Give it away

Education and outreach, meet content marketing ¶ 

Today, let's borrow something from the for-profit marketing world.

Something the marketers borrowed from us. ¶ 

If you give stuff away, you will make friends, build credibility, and create relationships.

Marketers call this content marketing. 

Suppose you sell (for instance) house paint. If you provide an online guide to picking colors (by effect, historic period, complementarity, or other schemes), that's good for business!

• Search engines will direct to your website views from people interested in painting their house.
• Your knowledge of color will favorably impress visitors and build trust.
• You just helped someone with a problem! That is a great relationship to have.

What goes around

So, who else gives stuff away for free? 

We do. 

Nonprofit and government organizations do. If you have an outreach and education component, it is part of your mission. 

For-profits sometimes have a problem with this. Give something of value away for nothing? What could we make if we charged for it? 

That's why marketers have to invent terms like "content marketing" in the first place: to ease CEOs into the practice of growing their businesses by building these important relationships with customers.

What can we learn by looking at education and outreach from this perspective? 

The Content Marketing Institute says the practice involves

valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.

This definition offers some rigor when thinking about your own messaging and communications projects.

Is your audience clearly defined? Is your content tailored to that group—is it "valuable and relevant" to them? Is the content you offer of consistent quality?

Go Deeper

The Content Marketing Institute practices the content marketing it preaches. You will find tons of ideas and information about content marketing on its website.

Those of us in the advocacy sector should not be shy about borrowing from this resource.

(The Institute, despite its nonprofit-style name, is a marketing consulting firm.)

It is also worth auditing a few commercial websites to see the kinds of content the for-profits are giving away.

Can you see who the target customers are? Do the marketers get it—are they doing a good job? 

If you pretend to be one of those customers, is the website a good user experience? What works, and what is annoying, about it?

Go ahead and learn what you can from these enterprises. They employ a lot of creativity! And besides, they got the original idea from us.

photo: shameersrk/pixabay