With another six months before the next season of The Walking Dead begins, zombie fans are desperate for a fix. For you marketers that are zedheads, we have some tips around content marketing that you can learn from the undead.
Your Content Should Be Alive
This is the most obvious. Many content marketers stagger through content creation like mindless, soulless drifters; writing content for the sake of content: content that lacks life and vigor. Don’t let this happen to your content. Give it life: make sure it does more than merely exist. That’s not content at all. It’s an empty shell masquerading as content.
Your Bad Content Can Reanimate
With the above-mentioned point out of the way, we want to also mention that not all zombie qualities are bad. Well, they are, but not when we’re talking about reanimation. Bad content is never really dead: you can reanimate it like the undead and let it walk the earth again. We’re not all content creation experts when we begin: there’s going to be bad content that exists along the path to genius. Go back and find that content and give it new life. Change the copy, change the design. If your content is ever going to be zombie-like in any capacity, it should be the reanimation abilities.
Double Tap (and Triple Tap) When It Comes to Social Sharing
Zombieland made the concept of the double tap famous. If you think a zombie is down after the first shot don’t just walk away. Double tap the undead with a second bullet or sword swing to ensure it doesn’t come back and surprise you. When it comes to social sharing, you can employ a similar tactic. Don’t ever just share your content once. No, once is never enough. You should amplify the reach of your content especially your best stuff by incorporating it into your social calendar multiple times and across different channels. That’s the nature of social media: not everyone is going to see it the first time around, so ensure that you get it in front of more eyeballs with double (and triple, and quadruple) tapping.
Virality Is A Mystery
When it comes to what started the zombie apocalypse, it’s never the same story and we still don’t know the cause in The Walking Dead. The virus is mysterious. When it comes to the virality of your content marketing, you may not know the exact formula either, but the main point is that you never know what’s going to spread like an infectious contagion. Don’t think about virality. Instead, just focus on creating thoughtful, creative, informative content and sharing it like crazy. (Note: do not do this with germs. That’s how the apocalypse starts.)
You Need A Team
If we’ve learned nothing else from The Walking Dead, it’s that you can’t survive on your own: you need a team. The same goes for your content creation. A team of content creators provides a variety of voices and perspectives and diversifies the kind of information you will be able to share with your audience. Every team member has its strengths. Build a solid team of warriors and you will survive and succeed.
Choose Your Weapon
Michonne has her samurai sword. Rick has his pistol. Darryl has his crossbow. Everyone in The Walking Dead knows what weapon they are most effective with, and uses it to their advantage. Do the same with your content and lead gen campaigns. Know what works, and do more of it. Call tracking, for example, is one way to measure exactly which of your content marketing efforts are generating high-quality inbound sales calls the best possible lead type enabling you to survive the apocalyptic interrogation of your boss when they want to hear about numbers and ROI from content marketing initiatives.
There you have it. If you follow these rules, you will survive in the cutthroat world of content marketing. Still don’t feel equipped? Download our free white paper, the Marketer’s Guide to Proving (and Improving) Content Marketing ROI.