Kristine Landia

Here’s What You Need to Know If You’re New to Content Marketing Content marketing has proven itself to be an effective tool in bolstering traffic, leads and landing sales. The concept has been around for ages, but with the rise of technology and the internet, it has been given a renovation of sorts. Because of this, the impact and reach of content marketing has become exponentially more powerful and broader, making it a valuable strategy for companies looking to advertise their products and services. Traditional marketing is still used by marketers of course, but it can be costly. If you’re a company tight on a budget, it may very well be unpragmatic, and unlike content marketing, it becomes irrelevant as soon as you stop paying for the advertising campaign. Content marketing, on the other hand, has the potential to last for longer periods of time, ranging from months to years. Content, when great, can be timeless. With all the advantages content marketing can offer, its rise in popularity is not that much of a surprise. If you’re one of those who is intrigued with the advantages that it can provide and is interested in making content marketing work for you but still clueless about content marketing as a whole, or if you’re just looking to refresh your rudimentary knowledge of this concept, this article is for you. Defining Content Marketing It’s best to begin with the definition of content marketing. According to the Content Marketing Institute (Content Marketing Institute,2018), an online resource which prides itself as the authority when it comes to all things content marketing related, content marketing is defined as: “…a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire clearly defined audience- with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” As the definition entails, content marketing “creates and distributes” content. There are many types of content that brands usually create. Among these are blogging, which is most commonly used, infographics which is great for visualization and guest posting which involves partnering with popular websites. As you read further, we will discuss some of these. These distributions often come free of charge. By providing useful information that will help your target customers troubleshoot their issues and concerns, the customers will perceive you as an expert in your field. For example, a furniture company can take advantage of content marketing by creating content that discusses the changing of seasons and fashionable textiles. The content has nothing to do with furniture, but it will attract customers who are maybe interested in interior design, or homeowners who are planning on renovating their furniture for a specific season. Another example is a sanitary pad company that creates content that delves on the issues a modern-day office woman encounters on a daily basis at work. While not necessarily focusing on periods and sanitary pads, this added value will develop a sense of trust in the customer. This sense of trust and perception of expertise nurtured through content marketing will help in keeping the customer engaged, and ultimately lead to the customer buying the product or service you are selling them. This brings us back to one of the basics of content marketing: having great content. What makes content ‘great’? But what makes content ‘great’? ● It is relevant and shows expertise Simply put, great content is able to hold the interest of the reader. Having good writing is vital but that’s not everything to it. The topic must also of interest to the reader. In fact, this might be the most important factor here. Make sure to pick a topic that will resonate with your targeted audience. The sanitary pad company mentioned above is a good example for this. It’s able to identify one of the many female concerns, making it effective and able to reverberate towards the intended demographic. ● It is able to promote your brand A great content is also able to tell the story of your company. Promoting your brand is after all one of the main reasons why your investing in content marketing. Being able to find ways to raise awareness about your brand without having to be too interruptive will require one to use a lot of brainstorming and creativity. ● It is shareable Furthermore, content marketing works best when SEO are ensured and working properly. You can also pair content marketing with the use of different social media as avenue, you can even capitalize on influencer marketing to drive solid results. This will help in getting your content “out there”. You don’t want to put all that effort, time and resources, only so nobody will be able to read it. Types of Content Marketing Now that we’ve covered what an effective content marketing should be, we now move on to different types of content marketing. Blogging Blogging is probably one of the most common type of content marketing. Press releases about new products or services are sometimes done through blogs. Many brands have set up websites and created a blog just for this purpose. Take for example Neil Gaiman (Gaiman, 2018), (a popular fiction author). He’s a brand himself. He also owns a blog where he regularly posts about writing in general, about his beliefs, and occasionally, about his soon to be published books. By keeping the customers updated, a blog can bridge the product and the customers. But did you know that you can do more with your blog? According to Techclient (TechClient, 2018), websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages. Forbes (Rampton, 2016) explained that blogs allow your website to be recognized as one of the valuable sources of information and be picked up by search engines. Blogs are designed to be search-friendly which gives your customers easy navigation to the topic they are most interested in. If your customers like your blog post, they can show their appreciation by sharing it through other social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat, which can be considered free promotion for your brand. Keeping a blog is not easy. To expect good results, consistency is key. The more frequent you post and the longer and more relevant the posts become, the more engaged your customers will be (Patel, 2018). Infographics Another method is infographics. A block of texts can sometimes be boring. Good visuals will help hold the audience’s interest. You can also incorporate infographics into your blog. Assuming that you already have ‘great content’ as previously described, it won’t hurt to have appealing and useful visuals. ● Guest Posting Guest posting is also another type of content marketing. It involves making use of popular websites. Having your content on websites that already receives a lot of traffic will give you the exposure that you need(Patel, 2018). In turn, the website gets free content. It’s a win-win strategy, and also costs you significantly less compared to having your product or brand advertised on a popular TV channel. ● Video Marketing Statistics show that people now spend 30 minutes of their time each day watching videos online using phones(Karaian, 2017). The Next Web(Laurinavicius, 2017) further backs this number by saying that 55% of people watch online videos on a daily, 90% of Twitter videos are viewed on mobile, and Snapchat videos of more than 10 million are watched on a daily basis. The numbers are all pointing to one thing. With that many people watching online videos everyday, it has now become a bankable type of content marketing. Producing engaging content in a form of a video will keep customers spending more time in your website. Some Takeaways Content marketing has offered companies more choices in terms of marketing. For the current giant companies in the industry, content marketing serves as a steady way to garner customers. For the startup companies, it has given them a chance to compete with the giant companies without spending as much to get the same results. Internet has given birth to social media, online videos, and blogs, which in turn changed the rules of the game of marketing. Customers have little to no patience when it comes to interruptive advertisements, popups, and banners (Patel, 2018). What used to be effective before have now become nuisance. Internet has made people aware that if they want information, they have an easy way of getting it. Irrelevant and unwanted information such as the muscle pain reliever advertisement above are things they no longer have to suffer through. That is where content marketing comes in. In a nutshell, by using the internet, people now have the power to find the information they want, and a forward thinking marketer knows how to tap into that. It’s simple, really. Give people the information they want, and you build yourself a following of loyal customers. These are all the basic knowledge you need to start getting into content marketing. It comes with common sense and understanding your audience. Having a strong grasp of the fundamentals will already put you ahead of the game. As you go through the process of content marketing, you’ll pick up more skills and maybe then, you’ll be the one sharing a blog post about what you’ve learned. Now that you know the basics of content marketing, how can you make content marketing work for you? Here's a free ebook we made just for you. Sources: Content Marketing Institute. (2018). What is Content Marketing?. [online] Available at: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/ [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018]. Gaiman, N. (2018). Neil Gaiman. [online] Neilgaiman.com. Available at: http://www.neilgaiman.com/ [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018]. Karaian, J. (2017). We now spend 30 minutes a day watching videos on our phones. [online] Quartz. Available at: https://qz.com/-/we-now-spend-30-minutes-a-day-watching-videoson-our-phones/ [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018]. Laurinavicius, T. (2017). Here’s why video is the future of content marketing. [online] The Next Web. Available at: https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/11/06/why-video-is-the-future-o f-content-marketing/ [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018]. Patel, N. (2018). Why 3000+ Word Blog Posts Get More Traffic (A Data Driven Answer). [online] Neil Patel. Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/why-you-need-to-create-evergreen-long-form-co ntent-and-how-to-produce-it/ [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018]. Patel, N. (2018). Why Guest Blogging is The Best Inbound Marketing Strategy (A Data Driven Answer). [online] Neil Patel. Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/why-guest-blogging-is-the-best-inbound-marketi ng-strategy-a-data-driven-answer/ [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018]. Rampton, J. (2016). [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2016/09/21/why-you-cant-affor d-to-ignore-blogging-as-part-of-your-online-strategy/#bf1eee02ab73 [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018]. TechClient. (2018). Blogging Statistics - infographic - TechClient. [online] Available at: http://www.techclient.com/blogging-statistics/ [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018]. TechClient. (2018). Blogging Statistics - infographic - TechClient. [online] Available at: http://www.techclient.com/blogging-statistics/ [Accessed 17 Jul. 2018].