increase user engagement by publishing engaging visual content to your social networks, content networks and blogs.
• Mailchimp – A web-based email marketing service. It helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrate with services you already use, and track your results.
• Bannersnack – Advertise on 99% of the web (Google Display Network and Facebook) to find new customers and get the lost ones back. To get the best results, you get your own professional account manager.
• RavenTools – An online marketing platform for SEO, social media, content marketing, PPC and more.
• SEMrush – Is a program many new and older bloggers are using to optimize their sites, create the content their audience wants and create a better experience for their visitors.
• Sumo – A free WordPress plugin that includes a growing number of tools to help you build traffic to your website.

I hope this Slideshare presentation helps you understand better what Content Marketing is and how to use it.

But I truly recommend you to start educate yourself (or your team) by reading good quality content about this subject, following the specialists and practicing anything you read there.