Content marketing corresponds to a new epoch. One in which brands are becoming editors, analysts and industry commentators themselves. One in which marketing departments become more and more like newsrooms. One in which blunt advertising is being replaced with branded informational content that people have a genuine interest in. Marketers in renewables need to offer something beyond the basic slogans if they want to maintain and enhance credibility in the new communication environment, particularly given that competing conventional energy industries are relatively accomplished in this area

One of the benefits of engaging in content marketing is the ability you will have to repackage it in many ways to suit the variety of social and paid communication channels available.  Content published on a news site can be disseminated through social media, email marketing or be shared through speaking engagements at conferences. The objective is to make multiple uses of one single piece of corporate intelligence.

Creating great content is about telling success stories, stories of solving challenging technical problems for instance. Educative and value-adding pieces will work as a social lift.  They will be shared by the readers through the social media share buttons, offering an additional boost to your content readership. However, Branded content seldom goes viral, and even if it does, it’s not necessarily a sign of success. If content goes viral for the wrong reason, as we have all seen many times, it creates a negative backlash that impacts sales and reputation!

With content marketing, the three corners stones of marketing (lead generation, brand awareness and thought leadership) are all tackled in one integrated effort.  The marketers who face the challenge of creating, managing and distributing content for marketing across multiple platforms, will most likely secure many rewards.