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Strategies in Global and Effective Content Marketing with Pam Didner

In this Marketing Nerds episode, "Global Content Marketing" author Pam Didner shares how to build a content marketing strategy for global audience.

Effective Global Content Marketing Strategies w/ Pam Didner | SEJ

Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts!

In this episode of Marketing Nerds, author of Global Content Marketing and expert consultant Pam Didner joins Kelsey Jones for a podcast on content marketing for a global audience. They discussed when to write evergreen versus trending content. Pam also shared when repurposing content is a good idea and what tools should be in every content writer or promoter’s toolbox.

Effective Global Content Marketing Strategies w/ Pam Didner | SEJ

Here are a few transcribed excerpts from their discussion, but make sure to listen to the podcast to hear everything:

Globalizing Content

The title of my book is Global Content Marketing. Essentially, my book is a how-to book to share with readers on how to scale your content across regions. The title “Global” and “Content Marketing” sounds a little bit daunting if you will, so whenever I give a presentation I try to explain the definition of a global content marketing, I usually break it down into two elements. Obviously, one is global. The other one is content marketing.

Content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable, and engaging content to target audiences with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business around existing customers. Using content as a means to introduce and also educate your target audience about your products and services. Hopefully by doing so, you can get the new customers or increasing businesses from existing customers.

The way I defined global is actually from clients’ perspective, especially from the perspective of internal communication. It’s about the headquarters and local teams working together to execute content marketing efforts. If you think about it, global in a sense is a collaboration between the corporate and the local team. On top of it, global does not mean you have to market in every single country on the planet.

Content Marketing Strategy for Every Country

It depends on products, organizational structure, budget allocation, corporate culture, and a senior sales and the marketing manager’s preference.

Some products are highly localized and let’s use the menu from McDonald’s as an example. The menu from McDonald’s will be substantially different between the US and India or maybe US and the Middle East because the menu, the food they serve is so localized then you will need a specific strategy for each country.

At Intel, processors are processors are processors. It’s a very standardized type of product. With that being said, I don’t think you need expanded localization or content marketing strategy for that.

The next thing is organizational structure. Obviously, it also depends on if you have global resources on the ground and if you do, obviously it makes sense that they have a specific plan that they can execute. Some companies, they may not have anybody on the ground, then the headquarter teams will need to take care of the strategy. With that being said, they probably will make it a little bit more homogeneous.

Another thing is the budget allocation and also how the budget is allocated, centralized versus decentralized. That will also dictate the strategy planning.

Another thing I would like to emphasize is corporate culture. Some cultures, they are more creative and they give more autonomy, if you will, to different regions and also countries.

The last element I would like to mention is after all the company is run by people. A lot of times, especially in a smaller company, a VP of sales and marketing or CMO, they can actually single-handedly determine how the common strategy or the marketing strategy should be managed. Some of them, they probably prefer a more centralized type of manner, which is one strategy and that will go to multiple, different regions. Some probably preferred that each region has their own voice, so that’s also a preference. It can be determined by company.

Should You Mix Your Evergreen Content With Trending Content?

As a blogger or a podcaster, you want to create compelling and useful content so your readers see you as the go-to source for specific topics. As a result, you use content to form a long-term relationship with your readers or customers. However from time to time you should have fun content that happens to some current events or milestones.

Mentioning Your Products or Services on Your Content

When we think about a call to action or CTA, we tend to visualize that we need to have a call to action to buy or call to action to download or basically a call to act. We usually associate a call to action with the last sentence of an ad or a blog or a video.

However, I feel a call to action should begin way before you start writing or producing your content. It nearly starts with your subject line if you think about it. The reason I say that is everything you communicate should have a sense of purpose.

I am not writing a blog post every single Monday because it’s fun. Well, sometimes it was, but a lot of times we had a reason behind why we are doing it.

The way I think about it is not about a call to action. It’s about what you are trying to communicate and what you want to steer your readers to. The call to action is not something you should focus on. It’s more or less if you are producing or creating a piece of content, what is the purpose? As long as you accomplish that purpose and the call to action will come naturally.

Repurposing Content for Global Audience

Repurposing content is a big part of global content marketing in my own opinion.

You can break down a long form content, such as an page white papers into a two minute whiteboard video, 15-slide presentation for Slideshare and into numerous digestible and snackable tweets. Another way is actually to take a small, little piece of the content and then you consolidate it into a long form content.

However, how does that play into say scaling your content across regions?

The way I would answer that question is to balance and also collaborate between corporate and local teams. If you think about it, repurposing content should be managed by a local team, not necessarily by a corporate team. That little local team decides what they want to localize and translate and then determine which content is relevant for their regions or their countries.

Recommended Tools and Resources

If you are doing content marketing, you should always have the following tools from my perspective: You should always have a marketing automation tool. You should also have a CRM so that you can track your customers and what kind of content they actually download.

Another thing you should also have is a content management tool. That content management tool can be a workflow that helps you to manage the content creation between different stages of the content planning. Also, the archiving of content, especially if you have digital ties to your content and everything is online.

There is one book I actually enjoy a lot. It’s a book about how to tell a story or how to do messaging and value propositions for your products and services. This is by Heath Brothers, Chip Heath and Dan Heath: “Made to Stick.”

To listen to this Marketing Nerds Podcast with Kelsey Jones & Pam Didner:

Think you have what it takes to be a Marketing Nerd? If so, message Kelsey Jones on Twitter, or email her at kelsey [at] searchenginejournal.com.

Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts!

Amazon link is an affiliate link.

5 Factors in Building a Global Content Marketing StrategyImage Credits

Featured Image: Image by Paulo Bobita
In-post Photo: mayrum2/DepositPhotos.com

Category SEJ Show
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Aki Libo-on

Aki is a content strategist, marketing consultant, and former assistant editor of SEJ. When not at work, she is busy ...

Strategies in Global and Effective Content Marketing with Pam Didner

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