GhanaWeb reporter and content marketing

This article Describes content marketing as a valuable way factor in the marketing mix and how GhanaWeb reporter can support it.

1. What is content marketing?

You can’t reach your full potential for content marketing success until you understand what it is – including its definition, the goals it can help you achieve, and how it complements and relates to other marketing disciplines and techniques.


Content marketing definition

You might find variations, but the content marketing definition by CMI is:

Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Well, let us provide you with a simple promise as to content marketing. If you have a good story to tell, let us help you find the right audience for it.

Content marketing works by capturing the attention of your desired audience and helping them address their informational and task-oriented needs. The aim is for that audience to grow to trust and rely on your guidance, recognize your company’s or client’s unique value proposition, and reward you with their business, loyalty, or evangelism.

Let’s dig into the definition’s three essential characteristics:

Valuable:

Content marketing is most likely to succeed when it serves an unmet need (e.g., delivering critical information buyers are likely searching for, providing a tool or technique to make their lives easier, or guiding them through the steps of a complicated process)

Relevant:

Your content should appeal to audience interests and information needs – not just perspectives and priorities your business wants to further.

Consistent:

Viral success with a single content piece feels great in the short term. But you’ll only get known or looked for by those visitors if you consistently offer something valuable. That means you produce and deliver valuable, relevant content on a reliable schedule.

Why build a content marketing practice?

Companies use content marketing to meet several different goals. Some of the most common goals include:

Brand awareness: Getting discovered by the right consumers
Building a dedicated audience: Capturing the interest of casual readers and getting their permission to send content to them
Lead generation: Identifying and qualifying consumers who are most likely to become customers
According to recent research, most successful B2B and B2C marketers use content marketing to create brand awareness, build credibility, educate audiences, build loyalty, and generate demand or leads.

Where content fits in your marketing plan

Content marketing isn’t a replacement for other promotional techniques. Instead, content works best when used to complement other marketing efforts that support your business goals.

For example, content marketing works well with:

Account-based marketing
Branded content
Demand generation
Inbound marketing
Influencer marketing
Native advertising
Product marketing
Social media
SEO
Public relations

While no single technique for developing and managing content suits every organization, focus on these five core elements to run a successful, scalable, and highly strategic content marketing operation:

Purpose and goals:
The foundation of your content marketing strategy – why you are creating content for and the value it will provide for your business

Audience:
A well-defined explanation of who your content can help the most and the benefits your program will provide them

Brand story:
The specific and compelling ideas that will flow through your content and how they will reflect your organization’s values and brand voice

Processes and teams:
The details of how you will structure, plan, execute, and manage the tasks involved in activating your content marketing strategy

Measurement plan:
The way you will monitor the performance of your content, evaluate its impact, and implement processes for ongoing optimization

Spend some time diving into each of these building blocks. You may be surprised by how much you and your team know – or how much you still have to learn.

2. What is GhanaWeb reporter?

GhanaWeb Reporter is Ghana’s first digital media sharing platform created to democratize journalism and empower content creators. Developed to give Ghanaian audiences direct access to a wide range of local content produced by citizen journalists and content creators, the GhanaWeb Reporter also empowers niche journalists and content creators to avoid the cost of owning websites, search engine optimization and web hosting. The reporters are granted access to monetized niche blogs that earn them a share of advertising revenue and Self-Service Advertising created to promote local advertising.

Integrated into the GhanaWeb App, the award-winning platform which runs on both iOS and Android operating systems allows users to share videos, audio, files, images and text of news, entertainment and opinion content as well as their social media posts to the App at their convenience. The posts are screened and then published on the user’s page and on the GhanaWeb Wall for a wider reach.

GhanaWeb Reporter was the only project from Ghana among 21 projects from 13 countries in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa region to receive $1.93 million in funding from Google in 2020 as part of the first Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge. The initiative aims to help journalism thrive in the digital age and to see news innovators step forward with new thinking.

The GhanaWeb Reporter has two main accounts which are the Basic Reporter and the Professional Reporter. The Basic Reporter is the default account that gives users access to the basic features including GhanaWeb services like the GhanaWeb Self-Service Advertising, GhanaWeb and GhanaWeb Business Pages at no cost.

Professional Reporters are classified into four categories: Blog Reporters, VIP Reporters and Advocacy Reporters. Blog Reporters consist of bloggers and citizen journalists who keep 50% of the local advertising revenue; VIP Reporters consist of celebrities and influencers who also keep 50% of the local advertising revenue; and Advocacy Reporters consist of charities, non-governmental organizations and agencies that are allowed to keep all the local advertising revenue generated by their monetized blogs. They also have access to directly publish content on their niche blogs and the GhanaWeb Wall without screening.

3. Why do you want to be on a platform as GhanaWeb

GhanaWeb is the leading news platform of Ghana and it outperforms all local sites in traffic and engagement.

As to its position as a real traffic generator, please read this blog. You can see that GhanaWeb is the undisputed leader of the online news ecosystem in Ghana.

Moreover, in Cameroon, we reached a similar status placing AfricaWeb at a top position. In Nigeria and Tanzania, we are just getting started.

The AfricaWeb platforms are known as the place of quality journalism and they provide the right medium for any serious message.

Awards & Nominations

The dedication to journalism, as shown by the initiator of AW Free Foundation, AfricaWeb, has been recognized by other parties.

High traffic means the more chance that articles are more likely to be seen, read and followed up. Moreover, since the platform has a high quality status, the impact and authority of the message will generally be deemed higher.

For Google SEO purposes, it is important to take into account the Esteem, Authority and Trust of the website on which your content will be published.

4. How to use the GhanaWeb Reporter for your content marketing strategy?

As a professional blogger you can place quality articles on GhanaWeb. Your clients or customers of your clients may need information in their customer journey that will help them a step further in their orientation process.

Before the buyer buys, the buyer first has to know you, and get educated before being able to take decisions for his purchase.

By placing content that supports the customer journey on GhanaWeb, you will increase the chance of being found and seen by a possible customer early in their consideration to select a solution to their problem. Then he gets to know you and will consider you as a reliable source for information and a trustworthy partner to do business with or to buy from.

Guiding and supporting a possible customer in their journey is a subtle and diligent process that needs diligent preparation. It is quite obvious that you do not ask your date to marry you at first sight. The potential customer does not like to be approached as a potential business. More care and interest is needed to start a relationship.

The good news is that as a professional blogger you will be active on a platform with a large audience and you will have full control over the published content on GhanaWeb. You can tailor your content to match your target group and decide on type of content, time of placement and the frequency of publishing. GhanaWeb creates specific URLs that will support the search results of specific messages around specific subjects.

We are happy to welcome you with your content marketing strategy.