Strategic take on the web (Hakola, Hiila 2012)

Strategic take on the web (2012) is a great book by Iida Hakola and Ilona Hiila, the founders of Vapamedia (Finland), where they give smoothly running guidance on content marketing on the web. Strategic take on the web gives the reader an easily understandable frame work to how companies should formulate their web strategy on the basis of their business needs on the whole (what are we trying to do?) and on the other hand, how content marketing can help them to achieve their business goals (how can we do what we're trying to do?).

Strategic take on the web is very practical in its advise. Content marketing is essentially very much of a dialogue between the examination of the functions of an organization (commercial or not) and of the functions of the different target groups and audiences. To put it in layman's terms: what is the organization doing in the digital sphere and what are the multitude of layers of the public doing there.

To enable this dialogue, Hakola and Hiila encourage content strategists to analyze their own content with ROT-analysis (redundant, outdated, trivial) with which one mechanically assesses each piece of their content rating it as per the three given categories. The results of the analysis should guide you towards steering the content you put out towards the right direction, whether that be in terms of the themes used in the content or the platform used for it.

In addition to looking at your own doings on the web, it's equally important to be following on what the different target groups are doing there. With big data and web analytics there is no need to guestimate stuff any longer. Instead you can follow what people are doing pretty precisely and create content accordingly.  By following on what the audiences are talking about your organization, brand or product  you gain knowledge of how you're perceived, what to utilize in your content and observe what perhaps needs steering away from.

Essentially, everything boils down to the question of how to create great, interesting content. Sure, this is a question virtually impossible to answer to, but Hakola and Hiila remind to look beyond the obvious. Far too often content is too advert-like (solely about the product) meaning that it doesn't interest anyone, not really. And therefore, content marketers should find larger, but still related, themes to their products providing an angle from which they can be discussed and displayed. 

OK then, the concept of content marketing well in hand now, but lacking the tools? No probs! I found an excellent listing of current content tools available from Digital Information World.