Let’s analyse the first option of developing your content marketing strategy to earn audience attention based on The Diary Of A CEO, the fastest-growing podcast in the UK.

There’s a stellar content marketing strategy behind their growth. It applies easily not only to podcasts, but other content marketing formats, too.

The core of their content marketing strategy and storytelling is:

• juicy hook - pose a problem;

• draw them in - demonstrate your solution;

• cliffhanger - leave them wanting more.

The key is how can you make someone care. It starts with defining the topic and the main question why you’re dissecting it. Why should anyone even care? That’s your problem. 

Next, demonstrate how you would solve it with a few possible takes. To keep up the engagement, you can do it through a lesson learned or an emotional rollercoaster. Basically, you will show your approach to solving the problem.

Give your audience enough, but not too much. Give them a sample of your content. Tease them in to engage and read or watch more. Don't be clickbaity, leave some loose ends that draw in your audience. Using a cliffhanger will do the job. Let your audience know where the long-form content is. Don't push it down their throat.

How to Implement This Content Marketing Strategy?

Channels and formats are crucial in your strategy.

The DOAC team has come to a conclusion on topics that perform well on different social media channels:

• Instagram - health, mental and physical themes, relationships;

• LinkedIn - work-life balance, career, entrepreneurship;

• TikTok - all the other crazy things. A great place to test out your ideas.

But where do you want to grow?

Is it a social media platform or your website? Here’s where formats come into play.

If you want to grow inside a social media platform, you should aim to reach new people and keep them engaged for as long as possible. That’s where short-form content thrives. You can let your audience know where the long-form version is as long as you don't oversell. 

Pro tip: on social media platforms, it's best to use your comment section for this. Keep the post neutral and do the sales in comments as valuable bonus points to your main post.

How to Make the Most of This Content Marketing Strategy?

Another brilliant hack this content marketing strategy implies to is how to get the most value out of your content.

Just split it up!

Produce as many short-form pieces of it as you possibly can. You can do that for written or video content.

1. Written - treat each chapter of your blog post as a standalone post for social media. This way, you can publish 3-5 different social media posts that all draw traffic to the same long-form blog.
2. Video - let’s say you record a 1-hour podcast. What can you get out of it?

• 5 x 10-min clips for YouTube.

• 10-20 x 2-min clips for LinkedIn or Facebook.

• a bunch of 30-60-sec short-form clips for YouTube, Instagram, TikTok.

With short-form clips, you can make deep dives on a specific topic or teasers. Depending on how often you post, these hacks can cover your feed for a month! 

Remember, each of your clips needs a beginning, middle, and end. Don't just use AI tools to cut random parts out of your story. 

Okay, let's take a different approach.

To analyse the content marketing strategy that focuses on going viral with trend hacking, let’s see what the industry pioneer, Ryanair, has done to earn audience attention.

TL;DR: Michael Corcoran, ex-CMO at Ryanair, explained their marketing strategy.

Ryanair relied on the following building blocks: 

• brand perception;
• category;
• product;
• delivery aka social media content. 

Ryanair are a disruptor brand in the aviation sector, offering low-cost flights. Their content marketing strategy focused on news-jacking - a marketing technique to weigh in on what’s hot in the media. 

With this news-jacking content marketing strategy, they managed to earn over 2 billion organic impressions in 18 months on social media. 

How did they do that? 

The Heart of This Content Marketing Strategy

There are 4 key factors when it comes to going viral with trend hacking:

1. timing;
2. team buy-in;
3. engaging a critical mass;
4. avoiding PR disasters.

1. Timing

First of all, you have to be quick! 

If you miss the chance, it's gone forever. Nobody's interested in yesterday's news.

It’s a good way to stay relevant by capturing the momentum, but it comes at a price. Especially, considering how short the news cycles are today. 

2. Team Buy-in

To make this content marketing strategy work, your team has to be on board. You have to free up a lot of time to jump the gun.

That's why 50% of the time of Ryanair's marketing team was reserved to implementing this content marketing strategy. That’s a lot, but it worked for them.

They also had a 5-minute rule - if the marketing team wasn’t able to package their reaction to the news in 5 minutes, they’d let it go and move on. 5-minutes was enough for them to lose the first-mover advantage.

3. Engaging a Critical Mass

This is probably the most important thing to get right.

Ryanair needed a critical mass of their audience to engage with the content. If you don't get the ball rolling, it just doesn't work. But if you reach that critical mass, the rest of the audience will naturally follow and there's a good chance of going viral.

If you think of viral content, what comes to mind?

Easy to understand without words - visuals do the talking? Addressing pain points that everybody knows, but no one talks about? Controversial? Calling someone out? 

You got to have the skills and guts to do it. This must align with your brand values and image. You have to be more of a challenger, disruptor, or everyman brand to make it work.

Just think of whether your audience will resonate if you did something like that? What if British Airways would've used this strategy? Would have it been believable? This content marketing strategy will work if you marry your brand, culture, and audience perception of you.

Did you already see that one coming?

You have to walk the line. There's always a competitor who wants to see you fall. Things can be taken out of context and it end up in a PR disaster.

Ryanair didn't come through with a clean sheet. A few blunders happened along the way. They enraged an English Premier League football star and even the royal family! The latter ended up in Ryanair taking down their social media post.

If there's no risk, there's no reward. As Ryanair proved, the right timing, wit, and guts can get you billions of views.

Let’s talk Tesla.

Tesla has a one-of-a-kind approach when it comes to marketing.

They’ve claimed to spend $0 on traditional marketing (TV, radio, prints, sponsoring, etc.). But in 2023 their marketing costs were $6.4 million. 

Still, that’s a drop in the ocean compared to other automakers. For example, General Motors spent $3.6 billion on global advertising and promotions in 2023.

Tesla’s focus is clearly on the product and customer desire. On getting earned media and organic impressions with PR instead of buying views.

Let's break it down.

Mastering FOMO with Content Marketing Strategies

With the release of their latest, Cybertruck, Tesla mastered the concept of the fear of missing out (FOMO) with a strong product and waiting lists.

A few months before the car was released, Tesla had almost 2 million people signed up for a pre-sale order. The buy-in was $100, making Tesla a nice buck of around $200 mln. Hats off!

Product-wise, Tesla created a powerful perceived image around the Cybertruck. It was not about the car, it was about the mindset. And it worked.

The famous tech YouTuber, MKBHD summed it up perfectly in the cold open of his Cybertruck review video.

Screenshot from MKBHD’s video “Tesla Cybertruck Review: Already Iconic?”

Do you see what Tesla did there? 

This video pulled together 4 million views in 6 months. $0 spent for millions of organic impressions among Tesla's target group - tech-savvy potential buyers. That’s just one video and one page from their book.

Do you see how powerful this content marketing strategy can be? 

Creating mystery and exclusivity around your product or service will do the job for you. It's about manipulating with the customer mindset through limited accessibility and the fear of missing out.

Waiting lists are just a way to deliver that. You can test the market, reduce your risk, and create scarcity. Such a great way to probe the market before any product or service launch. And, although Teslas are self-driving, this sure drives a lot of customer desire, 

Any business can try this. It can even deliver the most value for brands who are just starting out. Work smart, not hard.

How Can You Create a Content Marketing Strategy That Stands Out

We just analysed 3 totally different content marketing strategies:

1. growth hacking;
2. trend hacking;
3. the fear of missing out.

Whatever business you are in, anyone can find a thing or two to test for their brand. Understanding what, how, and to whom you want to tell is evermore important.

I put together some resources that will make creating your content marketing strategy much easier. You can thank me later.

• Who are you speaking with? Create audience persona.
• What value do you create? Define your framing in marketing.
• How to get and assess your ideas? 4 templates, all on me!

If you found this content useful, you should check out my post on how to get more views with these proven hacks.

If you want to grow your brand with some simple hacks anyone can do, let me know. Get a head start, because many tech companies are missing out on this!

Are you ready to shift gears? I’d be happy to help you out with content marketing and social media strategies.