An introduction to three intriguing content marketing apps that will allow you to create meaningful content, consistently.
Many of you already know I’m a huge fan of content marketing. You’ve heard the term thrown around, but may not know the difference between content marketing and a paid marketing strategy.
The core of content marketing is to create insightful, valuable and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. I think the most important word there is consistent.
Your tactical paid advertising is on all the time, changing and flowing to monthly programs you need to get in front of your customers. Your content marketing needs to be on all the time, too. Your social media channels, your video content and even your blog (if you write one) need to be replenished with fresh (story-telling) content just as often.
I can hear the groans from the dealerships now: “Great! MORE stuff to do! More things to plan and get out in front of consumers.” Considering that we are becoming a planet of isolated phone gawkers (I’ll save that for another article) it’s to your benefit to move outside of the “same old, same old” mentality of just placing tactical messages into your trade area. When you start to regularly place engaging content in front of your audience, you’ll build a well-rounded strategy of tactical and non-tactical marketing.
Three must-have tools
To keep your melon from imploding under the stress of this newly identified pile of work I just dropped on you, here are three tools you can use to expedite much of your content marketing heavy lifting. And they’re either very inexpensive or free to use:
1. Lumen 5
This video creation tool is a constant go-to for my little marketing team. It takes longer form content (like a blog post, or an email blast) and turns it into an editorial video. Simply import or connect content into the dashboard (or start with a new story), use their visual and audio libraries, do some pacing tweaks and you have a new piece of video content to drop into your dealership’s channels! (Bonus—they’re a Canadian company!)
Video creation is not hard—they’ll prove it: lumen5.com
2. Sniply
Not all content needs to be created from scratch by your team. Sometimes your audience can benefit from an article you find helpful and you want to share with others. Sniply lets you embed your own call-to-actions onto every piece of content (article/page) you wish to share.
Here’s how it works: Share an article (say from CNN) on your Facebook Business page and
when the audience visits that article, there is a branded call-to-action graphic banner leading the user back to the dealership website page that you identify.
Sniply brilliant—we use it all the time: snip.ly
3. Canva
Canva is a great tool for making quick designs with a dashboard that doesn’t require a Ph.D. in Adobe Photoshop. It’s helpful because it has prebuilt the optimal dimensions for each specific social platform (e.g. Instagram), which are already laid out for you.
They have lots of free icons, frames, stock photography and illustrations to help your dealership mix up its graphic approach. Believe me, there are still a few handfuls of dealers out there posting their print advertising on channels like Instagram (for the love of all things holy, please stop). You can really push the envelope and create posts that are eye-catching and engaging.
You Canva do it!: canva.com
There you go—three web apps built to make your life easier and your dealership’s brand stories sing. Start to balance out your tactical messaging with content marketing. Don’t forget what I said about posting your print advertising “as is” online. It’s like washing your feet with your socks on.
