Back in the day when we usually say the words “content and marketing” separately, we mostly do commerce traditionally on a direct approach. In the Philippines alone, since the invention of the radio and TV, commercials have become overused.
Your favorite soap that should only run for twenty-five minutes will extend its time. The program will run for one hour because of too many intermissions of up to ten minutes, especially if it has a high viewership rate.
There’s just something I want to impart with you from an article I read once. It said that “television is for amusements while the internet is not.” But as we observe it today, entertainment seems to be all over the place. Haven’t we had enough of them?
While being entertained, there will always be occasional interruptions. Aren’t you fed up watching repeated commercials every break? How many days do you think in total have you wasted watching “Ang Probinsyano” since 2015?
Don’t believe me? Then try to observe whenever you start binge-watching on your favorite channels. If not balanced at all, commercial breaks will always be longer than the program itself.
The ones who gain the most in this system are celebrities, athletes, or anyone famous to such a degree. Advertisers pay them (and it costs a lot in their part) to endorse products that they need to promote hoping to make significant revenues out of it.
Look, basically, you are watching mere endorsements all your life (that is if you spent your whole life in front of the television).
But over time, even if those pesky commercials have become so intrusive, it still is an effective way of marketing as it was then.
That’s how toothpaste, soft drinks, and even health hazards like cigarettes have become famous and flourished.
Today, advertisers are slowly deviating from the traditional way of marketing, shifting in the digital era — the age of the internet. And you as a regular Juan will benefit from it, through content marketing.
Content marketing in a nutshell
In my point of view, there are only two types of contents available on the internet: the ones that entertain and the ones that educate people.
To put content marketing into perspective these days, it is what most influencers in social media, video platforms, and blog sites are doing. And all of these falls under the category of internet marketing.
Before, advertisers haven’t figured out how platforms like the once-popular Myspace would potentially be of use and profitable to them. They became smart enough to weigh things through, though, while content creators found ways to strategize and monetize their creations.
We all know that TV commercials are costly and time-consuming to produce. It is unlikely with content marketing where you will not explicitly endorse brands. The way to do it here is simply by creating helpful content intending to spark interests and awareness of the said products or services.
Now, you are about to make a shift from traditional to the digital way of marketing. You need not be a celebrity to do this. You can be a star in your own right.
Below are the three basic ways you can use content marketing in the Philippines.
Social Media Posts
What you’ll need are the primary platforms Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, and of course, our all-time favorite, YouTube.
Social media has become a daily part of our lives.
Like the wallet that we can’t leave the house without it, our smartphone serves the same.
But it’s not the smartphone itself that we can’t live without; it’s actually what’s inside that we care about. Besides the ever numbing Mobile Legends game that seems to make kids and adults alike go deaf, can you imagine how to survive without social media? Do you know how it affects our daily lives?
Most people nowadays have become attached to it with the aid of that small rectangular device. They can’t live without taking photos or creating short videos of themselves and sharing it for all their friends to see.
Likewise, it feels incomplete without keeping tabs of the latest trends, fashion, or viral news and gossip several times a day.
Posting “hugot lines” or memes and getting some attention from them seems fun sometimes. But if you want to reap social media’s full potential, don’t spend all of your time on the internet doing just that.
I’m not the go-to-expert to use social media. Unlike other guru experts in this industry, I will not say that I’m the know-it-all kind of guy.
What I understand about this is that using the said platforms to gain a considerable amount of followers from them will give anyone excellent leverage, from a business standpoint.
Let’s say you are on Facebook, maximize its capability for your advantage. Create a FB page. And while building a following, why not post helpful quotes or short articles of a hundred words in each of them?
If a piece of writing turns out to be interesting and invaluable, you need not beg your followers to share; it will be automatic.
If you’re not into writing, then make videos instead.
Video Contents
Here, the materials you will create, obviously, are videos.
Vimeo and YouTube are great platforms to use. But the former is not entirely free. A plan will cost you $7 to $75 a month, billed annually.
Since we are talking about how to make money to come in, instead of going out, we are better off sticking with the free ones. Let’s include the social media platform Facebook in our options.
Like I said above, you can either make content geared for entertainment or educational ones that will genuinely benefit your audiences.
While we are on the subject, I will mention vlogging for a bit. It is the simplest approach to create content and share it with the public.
Today, we notice that some already famous personalities are also actively doing mostly just that. It’s easy for them to have an instant hoard of followers since they have already established that for themselves while being a celebrity outside the internet space.
Some will document merely random stuff. Eating anything raw or singing to the tune of the silly song “manok na pula” while making funny faces are considered video content. Heck! You can even go viral with that.
There’s just something I want to impart with you, I read it from an article once. It said that television is for amusements; the internet is not. But now, as we observe, entertainment seems to be all over the place. Aren’t we had enough of them?
What we need is something to cultivate our minds, especially our growing youths. That’s why, for me, I’d go with creating educational types of video content.
But that’s just me. I can’t dictate what you should and what you should not do. You can choose one type, or do both; it’s all up to you. Just make sure not to mix up your creations in one place. Upload them on separate channels.
When producing videos, try to make brief but comprehensive ones of up to ten or fifteen minutes.
You can also make your videos longer, maybe up to thirty minutes. Just be sure that what you’re creating is not dull but pokes the viewers’ interests.
Now, I said, this is the simplest method, but not all people are comfortable talking in front of a lens.
If you are like me, slightly introvert, you can create content through writing.
Blogging
If you can’t put your ideas into videos and not active in social media platforms, that’s fine, so be it. As long as you still want to speak your mind and share those ideas with the world, then blogging is for you.
Even before the rise of video platforms and social media, blogging seems to be the staple tool in creating content.
Nowadays, there are lots of ways to make and own a blogging site.
You can choose from free to paid versions.
Some sites offer free accounts so you can start blogging right away, the likes of WordPress.com, Bloggers.com, and Leia, to name a few.
The downside of it is you can’t get to have a personalized domain name. You don’t have full control over your blog site. If they feel that you are doing something that’s against their TOS, they can delete it. And the list goes on with so many restrictions.
The best choice is the paid versions. For less than $20, you can own a site without all the restraints.
You can write about your passions or interests. You can talk about what’s trending these days, or give helpful tips and tricks to make life easier. You can write just about anything under the sun.
More importantly, make your blogging site the source of beneficial insights.
If you want to know the basics of blogging, you can check out this article.
On the Whole about Content Marketing in the Philippines
As the title suggests in this post, marketing through the use of creating quality content is essential for the growth of your business. In reality, it’s already a business in itself.
The tools to do content marketing are readily available online. With the willingness to learn, you can’t go wrong if you look at the right sources.
Anyone inclined to know the concept will surely have the upper hand. But succeeding in this method still lies in your consistency and originality.
The internet is here to stay. Make full use of it to your advantage.