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Hispanic Content Marketing: Is it set to explode?

Content

If there is one marketing category that is clearly growing that is Content Marketing. To make it easy: Content Marketing is when brands act like publishers. Recent changes in Google algorithms have changed the content ecosystem by placing emphasis on quality and unique content. New companies are emerging to service Hispanic content marketing needs of both brand marketers and media.

Get the  HISPANIC CONTENT MARKETING REPORT: Sector to grow to US $3.51 billion by 2018 (Portada Premium Report)

Content Marketing
Content Marketing

According to the recent “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” report, while approximately 26% of B2B marketers’ total budgets are allocated to content marketing efforts,  investment in content marketing continues to grow. According to the report, published by the “Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, “60% of respondents indicate they will increase spending on content marketing in 2012. Over half (62% of respondents) use outsourcing for at least a portion of their content marketing activities, a significant increase over last year’s use of outsourcing (52%).”

To be sure, content marketing is not new. Think about the long history of custom publishing, also in the Hispanic market.   What is relatively new is the crucial role digital media plays in content marketing. In a world where Google and other search engines provide the main access to information about goods and services, quality content production and Search Engine Optimization is extremely important.

The decline of Content Farms

While “content farms” benefited  from the emergence of search engines as gateways to content (see Demand Media Buys Emerging Cast, Enters Latin Content Farm Space ), the recent change in algorithms by Google has changed the content ecosystem by placing emphasis on quality and unique content. As Google’s spam chief Matt Cutts puts it “All those people who have sort of been doing, for lack of a better word, ‘over optimization’ or ‘overly’ doing their SEO, compared to the people who are just making great content and trying to make a fantastic site, we want to sort of make that playing field a little bit more level.” These updates have paved the way for brands and publishers to increase their search rankings and thus, their visibility, by investing in creating high quality, fresh, content that people find valuable to consume and share.

“Google’s site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find “high-quality sites” by reducing the rankings of low-quality content.”

Michelle Azan, Director at Content Marketing at Skyword tells Portada that “Two main Google algorithm updates – Panda and Penguin – have negatively impacted sites that were low quality, published duplicate content or sites that had “thin content”. The Google Penguin algorithm update decreased rankings for sites that engaged in web spam, and link and keyword stuffing.”

As content marketing budgets increase, so too does the percentage of companies that outsource content marketing services. According the “B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” report, “last year, only 55% of marketers used outsourcing in some capacity. This year, 62% of B2B marketers use a mix of their own and outsourced content. Outsource-only strategies are rare at only 4%.”

Are overall content marketing trends impacting the Hispanic market?

The answer is a resounding yes.  Definitely on the  media side, where Batanga media recently acquired  Uruguayan content production company Cobrat, but the big news is the emergence of more service oriented companies that provide content marketing services targeting Hispanic and Latin American consumers.  These are  mostly venture capital and private equity backed including the above cited Skyword,  Enveritas and Outbrain.

Hispanic Content Marketing
Hispanic Content Marketing

Interestingly, these companies not only cater to corporations but also to traditional media companies. Skyword recently announced a partnership with Hispanic digital and print media news publisher impreMedia in order to create demand driven content. The partnership  will enhance impreMedia’s ability to reach and engage with key audiences by using Skyword’s Search-Driven Media™ platform to create and place additional content that matches consumer search. In addition Skyword’s proprietary writer management platform provides robust, demand forecasting and efficient writer and editorial response to meet some of impreMedia’s needs.  Skyword’s platform is available in English, Spanish and French.

Traditional agencies are also expanding into the content marketing business. Recently, Omnicom Media Group introduced Content Continuum, an interest-driven content marketing business unit. Media  companies themselves, e.g. Meredith, are creating agency like units to help brands market their content.

Editorial staff extension

To some extent, Content Marketing companies can be seen as an editorial staff extension for both media companies and corporations. Skyword recently signed a global partnership agreement with  Thomson Reuters. Skyword  clients can now tap into using Reuters writers all over the world to produce  custom  (not wire service) content for their sites. The Reuters writers will write on the Skyword platform – for production and optimization of the content. “With over 200 worldwide bureaus and over 3000 professional writers, our clients now can avail themselves of content in nearly any language from writers/editors that have in-market perspective,” Azan notes.

“Some of the most interesting categories in the Hispanic market are national news, lifestyle, hyper-local content, women, sports, family/home, financial, seasonal, B2B, technology, and autos.”

Content Discovery

Another company, Outbrain, targets the “content discovery space”.  Basically Outbrain technology enables companies to offer recommendations and help their audience discover more content on their sites that is interesting to them. In addition, it allows publishers to grow their audience by distributing their content on other sites, where people are already looking for something new to discover.  Outbrain recently announced its expansion into the U.S. Hispanic market and is also planning to enter the Latin American market.

Interest by Business Categories:

In the general market the Professional Services and Computing-IT categories are the most prone to engage in content marketing activities. According to Skyword’s Azan in the U.S. Hispanic and  Latin American markets, our clients and pending partners include publishers, brands, agencies and retailers. Some of the most interesting categories for these companies are national news, lifestyle, hyper-local content (U.S Hispanic  DMAs), women, sports, family/home, financial, seasonal, B2B, technology, and autos.”

Get the  HISPANIC CONTENT MARKETING REPORT: Sector to grow to US $3.51 billion by 2018 (Portada Premium Report)
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