Omnicom Launches Content Continuum To Optimize Brand Content
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, September 10, 2012
Omnicom Media Group's Resolution Media this week will launch Content Continuum, an interest-driven content marketing business unit, according to Heather Molina, managing director for the group.
Molina told MediaPost the strategy creates a "newsroom approach" for brands to connect with consumers, based on relevant topics and content. The agency then optimizes the content within days, rather than months, continuously monitoring data across Web sites, search engines and social platforms to identify trending topics and user interests.
That information leads to the creation of marketing content, matching what people see, say, and search for across multiple channels.
The concept not only makes search engine optimization act like paid search campaigns, but it turns companies into content creators, Molina said. "We're making SEO look like SEM," she said, referring to paid-search ads. "With SEO, it's always been a long-term strategy, whereas SEM is about the quickness of pushing it out and changing it as needed."
Molina said the act of quickly optimizing content and Web sites and getting it picked up by engines resembles a news organization, rather than an ad agency building campaigns for brands.
Aside from agility, brands must focus on a content strategy, from videos to blog posts. Agencies must have the tools to push it out more often. Industry experts say it is a way to connect online advertising with big data. Molina said Google's algorithmic Panda update makes content a "much more critical" tool to optimize organic listings, videos, Twitter tweets, and Facebook posts.
Resolution will tap into technology from Skywords, a content strategy agency that recently developed a platform for agencies, identifies and captures trends by the hour. Learning about topics that don't differ daily, the company mines trends in social, news and other sites to test the audience and determine the resonating keywords.
Molina expects other agencies to adopt this strategy, as well. She said it also will change the way companies hire search experts.
Ironic that the current death of newspapers allows for the replacement of newsrooms for SEO. Definitely a viable strategy - but a part of the polarization of our country. Instead of receiving information that is impartial and unbiased, we now search for the news we want to hear, i.e. Fox and MSNBC being the two extremes with other news networks falling somewhere in between. The reality in today's business world is you have to be found to get new customers - and inbound marketing and content creation are what drives being found.
The essential piece has to be content strategy and having a cohesive, cogent flow of content; speed and mass are not strategies. The other question is whether or not the agency model works for this. With finite, fixed resources it will be difficult to optimize and most likely expensive for the client. Newer flexible models that can scale rapidly, up or down, are needed to make this efficient.
Yes, Nick. "The reality in today's business world is you have to be found to get new customers - and inbound marketing and content creation are what drives being found."