No other industry produces content like the entertainment industry. Businesses in the entertainment space live and die by the content they produce. When these companies aren’t producing content as a product (like a book or movie), they’re creating content that’s part of the marketing efforts of a product (movie trailer, interview, etc.).  That’s right; even their content has content. 

So, what can other industries take away from the content marketing efforts of the entertainment industry? Plenty! Here are five content marketing best practices from the entertainment industry that you can apply to your content marketing strategy – regardless of your industry. 

Five Content Marketing Best Practices

1) Lean Into Your Brand

A core benefit of content marketing is its ability to reinforce your brand in the marketplace. The language your content uses, the visuals you select, even the media of the content helps to communicate your brand image to your potential audience.

The entertainment industry understands the power of on-brand content.

Every time your audience consumes one of your content pieces, it reinforces an aspect of your brand image within their mind. For companies that have a firm understanding of their brand, this can be a powerful tool for winning over new customers (or building their relationship with existing customers). For companies that don’t have their brand figured out, this can lead to a fragmented or contradictory content marketing experience for your audience.

Lean into your brand. Own it. If you don’t have a brand, cultivate one. Then, ensure every piece of content you produce is an accurate reflection of your brand.

2) Create The Right Content For The Right Audience on the Right Platform

We hate to break it to you, but you can’t publish every piece of content you create to every platform your brand is leveraging. No one wants to read 10,000 words of pillar page content on Instagram. Likewise, most people don’t go to Twitter to watch your latest how-to videos.

Part of an effective content strategy includes identifying (and creating) content to match the intended publishing platform as well as the audience expectations of that platform. Your Snapchat audience is not only going to interact with a different type of content than your website audience, but they’re also going to go into that content experience with a different expectation (entertain me or educate me vs. time for in-depth research).

Don’t just be a one-blog pony. Mix up your content media. Create fun videos. Show off some images. Keep in mind, your general target demographic is comprised of smaller personas – each with their own content format preference. 

Understand how your audience is using content publishing platforms (social media included), then use that insight to influence both the subject of your content as well as its format. 

3) Look for Opportunities to Re-leverage Content 

Looking for the quickest way to burn through your content marketing budget? Only publish content once.

Creating content is expensive. No other industry understands this more than the entertainment industry, which is what brings us to best practice #3, re-leveraging content.

What do we mean when we say re-leverage content? Look for opportunities to create new pieces of content from existing content pieces. For example, if you have a 10-minute long video that explains your product offering on a granular level, see what you can do to also turn it into a 2-min video (maybe a high-level overview of your product)? Likewise, you can take a collection of your recent Instagram posts and turn them into a collage or slideshow.

You can even take a screenshot of one of your Tweets and publish it to Facebook if you want too. There are no rules. It’s a lawless wasteland.

Quit throwing your content marketing pieces away on a one-shot publishing strategy, look for other ways to recycle, and re-leverage, your content marketing investment.

4) Consistency is Critical

Take a note from the entertainment industry’s endless array of publications. Do you think People magazine would be successful if it was published sporadically? Of course not. Rain or shine, busy or not busy, that magazine gets published weekly.

Believe it or not, your audience values consistency. Once you’ve established a rhythm to your content publishing your audience is going to expect you to stick to it. By doing so, not only can you help to cultivate a specific content-consumption habit. You also help to reinforce that you are reliable, that you can be trusted.

A consistent publishing cadence is critical to a successful content marketing effort. Find a publishing cadence that works for your creative resources/budget, then stick to that publishing cadence.

5) Amplify. Amplify. Amplify. 

Publishing great content isn’t enough. You can’t just hit publish on a new piece of content and expect to see an immediate bottom-line impact.  The entertainment industry understands that with so much content available for an audience to choose from, it’s vital to have a content amplification strategy in-place.

Remember, the loudest piece of content is going to be the one that wins in the end.

For many brands, this amplification strategy may rely on a paid media effort. Sponsoring Facebook posts, promoting YouTube videos, sharing your blog posts through a third-party platform, etc. Which, depending on how much content you’re producing, can add up to some big bucks.

Other brands may rely on push content or email updates to build awareness of newly published content pieces.

Our recommendation? Why pick just one amplification channel?

We recommend a multi-faceted amplification strategy that includes paid support, email notifications, and fan advocacy.

“What’s fan advocacy,” you ask? In a fan advocacy program, your biggest fans become your loudest brand advocates – sharing your latest content pieces directly onto their social media feeds.

Think about it. At SocialToaster, we’ve found that the average social media user is connected to around 600 individuals. So, if you have 100 fans in your fan advocacy marketing program, your content could potentially reach up to 60,000 people! All without having to sponsor a post. 

Ready to Kick Your Content Marketing Efforts Up a Notch?

A strong content marketing strategy is critical to the success of any brand’s marketing efforts. Take some cues from the entertainment industry and turn your brand into a content marketing star by incorporating these best practices.

If you’re curious how fan advocacy can help your content marketing efforts break records, we’d love to chat.

Schedule a demo or send us an email, and we’ll put you in touch with one of our content marketing experts to learn how SocialToaster is helping thousands of brands across multiple industries grow their content marketing efforts.