Content marketing is on another rise in popularity and has been for quite a while now. If you’re a business or a brand, chances are, you’re doing a lot of it as a way to promote your brand, without actually promoting it.
This means that now more than ever, your brand is part business, part publishing company. Blogs are the new norm for many businesses, with pressure to publish engaging content that search engines love on a regular basis.
Why is content marketing important?
There are benefits. Big benefits, which explains the rise in popularity. A brand operating like a publishing company is basically converting their business into what amounts to an online trade magazine, designed to target their ideal audience and establish themselves as an authority in their industry.
A wise, wise man named Chad Pollitt once said, “SEO is not something you do anymore. It’s what happens when you do everything else right.” If you’re putting out content that is geared toward your target audience and relates to your brand on a regular basis, then SEO will happen naturally.
Hungry for Content
Consumers just aren’t as interested in the old, more traditional models of advertising anymore. Many online customers go ad blind and don’t even see more traditional efforts to market a product or service. What they do see is what others are saying about a brand or business. What they do see is how brands and businesses interact with their audience. And that’s where the beauty of content marketing lies.
Brands are able to share insanely useful, entertaining content with their audience in the form or blogs, articles, eBooks, even podcasts and videos. When done well, this content resonates with readers, demonstrates your brand personality, and creates conversation and buzz.
Tips to Bring Out Your Inner Miranda Priestly
Target the right people.
While it might seem more engaging to share content that is funny, will that funny content convert with your perfect client? The goal is marketing (without really marketing) so you want content that speaks to your ideal customer. Something funny may get you a lot of general traffic, but that traffic is useless if it doesn’t translate into new customers and clients.
Mix it up.
There are many ways to share content with people. Create a content calendar and fill it up with different types of media. You can share expert, evergreen “pillar” content, industry related news and popular events, a regular editorial-style column every week, videos and podcasts, infographics, interactive content, and more.
Share beyond the scope of your own website.
Social media channels are great places to share your content and curate content from other industry experts. Once you begin sharing on these platforms and build a presence, users will begin to curate your content as well, creating a bigger reach for your content than you would have on your own. And with the rise of paid social media advertising, you can now even pay to play to build that audience, instead of relying on organic growth and curation.
In it for the Long Haul
Many people that engage with your content will be nowhere near ready to buy anything from you. It doesn’t mean they won’t, ever, but it does mean that your job is to keep them hooked and coming back often so that you can establish a relationship and rapport with them and pull them deeper into your buying cycle. Eventually, you’ll want to capture their email address and retarget them until they convert or opt-out.
By running your business as a two-pronged entity, both branding and publishing house, you can harness the power of content marketing and create a stronger brand bond with your audience. Creating a strong brand bond helps ensure you will stay top of mind the next time they are looking for a product or service you happen to offer. We say that’s darn good business.
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