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September 23, 2016

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Content Marketing

How content marketing works in the security and fire industry

In recent years ‘content marketing’ has become one of the main ways for companies to grow brand awareness and promote themselves. New research from Technology for Marketing (TFM) analyses what is working in security and fire industries.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing thus:

Creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly-defined and understood target audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action”

The key phrase here is a ‘clearly-defined and understood target audience’. Successful content brands have discovered and refined, through trial and error, a content formula that is proven to resonate with their target audience.

The problem with following the latest trends is that what works in other markets may be entirely the wrong thing for your industry.

Whether it’s banks filming SnapChat videos or pharmaceutical brands setting up Pinterest pages, you don’t have to look far for examples of marketing resources deployed wastefully. Then you get things like this popping up in your Facebook feed:

I’m going to start taking this targeting personally

 

What is the right content formula for your market?

Ahead of this year’s Technology for Marketing we worked with BuzzSumo.com to trawl through their massive database of social shares to see what we could learn from analysing 150,000 articles from 10 different markets.

The resulting research report – ‘The Science of Content‘ –  uncovered profound differences in how content is consumed and distributed in different industries. The main takeaway is that differences from market to market are far more important considerations for content success than general best practice.

You can download the full report plus another eight free digital marketing resources here.

Using the same methodology, here are some findings about how content is shared and consumed in the security and fire market:

Social shares by network

The importance of Facebook as a distribution channel should not be underestimated. In news media, automotive/car blogs or the charity sector, Facebook is the only game in town.

But LinkedIn is by far the most dominant network in the security and fire arenas – so this is where fire and security companies should focus their social media marketing efforts. Google+ and Pinterest, by contrast, are irrelevant.

 

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Length of most-shared content

General best practice in fire and security – perhaps counter-intuitively in a digital age of short attention spans – is that the longer the article, the more likely it is that it will be shared.

In the graph below, which ranks the likelihood of people in a range of industries sharing articles according on length, we can clearly see that readers of security and fire content are far more likely to share long than short articles. In fact, of all industries analysed, the fire audience is the most likely to favour articles of 2,000 words or more (no doubt because the regulation-focused subject matter demands detailed analysis).

The takeaway lesson: If you want to connect with an audience of fire professionals, go long.

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Best days of the week to publish

Across all markets, both business and consumer, content published during the week performs better than content pushed out at the weekend.

In security, Monday to Thursday are seemingly the best days of the week to publish, while in fire, Tuesday appears to be the sweet spot. In both cases, performance slides on Friday and further still into the weekend slump.

The takeaway lesson: Don’t publish content on Fridays and weekends.

 

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For more on content marketing in the security industry read this article

 

 

Listen to the IFSEC Insider podcast!

Each month, the IFSEC Insider (formerly IFSEC Global) Security in Focus podcast brings you conversations with leading figures in the physical security industry. Covering everything from risk management principles and building a security culture, to the key trends ahead in tech and initiatives on diversity and inclusivity, the podcast keeps security professionals up to date with the latest hot topics in the sector.

Available online, and on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts, tune in for an easy way to remain up to date on the issues affecting your role.

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alinajohnmike
alinajohnmike
March 3, 2017 1:21 pm

Great post as always. There
is very useful information on your website and it is quite effective for
writers like us. I think that content writing service has become a must for
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