Traditional outbound marketing and advertising have taken a backseat to “Content Marketing.” Instead of buying ads, banners, and search rankings, companies all over the web are turning to this relatively new form of attracting and gaining clients and customers.
Content marketing is the creation of unique content for use in
blog posts, videos, white papers, images (infographics), how-to guides,
case studies, to gain more leads and acquire more customers.
If the content is unique and interesting, the message can spread across the web quickly. Users and search engines alike have begun to pick up on this trend, bringing their purchasing power or rankings with it, respectively. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
Dedicate the Time
Just seeing the words “unique content” might make small to medium sized business owners & marketers cringe. Creating something that is unique and interesting is the most difficult task of the entire process, so don’t try to skip over it. It is important that your message is clear, concise and entertaining.
Repurpose Content
Once you have content to market, repurpose it in many different forms. Often times a blog post can be turned into a short video. Add more data to the blog post and turn it into a case study. Take that case study and make it visual, via an infographic. The same topic can be used throughout multiple channels, minimizing the time it takes to create new topics and content.
Share it
What good is shareable content if nobody can find it in the first place? None. Don’t make the mistake of putting up a blog post and expecting people to get there. Create an email newsletter and/or tweet out links to it. Have a video? Put it on YouTube and share it across your social channels. Have an interesting infographic or image? Pinterest and Facebook should be your targets.
So, why is it important?
With the ever evolving search engine algorithms valuing different tactics, having unique and interesting content has always remained important. Now more than ever Google is focusing on bringing these content creating websites to the top of their rankings.
More content equals more visitors which usually equals more leads (assuming your website isn’t a complete dumpster fire for conversions).