Cannabis Content Marketing 101

We hear the term ‘content marketing’ a lot now but what is it exactly and what makes it different? In our industry, cannabis content marketing is designed to attract and retain an audience of prospective consumers. Instead of pitching your products or services in the traditional sense, you are sending truly relevant and useful content out to the cannabis community to help them solve their issues or concerns, typically through digital channels like social media. People in the cannabis community are demanding quality information they can actively use and engage with. With the attention span of seconds, what you have to say better be relevant, valuable, and memorable fast or your audience will have moved on.

Creating Quality Cannabis Content

When creating quality cannabis content you must ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it relevant? The subject matter of your video, blog, or post must be important to your potential consumers. Lots of topics are important, but you need to know what unites your target audience and stick with subjects that are actually relevant to their interests and needs, such as local cannabis news and information  that may affect them.

• Is it valuable? Whatever your presenting has to to be information they actually need or want. Your cannabis content must serve to answer a problem or address a need your consumer may have. The higher value, the likelier your audience is to follow your call to action. Strain related content is a great example of this.

• Is it memorable? Obviously being relevant and valuable will help, but here’s where emotion comes in. Your cannabis content has to leave a mark on those interacting with it and the best way to do that is to appeal to the emotional side of your audience. Something like how medical marijuana has helped someone overcome a debilitating condition and changed their life.

Structuring Your Cannabis Content

So you’ve run your cannabis content through the three questions and you think you’re onto something. Now what? Well, getting your audience to look at it is your next big hurdle.  Here are a few tips to capture your audience and get them to absorb your content and engage with it.

The Headline: Do not be lazy about this, it’s not a grade school book report. This is your first and sometimes only chance to snag the attention of the cannabis community. Be sure it packs a punch big enough to get them investing a few more seconds of attention.

The SubHeadings: The majority of readers are skimmers. Invest the time in these headlines to answer the three cannabis content questions mentioned above and your audience is more likely to delve a little deeper.

Keywords: Not only is this crucial to SEO (a topic for another day), but your skim-happy audience needs to see your chosen keyword in a few places right away to keep them locked in. Your keyword should be in your headline, in at least one subeading, and peppered a few times throughout.

Portion Control: Break your written cannabis content into bite sized portions no more than a few sentences long. Too much text in a large chunk seems overwhelming and people tend not to want to make the investment. Piece it out and it will appear much easier to digest.

Wrapping It Up

They made it almost through your piece of cannabis content. You have an interested and engaged consumer and now you need to do something with it. This is the part where you wrap things up and give your call to action. You should know what the overarching purpose of your content marketing strategy is and now is the time to implement it, even if it’s as simple as inviting them to provide feedback or to share your cannabis content with others.

Putting cannabis content out into the world may seem daunting, but if you verify it’s quality and take the time to structure it successfully, the ‘quality over quantity’ principle applies.

The Social Media Unicorn team specializes in creating effective content marketing strategies that work for cannabis brands and businesses. Give us a call at 702-812-6555 or email to talk about how we can help you.