What is Content Marketing?

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If you’re exploring ways to market your business, you’ve probably heard of content marketing. And if you haven’t heard of it, you’ve been exposed to it for over a decade without realizing it. Which is the point!

Content marketing is a tough for many companies to wrap their heads around because it requires at the very least an investment of time (which normally means hiring someone to execute the content during that time, unless you’ll do it yourself) but it also requires that there’s no hard sell on the majority of that content.

According to the Oxford dictionary, content marketing is:

A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.

But that’s still not too helpful in understanding how it will work for your business. I’ll break it down.

What Are Some Content Marketing Examples?

Have you ever considered buying a product, then spent some time looking around the company’s website? This is very common especially if the item you’re purchasing is a little confusing like a technical service or financial product. 

Or have you considered buying a product from a company on Instagram but spent some time scrolling through their pictures before making a decision?

Those are examples of when content marketing was a tool in closing the deal. The key to good content marketing is to not let people know you’re doing it. That’s why before now you may not have even realized you were being marketed to. 

Click around this sites of some of your favorite companies and take a look at their blog and how their content is structured. If you find a great example, please share with us all in the comments!

How Does Content Marketing Work?

This is the hardest part to explain to companies because content marketing works by not directly marketing. In fact, most blog posts, videos, etc. shouldn’t have any kind of hard sell in them. You’re building up trust with your audience and proving that you have value to them before they even become a customer. 

Providing value is especially important in younger generations like Millennials and Gen Z who look into the companies they’re making purchases from. 

Let’s make up a content marketing example for a fictional company that sells reusable eco-friendly plates. This week they posted a blog about

How to Market my Business in One Hour

You are a business owner — congrats!
You came up with a great idea the world needs to know about and now you’re stuck with the question of HOW to get them to know about it.
There are a lot of long answers to that question, countless books and classes that are helpful, but you want to know what you can do now, right now! You’re fired up and excited and you want to start getting your brand out there NOW.
Good news, you can.
I’m going to give you three free strategies to market your business and start connecting with clients today.

3 Strategies to market your business

Start marketing your business in these three areas:

Cost-Effective Ways to Build Your Online Business

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Ok, you’ve started a business, now what?

During my time helping business owners set off on the journey to go digital, I’ve learned one thing: there’s a lot to know. I forget that what I know is based off of over a decade of working in digital media and marketing along with a hunger to keep up with what’s going on in the ever changing world of content marketing.

But you didn’t click on this article to hear me opine, so I’ll get to the point.

Whether you are the person starting your business online or if you’re trying to help a client, here are some tools you can use.

For building a website

To be honest, companies that will help you build a website are myriad and a longer article on their own. So, I’ll give what I recommend to my clients when they are getting started.

Medium

Medium has a really simple, sophisticated interface. If your business is more content-oriented, then this is a viable option (similar to mine, for example) for you. You have a lot of creative leeway using their free package. There are more options when you pay for the site (this is one of my favorites) but in the meantime you can get started for free.

WordPress

WordPress is a favorite option for many people. My own site is run off their free option (though I do pay for my URL through GoDaddy), but they have a more robust version you can pay for. WordPress is a great option for many businesses because it can be as manual or analog if you want. If you only want to sell some items and update a blog, you can do that via some plugins and an app on your phone. Or if you want to code your own, unique website, that’s available to you too.

SquareSpace

If you’re looking for a simple, beautiful option where you can sit down and have your business up and running in 1hr or less, I’d recommend SquareSpace. At $9.99/month for a basic package, you get a ton of features including the ability to sell things. Truth be told, if I or one of my clients was in a retail business, I’d run it off of SquareSpace. Chances are that just one sale will more than make up for the cost of the site, and you have their support staff on-hand ready to help with your questions. It’s the best value for a paid website I’ve found.

For socializing your business

Every business has a different strategy for how they want their brand and content to be seen by the public which is why there are a lot of different options for managing social media posts. Additionally, you’ll need to decide what you want your tools to do for you: automatically posting, chain of approvals, or simply scheduling. However, keep in mind that you will pay for these conveniences, so it’s important to think about which you really want/need then scale if needed.

Fast Facts: People Like Your Content More Than Your Ads

3 Tips for Creating a Content Marketing Strategy From Scratch

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You’re convinced you need a content marketing strategy, but where do you begin?

Here are some tips to get you started.

1. Review Your Demographic

Have you ever heard the saying that we get what we need, not what we want? That’s often the case when it comes to internet marketing. You can try your best to attract a certain demographic of people, including employing specific SEM parameters, but that doesn’t always mean you’ll get that audience.

For example, if you have a website about yoga, you may try your best to attract people who are experienced yogis, but instead you find new enthusiasts. Does that mean your readership is any less valuable to you? No. Of course not! You should embrace people who find your content helpful, and aim to build a community around that which will still achieve your original goals.

So, ask yourself these two questions:

Fast Facts: Lead Generation is Top of Mind

Fast Facts: Quality Not Quantity Is Back In Style

Repurposing Content is Smart — Here Are 5 Clever Ways to Do It

Scott Webb Photography, London, Canada

Imagine this: you buy a pair of shoes, but you can only wear them with one specific outfit. The same is true of your other shoes and other outfits. Sure, some people hold their closets to this rule, but it’s expensive wasteful. So, why run your website the same way?

I’m a huge proponent of repurposing content because at the end of the day, you paid for the content (whether with dollars or time), so you might as well get the most bang for your buck. Most digital marketers know that completely duplicated content isn’t a great experience for readers, however, content about a similar topic can actually help drive SEO traffic to your page. And believe it or not, readers like repurposed content when it’s done the right way.

There’s no single method to making repurposed content work for you, because it largely depends on who your audience is, and that will change from site to site. You’ll want to figure out some insights about what delivery methods your visitors engage with most. Do they prefer articles or videos? Are infographics a hit? Does short or long content perform well? Additionally, you’ll want to think about your social media channels, and how they can help you leverage your content. All of these insights can not only get more eyes on what you’ve published, it can also help you decide which marketing partnerships will likely be the most beneficial, thanks to these audience insights.

Here are five clever ways to get the most mileage out of your content and how to make it more engaging.

1. Turn it into a multimedia experience

You may have seen Moz’s Whiteboard Friday, where Rand Fishkin & Co. take a different SEO-related concept each week and illustrate how it works. The videos are one of the most educational parts of my week, but Moz goes one step further. They also publish a hi-res photo of the finished whiteboard, and type out all of the text below the video. If that isn’t enough for you, they also embed an audio file from Soundcloud so if their users are podcast people, this option is available as well.

A single weekly post repurposes content in four very user-friendly, and engaging ways. While many people watch videos, others would rather quickly scan an article. And if the lesson that week was particularly illuminating, the photo allows the visitor to share it with only a few clicks.

2. Revisualize the content

Moz takes, quite literally, a straightforward approach to repurposing content, simply delivering the same product in different ways, but there are other methods to making the same thing feel fresh. If you have a piece of content that lends itself to becoming an infographic, then take a few moments and create one.

Even if you don’t have a graphic designing bone in your body, there are lots of free tools out there to help you design an image people will engage with. My favorite is Canva. I discovered it a few years ago, and since then I’ve created marketing materials for clients, social media posts for college intramural programs, lengthy infographics, a new cover for my novel, business cards, and some casual pics just for the heck of it. Do a quick content audit, focusing on which pieces get the most engagement, and start thinking about new ways to present it.

3. Socialize articles… Again

People are typically pretty good at Tweeting or posting their content to Facebook, but are you employing the most engaging tactics? Let me illustrate. When I used to write for a celebrity blog, we’d have headlines like, “You Won’t Believe What Shoes She Wore With This” and post a picture cropping out the shoes. Sometimes, if the headline was that ambiguous, we’d crop out the celeb’s head, too.

Of course, this is the most shameless form of clickbait, and no one likes that, so don’t go that far, but think in th same frame of mind.

If you have an article about how to de-stress and de-clutter your life, create a graphic with the article title, or a little factoid that will entice readers, and direct them to the article link. By using this method, you get double leverage out of your post without looking lazy and simply posting the same link again, or coming up with something like, “Throwback to one of my favorite posts.” If you’ve tried that method, it’s ok, we probably all have at some point.

You can also launch a week-long social media campaign. For example, if you have a website about yoga, feature a new pose each day to balance the seven chakras. The info is already on your site, you’re just making it accessible in a new way.

Value of an Editorial Calendar

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Everyone starts the new year off with the best of intentions. We write down resolutions, we get into a positive mindset, we really do try to start off on a good foot.

If refining your content marketing strategy is on your list of improvements to make to your blog or business, then creating an editorial calendar is a key tool to make that happen. Psychology professor Dr. Gail Matthews, from the Dominican University in California, conducted a study about writing down our goals. She found that people were 42% more likely to achieve their goals if they wrote them down. That’s how an editorial calendar can help you.

If you’re struggling to start one, here are some tips to make a helpful calendar for you, no matter what your KPIs are.

Pinpoint Your Goals

What’s the reason behind why you want to ramp up your content marketing strategy? Is it because everyone else is doing it so you feel like you should too? Or is it to gather leads? Maybe you want to provide your potential customers with information that will help lead them down your sales funnel?

Whatever the reason, write it down. This way, when you’re creating your content ideas, you can refer back to the goals and ask yourself if the content will help achieve them.

Create a Plan

Ask yourself question like how often do you want to publish articles? Do you only want text or do you want graphics too? What kind of a budget will that take, both in terms of time and money?

Once you’ve narrowed down any potential problems with publishing type and frequency, you can be more realistic with your overall strategy and expectation. For example, if you hope to gain five leads from each article, and 500 leads for the year overall, then you know you need to publish 100 articles, or roughly two per week. If your budget only accounted for half that many, then you need to reevaluate either the budget or your expectations.

Start Brainstorming

There are plenty of articles out there providing editorial calendar spreadsheets, telling you what you need to have in each one, and the list goes on. I’ve found that these are helpful to give you ideas of what you might want in your own calendar, but at the end of the day, you have to fiddle around and see what works for you.

Personally, I like to keep it simple and include:

Fast Facts: Social Media as Content Marketing