What is content marketing?
According to Bruce Rogers, Content marketing is the emotional and informational bridge between commerce and consumer. Building that bridge requires more than a budget, editorial calendar, and vision. It requires people who care, who love content, and what it can do for people. Not just what it can do for revenue, but rather how it helps people live their lives.”
What is content marketing to me?
Short and straightforward. It is story telling.
Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make but about the stories, you tell.
Content marketing is a long-term strategy (storytelling) used in building strong relationships with your audience. Meaning creating and sharing valuable free content (that resonates with them) to attract and convert prospects into customers, and eventually recurrent buyers.
Note that the type of content you share should align with what you sell. In other words, your content is a gateway to educating your prospects so that they get comfortable, and trust you enough to do business with you.
Also, note that great content takes time. There are some foundational principles you should follow to ensure that your content is consumable by your audience.
Principles
1. Make it interesting and digestible
- Add a personal touch to your content and build authority.
You should make it easy to digest. - Your readers are not out for facts only. They need more flare and fineness to the details they want. Give it to them and make it interesting too.
Dish away the “too professional” tone
Publish images, GIFs that are fun and entertaining to your audience.
Your content should have a personal feeling … Like a friendly, smart person who’s got answers to your audience`s problems.
According to Harvard Business Review “feel good hormone,” encourages people to communicate and collaborate with others.
Most readers are impatient when in search of information. They scan through pages instead of reading.
- Use bullets and numbers to make it scannable.
- Use “you” and “I” to create a natural connection with your audience.
- Keep your paragraphs short and tell stories. People tend to remember stories than a bunch of text.
Gary gives us an inside about the effects of storytelling on your content marketing efforts.
2. Value packed
From our definition of ” What is Content Marketing?” above, you would have realized that it needs to solve a problem.
However, making your content value packed attracts more readers to it. Ask yourself these questions:
- Does it get your prospects closer to their goals?
- Is it entertaining enough to arouse their interest?
- Are your site designs appealing?
- Is the content formatted and easy to read across multiple devices?
Good content will build an audience faster and help your SEO ranking too.
3. Visibility
The internet is saturated with content. This means that it might be an uphill battle to stand out.
Visibility is what you should strive for. Be unique!
Conducting a market research would enable you to analyze what your competitors are already offering. Use this to your advantage and offer something different or use different phrases.
According to John Medina from Brain Rules:
” When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if you attach a relevant image with that same information, people tend to retain 65% of the information three days later.”
John Medina
Brain Rules
4. Consistency
Be consistent with your brand story and include testimonials (if available) to stand out from the sea of content.
To have a successful content marketing plan, you have to be consistent with your content creation, distribution, and overall design.
As a rule, study your market on several platforms and determine when the majority of them are online. You might want to publish content at such periods to establish a stable and reliable presence.
We have answered, “What is Content Marketing?” The next question is;
Why Do You Need It In Your Busines?
1. Build Your Brand
The truth is, there are lots of business owners and competitors working towards the same goals. Throughout the various stages of your content marketing strategy, you should focus on showing your authority and level of expertise. Give them a thousand reason to pick you over your competitors.
- Your Content marketing needs to build brand awareness.
- Provide them a vibrant and consistent brand story that would make them yearn for more.
- Become a go-to resource on a given topic and conquer your market.
2. Build An Audience
Put yourself in your reader’s position and ask if the content you’re creating is rewarding for them.
Creating high-quality content that resonates with your audience is the ultimate goal of content marketing. Build an audience that is craving for your content so that you can eventually convert them to paying customers.
When sending out emails, writing blog posts, creating white papers and video, etc., always have this in mind. It’s all about them and not you so give them the answers to their questions using your content strategy.
In fact, Content marketing is an ongoing battle for eyeballs. So go out and blast, promote and hustle to grow that audience!
Our job as #Marketers is to create the minimum amount of #Content with the maximum amount of… Click To Tweet
3. Convert Your Fans
Content marketing has many branches and demands, and you aim to build credibility and trust.
It also needs to convert attention and confidence into leads and sales. Use Ebooks, landing pages and other forms of long form video with calls to action.
Content marketing generally is 75% education and 25% selling.
Case studies and testimonials are the best-consumed types of content for buyers. About 78% accessing this format type when researching purchases in the past 12 months (vs. 72 percent in 2016).
Here are the appropriate types of content to create during the buyer’s journey that would enable you to achieve business growth.
I hope you’ll return with answers (after reading this article) from our initial question above ” What is Content Marketing? Why Do You Need It For Your Business Growth?
So, how are you planning to use OR How are you implementing Content Marketing in your business growth?
On – 25 Aug, 2017. By Apolline Adiju.
If this post raised some questions feel free to ask me a question