With another mid-season premier of the hit series The Walking Dead, air -zombie fans like me would have enjoyed a sneak peak into what’s airing this Sunday. For you marketers that are ‘zedheads’, we have complied some tips around content marketing that you can learn from the undead.
Content Should Be…Alive
That is the most obvious fact of course! Many content marketers stagger through content creation like lifeless drifters – writing content for the sake of filling a blank pages or replacing the “lorem ipsum’s” in an website – in other words, their content lacks life and vigor. Don’t let this happen to your brand or website. Give it life – make sure it does more than merely exist. That’s not content at all. It’s just empty, lifeless words masquerading as content.
Bad Content Has Potential to Reanimate
With that mentioned, we also want to mention that not all zombie qualities are bad. Well, they are, but not when we are talking about re-animation. Bad content is never really dead: you can reanimate it like the undead and let it walk the digital world again.
We all did not start out as experts in content creation – there’s going to be bad content created along our learning path t genius-hood. Go back and find that content and give it a new life. Tweak the copy, change it’s design and presentation. If your content is ever going to be a zombie in any capacity, it should be the reanimation abilities.
Double Tap When It Comes to Social Sharing
The Walking Dead made the concept of the “double tap” famous. If you think a zombie is down after the first shot…don’t just walk away. Double tap the undead with a second bullet or sword swing to ensure it doesn’t come back and surprise you. When it comes to social sharing, you can employ this tactic.
Don’t just share your content once and forget about it. Just once is never enough. You should amplify the reach of your content—especially your best stuff—by incorporating it into your social calendar, multiple times and across different channels. That’s the nature of social media: not everyone is going to see it the first time around, so ensure that you get it in front of more eyeballs with double (and triple, and quadruple) tapping.
Virality Is A Mystery
When it comes to what started the whole zombie apocalypse, it’s never the same story and we don’t know the cause. The virus that started the apocalypse instill remains a mystery. Similarly, when it comes to the virility of your content marketing, one may not know the formula either. But the whole point here is we don’t know what may kick up heat and go viral and spread like a contagious infection. Don’t think about virility as the goal. Just focus on creating the most thoughtful, creative, unique content or simply an idea and start sharing it like crazy.
You Obviously Need A Team
If we’ve learned nothing else from The Walking Dead, it’s that simple fact that you cannot survive on your own: you need a team. The same goes for your content creation. A team of content creators can provide a variety of voices and perspectives and diversifies the kind of information you will be able to share with your audience. Every team member has its strengths. Build a solid team of warriors and you will survive…and succeed.
Choose Your Weapon
Michonne has her samurai sword. Rick has his pistol. Darryl has his crossbow. Everyone in The Walking Dead knows what weapon they are most effective with, and uses it to their advantage. Do the same with your content. Analyze what works, and do more of it.
Call Tracking, for example, is one way to measure exactly which content marketing efforts are generating high quality inbound calls, enabling you to survive post apocalyptic interrogation when your boss wants to hear all about the ROI numbers from content marketing initiatives.
There you have it all. One of these helpful hints may help you survive the cutthroat zombie filled world of content marketing.
Written with full credit to Anusha Anand – Tahzoo
Nikki Isherwood
As you are all well aware, I’m a Walking Dead junkie. But in all reality, there is a lot to be learnt here… and also how to keep an audience engaged. Love this article…