It’s Presidents’ Day.
And while you might know that the reason some of us get the day off work is because we are celebrating George Washington’s birthday (which is actually February 22), what you might not know is that our nation’s leaders have been inadvertently giving content marketing advice since the foundation of our country.
Not that surprising. Can you think of a venue more apropos to content marketing than politics? I can’t.
Content marketing is essentially the brainchild of successful political campaigns. Let me walk you through this idea.
To get elected, politicians must create a lot of content: speeches, posters, forums, (and more recently websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter campaigns) to win over constituencies. Political content persuades, educates, and informs voters, and also establishes trust between the political candidate and her or his voting electorate. Ultimately, the goal is that good content produces votes.
In B2B marketing, we do the same thing. We create stuff to attract our target markets, gain their loyalty and trust, and ultimately our goal is to produce dollars.
So, to celebrate this glorious day off work, I picked out the best content marketing advice from the experts—our presidents—and added a little modern flair. An extra shout out to Giphy.com for their endlessly entertaining .gifs.
1. James Garfield
The Content Marketing Translation: Your content depends on good ideas. Spend time ideating the kinds of content you should produce. When you are out of ideas, poll the various branches of your business and ask them: what types of content would help you do your job?
2. Andrew Johnson
The Content Marketing Translation: Reuse and repurpose your content. It can live in multiple formats. Hosting an interview of an influencer in your vertical? Repurpose that content as a YouTube video, a blog post, a tweet, a Facebook post, and potentially even a homepage landing resource.
Also, don’t feel restricted by the arbitrary “rules” of content marketing. Push boundaries to make an impact. Don’t get comfortable.
3. Woodrow Wilson
The Content Marketing Translation: Read the literature in your vertical and industry. Take time to have personal education and growth. Use the information that you learn to bolster your content, develop more powerful insights, and ultimately improve your content reach.
4. John Adams
The Content Marketing Translation: Content marketers read, think, speak, and write. If you aren’t reading and thinking, you’re probably not writing well. Take the time to understand what you want your content to say. Believe in it, and be bold with new ideas. Our job as content marketers is to educate, but also challenge our buyers to be more successful, to think differently about their industries.
5. Grover Cleveland
The Content Marketing Translation: Don’t be overbearing. Don’t preach product-centric content. Be gentle, consistent and reliable in your content marketing production. And you better be able to back up your claims with thoughtful advice and a solid product. Otherwise, your words are meaningless.
6. Bill Clinton
The Content Marketing Translation: Economy = money. Information = Internet. Education = content. Motivation = the want to buy. This is our jobs. The content we create should inform, educate, and drive action.
7. Gerald Ford
The Content Marketing Translation: Content should be shareable across platforms. A SlideShare can be made into a Pinterest board, and you can tweet it play by play. This also reflects the concept of repurposing. Think of how to repurpose your content across platforms and formats.
8. Abe Lincoln
The Content Marketing Translation: Research goes a long way for meaningful, worthy content creation. The more research and original thoughts you can put into your work, the bigger the splash that content can have. Plan for your content. If you have a plan in place for your content campaigns, you will be able to execute much more effectively.
9. John Adams (again)
The Content Marketing Translation: Make your content strategy smart and actionable by using facts and figures. Don’t create content that has no factual basis.
Also, track the behaviors of your buyers, and measure which content is working. What people “say” they want is one thing, but how they actually act and respond to your content is a powerful indicator of its success.
10. William Howard Taft
The Content Marketing Translation: Cite your sources! Too often, we see content marketers getting lazy with citing where they get their information. Folks, that’s called plagiarism. Give credit where credit is do.