For years, marketers have been famously stating that “content is king.” Content marketing has enabled individuals and organizations across all industries to position themselves as market leaders and industry experts by sharing valuable information with their target audiences. As recently stated by Forbes, “content still reigns as a leading marketing strategy” and content marketing is only becoming more important for research institutions in 2023.
Content Marketing’s Value for Research Institutions
Content marketing can serve as a vital tool for improving your research funding. It allows you to reach a larger audience and your target audience more effectively. As found by demand metric, content marketing drives 3x as many leads as outbound marketing, while decreasing spending by 62%.
Content marketing improves research funding by:
- Improving your search engine rank
- Making your website more user friendly
- Positioning your lab or university as an industry expert
What does Research look like as content marketing?
Content marketing can take a variety of forms from long-form podcasts to short-form tweets. With the continuous rise of social media and our rapid acceleration towards a digital world, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, we are being flooded with content from topics about best business practices to granular health claims. However, this major influx of information has led to a content crisis, where many individuals do not know which sources to trust. This crisis has created a major opportunity window for researchers and research institutions to serve as reputable industry experts. This will not only build their online presence but will also improve funding opportunities.
A prime example of a researcher building a massive online community through disseminating scientific findings is Dr. Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman, a leading neuroscientist at the Stanford School of Medicine, has built the #1 podcast in Science, Education and, Health & Fitness called the Huberman Lab. The podcast facilitates discussions that provide valuable information about health to the general public that are always backed by scientific research. Huberman’s prestige and massive following, garnered through his podcast, have inevitably helped build his highly regarded reputation. His immense popularity and trusted online presence have positively impacted funding for his lab at Stanford. Dr. Huberman’s podcast is just one example of how research can appear as content marketing. Short-form videos and blogs that live on your website are two other great methods to make your research findings digestible and easy to access for a larger audience; the average online reader may not have the knowledge or attention span to dig into a lengthy scientific article or paper. A 1-3 minute video or 400-word blog explaining key research findings can be shared across social media channels which will allow your research to reach many more people. Simultaneously, this will build your reputation as a trusted source that readers may look to for information in the future. Increasing your content marketing and establishing yourself as a thought leader in your respective research discipline will help improve your research funding opportunities in 2023.
OpenScholar provides universities and medical centers with an easy-to-use and individual researchers’ website-building infrastructure that empowers researchers to upload, update, and optimize their content marketing such as blogs and videos to quickly improve and expand research funding opportunities. Want to learn more?
When you use OpenScholar to show your work, share your work, and collaborate on research, magic happens: science advances and outcomes are accelerated.
Contact OpenScholar to learn more and get started