A look at the biggest news stories surrounding online marketing quickly makes it clear that content marketing is getting most of the attention. But what exactly is it? Why is it so important? And how can it help your business to attract new customers?
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is nothing new. In fact, it is what the internet was built on.
If your website has a blog then you are already carrying out basic content marketing. Every time you create and share a blog post, an article, a video or an infographic you are using content marketing to reach your audience.
The term has become a buzzword in recent years for 2 reasons:
- Search engines have increased the importance of fresh, high quality content as a ranking factor, making it critical for businesses to be more thoughtful about what they write about as well as when and where they publish
- The increase in social media platforms as well as the amount of content being shared means that businesses constantly require fresh, appealing content to share to get their audience attention.
How Can Content Marketing Help My Business?
There are many, many reasons to invest time and resources into a strong content marketing program. Here are the top four:
- SEO. Search engines love content. The more content you have on your site, the easier it is for them to understand, categorize and rank your pages. As search engines have become more sophisticated they are now adept at identifying content that is recent, high quality and relevant. Keep these three criteria in mind to create content that serves your SEO strategy well.
- Social Media. This aspect of online marketing was the buzzword before content marketing, and it is just as important to business marketing as ever. The number of social media platforms competing for your attention has grown at an overwhelming rate, but whichever sites you choose to focus on you will need a regular stream of great content to populate your profile with. This content should be interesting and designed to appeal to your target audience in order to be successful in getting views, clicks and shares.
- Email Marketing. Whether it is a monthly newsletter, weekly promotions or one-off marketing messages, email marketing is still a strong way to share information and bring visitors to your website. Including content such as interesting news, helpful tips or advice is a great way to turn a dry sales message into an engaging email campaign.
- Stand Out From Competitors. A large number of business still neglect content creation. Excuses range from it being too time-consuming to create, not having enough ideas, or not believing that it is important to their online marketing efforts. Hopefully the above points have convinced you why it is vital for all businesses to create great content, and doing so will put you one more step ahead of your competitors who aren’t employing this strong strategy to attract customers.