Content strategy – Dutch Uncles

Rite KnowledgeLabs, The Corporate Read To Digital Content

Aakash Sharma — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 08:35:07 +0000

As challenging as the past one and a half year has been due to destruction by COVID-19 and financial hardships exacerbated by the global pandemic, it is undeniable that these unprecedented situations have brought about catalysing changes.

The world as it was undergoing an almost complete transition. Students had to get accustomed to online education, governments met virtually for policymaking, businesses even the Kirana stores – had to shift to easy-to-use online channels, and most importantly, remote work-from-home became a reality for entrepreneurs and employees worldwide.

The figures from last year show a worrying and sad reality as 26.6 percent of the female workforce moved out of the labour force, juxtaposed to the 13.4 percent of men. But women entrepreneurs have certainly used the technological shift to boost their business journey by overcoming the traditional barriers in remote working, operations management, hiring and networking.

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With accelerated adoption of digital platforms and an overall shift towards virtual interactions, one of the key benefits has been the creation of a level playing field for women in business and technology.

One such entrepreneur, who has grown into one of the most successful businesswomen in the digital marketing agency and online content space, is Ms. Zahara Kanchwalla.

Zahara Kanchwalla – Pioneering the idea of content-first

Zahara Kanchwalla is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Rite KnowledgeLabs, a content-first digital agency founded to address the need gap in specialised, thought leadership content. She is the company’s COO and is responsible for providing operational leadership and ensuring service delivery quality.

She works closely with clients across diverse digital stakeholder communications and thought-leadership programmes, anchoring relationships and ensuring the service delivery exceeds expectations right from the take-off to the finish.

Previous stints of Zahara Kanchwalla

Zahara Kanchwalla has over 17 years of industry experience. She has worked with several multinational and leading Indian organisations in business communications, content publishing, e-learning, IT and training.

Before co-founding Rite KnowledgeLabs, she held the Content and Publishing Head position at Ketchum Sampark and Riteverses. Previously, she worked at Tech Mahindra in marketing and communications and was responsible for overall content and knowledge management.

Zahara Kanchwalla success mantra – what can you learn?

There are many essential qualities, hard to learn practices and diligent abilities that go into making a successful entrepreneur. From Zahara Kanchwalla, aspiring entrepreneurs can learn numerous tenets to start and establish themselves in the industry.

According to her, boosting one’s professional network digitally is imperative in today’s world. Networking in pre-pandemic times meant physically attending events or staying back to socialising post the working hours. But today, with remote work setup, online teams and virtual businesses have become a norm, and give an excellent opportunity to benefit from virtual networking.

Kanchwallaalso puts much emphasis on setting boundaries between one’s professional and personal life. With professional and personal roles simultaneously happening out of the home, it can be overwhelmingly difficult to strike a balance between the two. However, with proper planning and boundaries, one can ensure that both aspects of their life run smoothly.

In a nutshell, the post-pandemic digital industry is ripe with opportunities; all you have to do is utilise your skills and resources with the best possible strategy and intelligent investments. Like Zahara Kanchwalla’ over five years old Rite KnowledgeLabs, with the right tools and skillset, you too can start on a path of growth and success in this rapidly digitising era.

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WhizCo, Benchmarking Digital Marketing Services

Aakash Sharma — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 03:35:08 +0000

‘Content is King’, and the pandemic induced rapid digitisation of all sorts of businesses has ensured this kingly status of content as it became synonymous with the digital presence of any business. The shift to online platforms was already underway; the COVID-19 pandemic only hastened its pace. The biggest industry that has virtually taken off with a boom during the last year is, without a doubt, the digital marketing services industry.

The foremost advantage for businesses in taking the digital marketing route is that the conversion percentage is very high, and therefore, the business growth is big. With brands witnessing the largely positive impact of their digital footprint, many have gone ahead with outsourcing their marketing campaigns to digital marketing firms that have the expertise in this new industry.

WhizCo, acing the digital marketing game

While traditional campaigns require spending a fortune without any distinct ROI, digital marketing services yield way more results than their conventional counterparts. And one digital marketing services company that has made great name recognition is Delhi-based WhizCo. WhizCo is a creative digital marketing agency based in Delhi. It provides services like SEO Performance, Social Media Marketing, and Influencer Marketing.

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WhizCo offers brands a robust portfolio of digital-first opportunities that drives consumer engagement and action through "powerful human connection".

Prerna Goyal, co-founder and chief marketing officer of WhizCo, is the driving force behind the company. Along with Aastha Goyal and Keshav Jindal, she seeks to redefine the country’s digital marketing space, which has traditionally relied on the strategy of uploading content on various social media with the hopes of recognition.

WhizCo began its operations in India and, over time, has expanded its reach to the global market. Some of the biggest brands this company has helped reach their potential include Maruti Suzuki, Cantabil, PayTM, and OYO among others.

Delivering robust and result-driven marketing solutions by WhizCo

Providing a wide array of services, including Digital Strategy, Viral Marketing, Meme Marketing, Social Media Growth, Influencer Marketing, Account Management, and Hashtag Challenge, among others, WhizCo has tapped a widely expanding market that is set to grow substantially in coming years.

The digital marketing and advertising industry across India had a market size of around $2.68 billion in the financial year 2020, up from just $633 million in the financial year 2015. This is projected to go up to approximately $7.26 billion by 2024, indicating substantial growth in the industry.

Influencer marketing and the new era of content-driven outreach

The influencer marketing space has increased significantly since the start of the pandemic. Businesses across industries and domains, be it FMCG and retail players or entertainment and media, have rapidly adopted digital paths. The $53 billion vernacular content market of India has flourished immensely with massively increased social media usage resulting in unprecedented figures of content intake. Influencer marketing has moved out of traditional social media as it has also found space in short video platforms.

What can budding entrepreneurs learn from WhizCo?

Start-ups and upcoming entrepreneurs must learn to adapt to new trends and embrace technological change. In delving into the new era of marketing and brand promotion, they must create a massive pool of content assets across various social media and digital platforms. Businesses can leverage this to gain traction and help clients expand their outreach.

There’s a great market for digital marketing businesses as associations with brands across distinct verticals such as fashion, health and fast-moving consumer goods, among others, is possible, now that online shift has become necessary for all.

Moreover, for the success of any brand campaign, it is essential to have in place a collaboration of influencers rooted in varying short videos, social media, or other online modes. Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn this from WhizCo; it has amassed a strong cumulative base of nearly 7 million people and offers services that are not traditional digital marketing but focused more on content marketing and brand amplification.

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Current Trends of the $53 Billion Vernacular Content Market of India

Aakash Sharma — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 10:30:08 +0000

In the age of data and the Internet, content consumption has increased exponentially. As internet connection has become more accessible and more convenient, the wave of ‘Digital India’ has found its way into tier 2 and 3 Indian markets, leading the digital revolution.

According to an ICUBEᵀᴹ 2020 report, there are over 264 million internet users in rural India, more than urban India’s 210 million. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures for its containment accelerated internet penetration in the country and with it came the golden moment for India’s e-commerce, digital entertainment and edtech industries.

As the number of internet users in India is expected to surpass 700 million shortly, it is worth noting that digital content and video consumption in rural India has increased twice as fast as urban India over the past four years. However, the country currently has only 40% internet access, meaning that there is a great potential to add new users in the years to come.

Vernacular Content and Rural India’s Fortunate Meeting

In general, the growing vernacular internet users have outnumbered the English language users. As significant customer groups in non-urban areas prepare to participate in digital media, regional ambitions are shaping businesses’ development strategies.

Data shows that 53% of non-metro internet users prefer local content on social media. In addition, 73% of Internet users access social media content daily, and 9 out of 10 users mainly use mobile networks to access the Internet.

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India is a vastly diverse country with over 121 languages and more than 19,500 dialects used by over 130 crore Indians. As per estimates by experts, the market opportunity of the vernacular content in India is worth $53 billion in 2021.

Vernacular Content Transforming the Digital Space

The key categories that the vernacular-driven digitisation will transform are:

Digital Entertainment and News
Social Media Platforms
E-commerce
Online Payments
Government Services

These are the segments where provincial and rural internet users have higher engagement rates than metropolitan users. Government services, banks and payment apps were among the first to assert the roll-out of vernacular products necessary for their rural users’ economic inclusion.

E-commerce meets Vernacular Content

As more people are gaining access to opportunities and their incomes are growing, the potential for e-commerce in rural India is also increasing. Users want end-to-end support from choosing products to service delivery in a vernacular medium. If companies can give local language services, they can overcome language barriers and more people will use their online methods.

Social E-commerce

Social e-commerce has emerged as the most promising business model over the last year. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook have taken advantage of this in entirely innovative ways. For example, Facebook recently opened its Facebook Shops, allowing businesses to sell products directly from the platform. WhatsApp has also significantly improved its game this year, allowing users to communicate in various regional Indian languages. It also added a payment system in 10 local languages.

Voice Commerce

As per Google, more than 20% of searches in India are voice-driven, and voice searches, on average, are increasing by 270% every year. A fundamental cause for this growth is that voice commands are faster than typing. In addition, the advent of cheap smartphones has further increased the use of audio functions and voice commerce.

Video Commerce

Social media platforms such as YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, among others, account for about 90% of total video consumption in local languages. These platforms have significantly increased the use of short videos and marketing content on social media. Video commerce, or ‘shoppable videos’, have gained popularity on platforms like Instagram and Facebook in India.

Flipkart – Taking on the Vernacular Challenge

Flipkart has reported 15 million daily users connecting through their vernacular interface within a year of launching in Hindi, and their customer retention is at a surprising 95 per cent.

Jiny UI Platform is easing transactions with local languages

Assistive UI Platform Jiny has reported an increase of 20 per cent conversions by providing vernacular audio/text support while transacting. Currently, 35% of Indian language users go online for digital payments, and the company has great hopes in the segment.

Pepper Content – Treating Content like a King

This entirely content-based start-up is catering to vernacular content needs by using its self-established network of content writers who cater to the content services in numerous languages.

Conclusively, the preference for regional vernacular languages on social media is higher in non-metro cities when compared to metro cities. Since most of the population lives in non-metro regions, the scope of regional languages has grown substantially. Consequently, the estimates and market opportunities for start-ups in the vernacular content are pegged to be very high.

India’s $53 billion vernacular content market in 2021 is primarily driven by the vast rural population and diverse demographic needs. With about $708 million already invested in regional language start-ups between 2014 and Q3 2019, ample opportunities lie ahead for budding entrepreneurs and new start-ups.

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3×3 Content Strategy Landscape for B2B Marketers

DU Desk — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 12:06:04 +0000

The ongoing pandemic has thrown a curveball across businesses, making entrepreneurs, founders, businessmen contemplate their existing strategies and adjust the same as per the changing scenario.

Speaking in terms of content marketing for B2B businesses, there has been a complete overhaul, as the majority of the offline strategies is a thing of the past. This is coupled with breaking the digital barriers to reach the target audience. Sellers and marketers will have to think differently and adopt strategies that will help them deliver better.

In a bid to have a comprehensive view and understanding, we spoke with an independent content strategist and founder of Story Scientist, Nischala Agnihotri, who was a part of the live show on ‘3×3 Content Strategy Landscape for B2B Marketers’ hosted by Dutch Uncles. These weekly live shows are a part of the company’s ‘MentorED’ series.

The workshop, moderated by Associate Editor Chetna Gupta, elaborated on the new-age content strategies and relevant tools that businesses need to invest in.

Below are the few highlights of insights shared by Agnihotri:

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In order to understand the content strategy landscape, one needs to be able to find the right balance between quality and quantity, while also making sure that it is something the audience wants.

How would you define content strategy?

It should be the right content mix, content theme, and culture, rather than behavioural culture. Functionality and emotionality make up for quality content. Now the question arises — Why would we choose branding as our goal?

Branding is as essential to start-ups as it is to any other industry player in the market. It is important from a visual perspective but first, you need to figure out the position and statement that you wish to make. It is the expression of the culture within your company and is essentially an identity you want to portray to your customers. It is also very important to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Branding is there to help you stand apart from the crowd, especially in the foetal stages when your business is not as well-known as most other names out there. This is where branding, as a goal, comes into play.

On the other side of things, we also need to look at content production in terms of marketing and strategy. But you must understand first – why we do it.

- - Do you know who your audience are and where do they live?
  - In terms of channels, what formats do they prefer?
  - Would they consume your content and when would they consume it?

Once these questions are answered, that’s when you go and start distributing it. A content marketer gathers enough data and does enough research to be able to understand this flow.

When it comes to content production, that is where the actual execution starts, you start creating as much content as necessary. At the same time, you play with the right amount of quality at the right quantity. The third step in this process is that we need to discover options. You need to figure out your goal in order to do that.

How do you smartly budget and invest in content marketing?

Our speaker states that this aspect is typically side-lined. The answer to that is to be able to use the content strategy landscape that’s designed for B2B marketers and spread out the efforts amongst the team responsible for the content. It’s not just the marketer or the content writer or the content strategist, it is with tech companies.

Content actually also comes from the engineers, the teams who actually work directly for the client. So, this grid-based strategy takes all these factors into consideration.

It helps us figure out how to work with themes and prioritise which content will be produced, published and distributed based on the goals that we are targeting. The ultimate goal is to align the buyer journey with content and communication paths while strengthening organic search. If you are in the marketing space, then you strengthen your organic search and get your business found using SEO.

The floor was then thrown open to questions. Edited excerpts:

Audience Q&A

How do quality and quantity work? How do we balance the content?

Speaker: For quality, like I said, please stick to those three elements mentioned earlier – Make it essential, make it functional and make it emotional.

When I say essential, these are things like product features and pricing, which you can not miss. Without that, there is no communication to be had.

On the other hand, when you look at something like, ‘How do I make it functional?’, just imagine you are publishing a very long article on a platform like, let’s say Instagram, which needs images as well. So, they would love to see arousals that you have repurposed from an existing blog. People on Twitter would prefer just the gist. They don’t have time for anything more. Only if they love what you have written in those limited 200 characters, will they click on the link. So, it’s really about maintaining that quality. If you know your audience, you will be able to get an emotional response. For example, you know your mother well enough that you will be able to get her the gift of her choice and similarly with your spouse. You know what will be the right gift for them.

In the same way, you should be able to know your audience so that you are able to invoke the desired emotion.

Quantity does not have a lot to do with your budget and this is specific to start-ups, especially those in the growth stage who are not so bound by budgetary constraints. Yes, they do have a framework of budget, they have a set boundary, but they are not really tied by it. They can play around with quantities. You have to go back to your budget and see if that is going to work for you. So that is where you bring the combination of quantity and quantity.

How do I verify initial pieces of content?

Speaker: Use the 3×3 grid, because it helps you decide where you have to start. It is especially useful when you do not have data. You do not know what your audiences like, but you go by a simple formula that is given in the 3×3 grid. If you do have data, every cell in that grid has exceptions.

It will not, however, work for certain scenarios. In that case, you switch to something else.

How do you build the initial pieces of content? You need to be able to give me more information on who you want to build it for and then figure out where you have to invest. This is because, say, an HR professional or the leader of a company, would not be interested in social media posts all the time, or they may not notice you all the time? Rather, they would want to have elaborate case studies and would want to hear how the company has been able to make a difference. So, it is really about who your audience is. If you have done that right, you will definitely see results.

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Competition and the ability to identifying it plays a big role in content strategy. At the end of the day, you need to be able to differentiate your business from the rest of the players.

How important is content-linking within the website?

Speaker: When you have a page that has a high ranking and you have other pages that you want to rank, especially when you have your root keyword ranking page that gets a lot of traffic versus other blog pages that are made for long tail keywords, it is highly important that you link the two.

This is important especially if you have a related posts plugin or you have any other way of linking your main landing page to the blog pages, that is going to give you a lot of traction.

I think before you do your off-page work, some amount of on page internal linking should be done.

Is it important to use different types of content strategy?

Speaker: You are dealing with humans who are emotional and want variety. The thing is, sometimes a single type of format really works well with a certain audience, but only up to a certain point. When you are competent or get more creative, you will get into trouble. Reverting becomes highly difficult when you have to move from one content format to another.

Besides, your team has been accustomed to a particular content format for a very long time. Switching will lead to internal friction. So, it is best you go with a minimal mix of content formats and figure out the top three. You do not have to do 10 different ones to start with; figure out the top three that work for your audience, which they would love to consume and then just go ahead and publish that. This way, pivoting becomes very easy.

Is it possible to make the content evergreen so that it remains of the same value even after a year?

Speaker: It is possible to make your content evergreen, depending on the sector. Especially if it is educational content and you are targeting the top of the funnel. There are some all-time favorite companies for marketers, my personal favourite being HubSpot.

It is highly possible that those kinds of people retain the content as there is always a fresh audience coming into the space over and over again and they want to look at educational content all the time.

Nowadays, a lot of product companies, barring e-learning platforms, are choosing to post around six videos or a 10-video tutorial that can help the audience understand the product. A blind formula for creating evergreen content is to make it into a course format. That could be a 10-day email course which would include five to six videos that you publish on your website or it could be 10 different long-form articles elaborating step-by-step procedure on solving a particular problem. These things work well as evergreen content and good quality traffic to your domain.

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