Content Marketing Methodology: A Required Course for Web3 Startups

In the past 30 years, the Internet’s natural connection properties have brought about earth-shaking changes in the dissemination of information. On the one hand, the dissemination of information presents a form of point-to-point network transmission. On the other hand, the speed of information dissemination has accelerated. The change is greater than ever; the benefits that this brings to start-ups are:** “The Internet makes the cost of content distribution lower, the rapid expansion of Internet information makes the dissemination of information faster, and the emergence of social media Let small businesses also have the opportunity to build their own brands and achieve low-cost marketing.” **

Indeed, if the top brand is the best traffic pool for an enterprise, then the content is the best reservoir** for the brand. For most small and medium-sized enterprises, content marketing is the most efficient and least costly way. Think about the role of content marketing in the early stage of Xiaomi’s content operation in various forums, or the competition between 360 and Rising antivirus software. Continuous production of good content can establish a trust relationship with users. For users, brand is the standard. Users must have certain expectations when using a product. This expectation is based on Trust in the product, and this trust requires continuous output of content and the establishment of a relationship with users.

In Web3, the transmission of information presents the characteristics of “bottom-up, community fermentation, rapid expansion, and active acquisition”, which has two advantages for Web3 start-ups in the early stage. Small, the content spreads faster; the other is that good content does not cost too much to spread. For start-ups, valuable, interesting, and continuous content communication can maintain an effective and long-term connection between the brand and the audience, thereby driving profitable user behavior.

What kind of content is good content for users?

What are the characteristics of good content? We think about a question from the user’s point of view, what are users looking for when they read the content: the best sense of value and identity. **

Users need valuable and easy-to-read content. It is difficult for us to find a more diligent audience than Web3 users. Users actively look for valuable articles, but this does not mean that users like complicated, obscure, and esoteric text, but because the technology-oriented Web3 is still in its early stage and is still in the stage of consolidating the infrastructure, users have to learn a lot of technical-related professional articles to understand what the project party is doing, so as to decide whether to use product judgment. However, if the content can be more readable while maintaining professionalism, the communication effect and conversion effect will be better. “Title Party”, “Summary Type”, and “Talk to People” are the most popular content forms for users .

**Improve the ability to empathize with users. Good content will definitely give users a sense of identity. **The dissemination and transformation of content must satisfy the user’s “pretending” mentality. Humans are social animals, and everyone needs to be in their own social media. Find your place in the network, and package yourself through a series of social behaviors. The audience recognizes the content, and the content can reflect the user’s “forceful style”. Such content can cause users to actively share and repost, and can help users shape their “personality” in order to get better dissemination.

3 Types and 5 Attributes of Content, and the 70/20/10 Rule of Content Investing

In the Internet age, content has become more fragmented, media has become more dispersed and smarter, and Web3 is an industry with a significant excess of information. How can users continue to pay attention to brands amidst massive amounts of information? This requires us to classify different content when doing content operations, manage content according to different types of content, and maintain continuous output at different frequencies for a long time.

We divide content into 3 types, namely persistent content, hot content and instant content:

**Persistent content: **Persistent content usually accounts for the largest proportion. Startups educate the market, cultivate users, and build brand loyalty by providing valuable information. This type of content includes product stories, brand stories, and events Content, user stories, industry reports, etc. Usually persistent content will not lose value with hot spots, and can continue to exert long-tail value, for example, it has a great impact on the SEO of start-ups on search engines such as Google help. Sustained content requires medium and long-term planning, sufficient research on users to understand user needs, and then formulate corresponding content output plans. For example, if you are a Web3 security company, then you will continue to output Web3 security-related knowledge and content , Whether it is C-side or B-side, there are different types of content that will be liked by the audience.

**Hot content: **Hot content is mainly used for the content operation of social media. Durex in the Internet age has created many classic cases in the matter of chasing hot spots. This type of content operation has relatively high requirements for operators. High, it is necessary to ** find the correlation between the brand’s internal and social hotspots, and ** find the sense of “following hot spots” in the long run. Web3 has hotspots almost every day, and many hotspots can also be scheduled in advance (ps recommends preparing a Web3 hotspot calendar). In addition, during time-sensitive hotspots such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games, good use can also create valuable, Interesting content. Among these hotspots, some of these hotspots are sporadic hotspots that occur naturally, and some are artificially created hotspots. “Creating hotspots” is obviously a higher level of content marketing than “chasing hotspots”. Usually, it is necessary to find a matching point. Careful planning is launched at the right time.

** Immediate content: ** This part of the content tests the content operator’s quick response ability, depth and breadth of industry cognition, and timely expression of attitudes to hot topics. I think this part of the content is more suitable for start-ups After all, the founder is the person who has the deepest understanding of the industry, and can more accurately express his thinking and insight into events.

In the process of making content, there are still 5 characteristics that need to be maintained, interaction, standardization, high quality, linkage, and divergence:

**Interaction: **Interaction is essential in the age of social media. Interacting with fans and KOLs, especially content operations in the direction of social media, must spend all the time you can spare on social media. Anthropomorphize social media accounts instead of just cold corporate blue Vs, collect high-quality big Vs in the track and industry, and pay close attention to maintaining close interaction with them for a long time and establishing connections. tease";

Specification: No matter which platform you are on, you must maintain a unified visual form and language style, and only by keeping pace can you deepen your impression;

**High quality: **Ensure high-quality content, don’t waste fans’ time, low-quality content in the era of excess information will only consume users’ favor towards you, produce content by yourself, and don’t forget to pay attention to high-quality content in the industry content, interact with it and contribute your insights (if any);

**Linkage: **Linkage refers to the establishment of partnership in the industry. Web3 is one of the best entrepreneurial circles with the best entrepreneurial atmosphere. The interaction and cooperation between social media accounts of start-ups can empower each other to gain higher attention in the market , at the same time, high-quality partners are also the endorsement of start-ups;

**Divergence:**Divergence requires in-depth analysis and research on the target audience to understand what type of content the audience likes. Even if the content has nothing to do with the business itself, the advantage of divergent content is that it can attract users’ attention horizontally. , The divergence of content also means a wider audience and a wider range of potential users.

In the planning of the overall content operation of the enterprise, the proportion of different types of content should be emphasized. At the same time, the energy and time invested also need to be properly allocated. In this regard, you can refer to *Coca-Cola’s 70/20/10 content investment rule: *

The content of 70% is the fundamental aspect of content marketing. This type of content is similar to continuous content. It is the medium and long-term content output that any brand/product needs to do. It is the main content that gradually builds word-of-mouth. Such content has the characteristics of low risk, but it does not mean that it is boring or meaningless content, but it is more practical for users and will not arouse user disgust; invest *50% in this 70% content The most energy, mining valuable content for users, thinking about what kind of problems they want to solve? What issues are they most concerned about? What are the methods of storytelling? What is the tone and information you want to convey to the user;

The content of 20% is more innovative and in-depth, and this part of the content is mainly to communicate with the core user groups; for 20% of the content, invest 25% energy to produce more in-depth Research reports and insights, or more creative content that can arouse user interest, or keep up with the rhythm of new communication channels, and make full use of video, podcasts, etc. to output content;

The content of 10% is brand-new creativity and brand-new interaction. This part of the content requires a lot of energy to prepare and carefully plan. The whole is more inclined to the marketing-oriented operation idea. This part of the content may become a hot spot , but be prepared to fail; invest 25% in this 10% of the content, this part of the more cutting-edge exploration, highly creative and refined operation content will be more interesting, and it is most likely to become Market hotspots, do well;

The effect of content marketing is not necessarily immediate, but the long-term output and the subtle influence of “moisturizing things silently”. The core of content marketing lies in “softness”. Marketing, long-term, immersive impact on target groups. Among them, Coca-Cola’s 70/20/10 content investment rule is a relatively good energy allocation rule. The team can make plans according to the 70/20/10 content investment rule to output content in an orderly manner.

How to do content marketing well

01 First of all, you must clarify the marketing purpose. The marketing purpose can be expanded from two dimensions. One is to clarify the effect you want to achieve through the content, and the other is to clarify the target audience you want to convey. Find the precise group of people, establish the uniqueness of the brand through the content, and convey the reason why the audience chooses “you” instead of “he”;

02 Oriented by target audience, consider user needs from the perspective of substitution to formulate plans. Content operators must have a strong ability to empathize, start from the perspective of the audience, and understand the type of content that the audience wants to obtain through research;

03Brand medialization and socialization, the use of media for communication is essential, but rather than relying on the power of the media, it is better to mediaize the enterprise, build an enterprise media matrix, and shorten the distance between the enterprise and the audience;

04 Sustained, coherent, and rhythmic. Social links with fixed frequency are very important. The company’s external communication channel is not an advertising platform, but a platform for operating relationships with the audience. Rhythmic content output can cultivate user habits ;

05 *Repeat repeat again, unified vision is very important, it can effectively strengthen the audience’s awareness of the brand in different channels;

06 The Inverted Pyramid Structure of content is the rule of most content writing. Put the most important and attractive content on the lead, and put the most exciting content on the front. The importance of the main body of the content is decreasing. Heavy, the following is small and light. The advantage of this type of structure is that it allows the audience to understand the important points of the output content at the very beginning. The top-heavy structure can help the audience optimize their understanding and reduce the reading cost of the audience without affecting the expression of details. , and the reader stops reading at any paragraph without affecting the transmission of the main idea of the content;

Image source: Content Detonates Growth

Use the psychological dynamics of user product experience to create content

All marketing is carried out around users, so designing scenes and layout content around the psychological flow of user experience products can design more targeted content and have the opportunity to obtain better brand transformation and interaction.

01 Perception: The first thing that impresses users must be a good Slogan and vision. A good Slogan must be able to condense product functions and user value, and at the same time convey the value proposition of the brand. Emotions, such as Coca-Cola’s “happiness”; good visuals can often attract users’ attention in an instant, users like to classify and symbolize, and visuals with tension are easier to be classified in the user’s mind. The first impression is very important. Perception is the truth. Do a good job in the content of the “perception” part, and empathize with the audience at the very beginning to further guide users to experience the product;

02 Contact: This link can be divided into demand scenarios, media scenarios, and use scenarios. That is to say, we need to layout and output content in scenarios that may inspire audiences to use the product and media scenarios that target audiences can access. At the same time, the content design of the product itself cannot be ignored. The product is one of the best content display channels, which can clearly let users perceive the function and value of the product. It is essential to set reminders in the product to guide users to experience the function;

03 Touch: Use public relations content to deeply touch users. This may be the best way for brand soft launch. The budget is low enough and in-depth communication with users can be completed. Web3 likes good narratives. What the project party needs to do is based on user needs Make products and tell a good narrative, whether it is a product narrative or an entrepreneurial story, you must have “story thinking” when outputting content;

04 Action: When the user takes action to use the product, the trial experience is particularly important. If the content is used to prompt the user to further use the product (Token reward is of course a direct and rude way), the sense of game is an element that can be considered, such as completing tasks It would be a good choice to collect badges/NFTs to motivate users to experience products;

05 Experience: A good product experience can strengthen users’ awareness of the brand. The experience link is the moment to really test the product. Don’t rush to market the product before it is not “smooth” enough;

06 Sharing: The possibility of social fission must be considered in all aspects of the product, and the motivation source for user sharing may be found, which may be driven by interests (bilateral rewards, ranking rewards, honor rewards) or empathy;

Content Marketing Channel Selection

McLuhan once said: “The medium is the message”, which means that the information delivered by different channels has its own uniqueness. In the Internet age, the audience’s attention is mostly torn apart by different channels. The platform can only affect a small part of the audience, so it is necessary to distribute content through multiple channels, optimize content according to different channel characteristics, and carry out targeted content layout.

**01 Own voice platform: **Continue to operate private domain traffic through its own voice channels, including but not limited to Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram, Discord, Medium/Mirror, EDM, Youtube, Podcast, etc., different channels The attributes are different, and the popularity in different countries and regions is also different. For example, Twitter is more anthropomorphic and fragmented, and Discord is community-oriented. At the same time, social media such as WeChat official account and instant in the Chinese market cannot be ignored;

**02 Paid media: **The investment in dissemination is as important as the operation of content. Generally, paid channels can play a better role at large event nodes, and spread limited funds at the right time, like a whirlwind Overwhelming communication until users form a conditioned reflex to brand awareness. At the same time, when it comes to paid media channel placement and KOL selection, it is necessary to screen each activity and establish an effect tracking system to customize content for media and KOLs with different characteristics. The worst thing is that all KOLs post the same content. The content swipes the screen, or all the media publish the same press release. Maintaining a relatively close relationship with the media for a long time to do advertorial marketing can also achieve invisible and subtly attract audiences;

**03 User output: **The best content must be interactive. User output and interaction are also one of the tasks of content operation. For channel delivery, the measurement effect should be more three-dimensional. It is difficult for content operation to completely quantify this. To track and evaluate effects from a single dimension, we must listen to the voices of users. Feedback from early users and core users is crucial to the advancement of the project. Web3 attaches great importance to community culture, and building a good community foundation is the first step for a project to go to market. step;

The most distinctive feature of information in the Internet age is the excess and fragmentation of information, and the rapid replacement of information. If you want to continuously establish communication with the audience, you must continue to produce content, and gradually cultivate users through accumulated content output and repeated strengthening of views. Trust in the brand. Content marketing has become an indispensable part of corporate marketing in today’s changing media environment and information dissemination methods.