There’s no shortage of content for Google to index these days. As of July 2019 there were nearly 1.7 billion websites, and each day about 500 million Tweets were sent and about 5 million blog posts were published—and those numbers just keep growing. Generating content for the sake of having it around is no longer a winning strategy, because the tremendous scale of content generation means that companies can’t assume that any of their content is guaranteed to be seen. 

The old adage “Content is king” holds true only if the content can attract attention in a very crowded field. Today, for all intents and purposes the ultimate arbiter of what is (and isn’t) attention-worthy is Google and companies that want to get their content in front of an audience need to make sure that it has the relevance and freshness that are likely to improve its rankings in Google search results. By following these five suggestions, organizations can more effectively reach their target audiences.

We founded Mamu Media in 2012 in response to an unmet market need. At the time it seemed that too many companies were putting too much of their energy into generating and disseminating content just for the sake of content. They weren’t trying to meet the specific needs of their clients. Instead, they were using a scattershot approach: they threw a whole bunch of content (in different formats) out into the world and hoped that some of it connected with potential clients or customers well enough to lure them in.

Seven years later (which is a lifetime in the fast-paced worlds of marketing and media), I’m sorry to report that things haven’t changed very much. Too many organizations are still spending a lot of their resources just spreading generic content everywhere they can and hoping that some of it—any of it—will stick somewhere.

“What’s the harm in this approach if the company can afford it?”

When we announced “Print Is Back, Baby!” a few years ago, at that time such a declaration was still squarely in the “breaking news” category. Although many pundits were talking up the value of print publications—claims that were backed up by plenty of research—most businesses still insisted on putting all of their (marketing) eggs into one (digital) basket. Some companies recognized the merits of print early on and incorporated it into their marketing and PR strategies. But most either decided to ignore completely or adopted a wait-and-see approach.

Four years later, it’s clear that print has a very solid foothold in the media market. Even as organizations are strengthening and expanding their video and social media presences, “print continues to generate the largest chunk of revenue for most legacy publishers” and remains a cost-effective way to connect with customers.

In fact, print is so strong that several companies that originated as online or digital businesses have in recent years added print materials to their marketing toolkits.

• In 2017 Airbnb launched an eponymous publication, Airbnb Magazine. When announcing the new endeavor, Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky described one of print’s big advantages over digital material: “There’s the possibility that [a print publication] can be saved. It isn’t ephemeral, as opposed to content on a feed that expires.”

Although QR codes been around for a quarter of a century, it seems that most people in the USA still don’t know what they are and what they can do. To the naked eye they look like gibberish. But these machine-readable barcodes pack quite a punch: in a very small space, they can provide a wealth of information.

Back in the 2000s, QR codes were touted as “the next best thing!” for the marketing industry. But in the USA they’ve remained largely on the periphery of most mainstream marketing efforts for two main reasons. One, because they aren’t readily identifiable texts or pictures, people don’t quite know what to make of them. And two, the ability to decode QR codes has largely been locked up in dedicated applications that people often don’t already have on their devices when they encounter the codes.

With the 2017 release of iOS 11, however, the QR code landscape dramatically changed when the Camera app started to include a built-in QR code scanner. In other words, iOS users no longer need to download special apps in order to read QR codes. This major development basically eliminates the “I don’t already have an app for this and I don’t want to spend time downloading it now” factor that makes people reluctant to engage with QR codes.

At Mamu Media, we’ve built our business model around content marketing because we believe it’s the best tool out there for building the kinds of relationships that enable an organization to reach its customers most effectively. In recent years, more and more companies have seen the potential of this approach and embraced content marketing in their own campaigns, often with remarkable success.

By presenting content that aligns with their clients’ interests, organizations can build stronger relationships with them. For example, IKEA’s “Oddly IKEA” video leverages the current craze of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos to connect with people who are interested in its products. I’ve written before about how Patagonia produces videos about environmental and social responsibility to attract customers who place a high value on those practices. And every day, exercise equipment company Peleton offers its customers hours of new workout videos, a strategy that not only highlights the company’s strengths in its business niche but also fosters customer loyalty.