A brand that doesn’t put content onto its site doesn’t have one. It has yet to figure out how it wants to effectively access consumers via advertising, reader submissions, affiliate links, Instagram, YouTube or every other social channel.

Content marketing is one of the most valuable pieces of marketing. By building content, a brand is able to create a rich, engaging environment for consumers. The idea here is that content is the most abundant commodity that a brand can have. For each piece of content published, it is able to reach many different people with a particular message.

The problems come when a brand doesn’t understand when it needs to focus on growing its audience (as opposed to publishing content) and what content to publish in the first place. And it turns out that research has shown that content is driving large amounts of page views – yet most brands either produce more content or produce low-quality content (compared to their competitors). As simple as it sounds, getting the right mix of content and where it sits in your portfolio is incredibly complex.

Content: It’s a piece of marketing

In an interview with the Harvard Business Review, David Peterson – head of brand and innovation at HubSpot – said, “Because brands are concerned with creating and distributing content in response to the consumer’s behavior, the brands become a content factory. The brand created so much great content that it eventually becomes invisible. The brands have relationships with consumers, but what the customer needs isn’t being delivered or what those consumers really care about isn’t being delivered. It’s not the kind of relationship brands should want to have with their customers.”

If there are so many different ways to solve a consumer’s problems (and audiences change their actions every few months, the very idea that everything is worth producing in one or two ways is ludicrous), then by that same theory, content should be mass produced.

For content marketing to be valuable, content should be delivered organically by your brand.

Speaking from a designer’s perspective, there are two ways in which you can ensure that your brands’ content is effective. The first is through analysis. A brand’s efforts to find content must involve the consumer to be effective. The content marketing researcher needs to know the exact needs of the consumer. The brand must always know which part of its brand most needs to be owned and should refrain from participating in user-generated content or affiliate links. There needs to be very little of the content that benefits your brand, but if you simply don’t know how to do this, research is absolutely essential.

Another way of assessing a brand’s content production is to run different tests to see what works and what doesn’t. Creating and placing more content is not in itself a bad thing, however, you have to focus on finding valuable and engaging content that is easy to distribute.

The most important thing to remember about content marketing is that it can’t be the work of just anyone. It should be managed by a brand’s content manager. A savvy team of individuals must be chosen to represent your brand’s content marketing, and if your content manager doesn’t fit in with the company culture, you probably should not be hiring this person.

While each brand’s original needs are slightly different, the brand’s objective must be to grow the number of visitors to its website. According to Malia Zimmerman, VP of digital and social media at communications firm Cision, “The primary use of engagement strategy lies on boosting website views and revenue opportunities by raising the overall web traffic to your site.

Coverage and posting promotions in relevant social media channels and websites can also help to create online traffic through a link network. Furthermore, the brand can amplify its social and digital marketing with a hashtag as it incorporates community participation into its social strategy. Brand engagement also gives brand fans a unique experience that can drive lead generation or lead to conversion – or even simply to purchase.”

Content marketing is easy for brands to define. Good brands manage their content marketing. But if the brand doesn’t get the balance right, a bad movie can remain a bad movie.

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