The power of content marketing
Have you heard the phrase “content is the King”? Yes, the king of Internet. The content is one of the most valuable and influential factors online, not only for the search engines like Google, but for the most important individuals in the digital world – our users.
The creation and the maintenance of Internet content is not an easy task. On the contrary – in order to create a quality content, we need time and resources. In other words, the process of unique content creation is not a simple task.
Content marketing is a marketing process of creation and presenting of a valuable content in order to attract and engage potential customers or clients. The information that this technique offers is focused on attracting a certain type of audience or group by calling them to the make a desired action. In other words – to transform the potential customers of the company into leads and thus to generate profits.
Let me put it like this – if the traditional marketing and advertising could tell your customers how good and “perfect” your company is or why your products/services are better than the others, but the content marketing will actually show, highlight and prove the above statements.
The added value of the content
Stories are a powerful tool in our hands which allows us to have an emotional influence on our customers. The content that we are planning to share can give qualities to simple objects.
To test the power of words, two enthusiasts began an experiment which main purpose was to find the answer to the question “Can you give a value to an object by only using words”. Thus was born the project “Significant Objects”. The market place for these objects was eBay. Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn bought several small items which they have found on garage sales and thrift stores, and the total of which were only $128.74. To test the idea, they gave the objects to pre-selected writers (one each), which were having the task to write a fictional, but at the same time fascinating story which will be part of the object’s value. The positive results of the experiment happened very quickly. They sold the objects successfully for $3,612.51 (You can calculate the ROI) and proved their theory. This is only the first phase of the project and now the idea has evolved into a cause. Follow the phases of the Significant Objects Project.
The story that’s behind the products we sell, is much more valuable to our customers, than the actual price. The added value that you offer to your customers is the reason of their return to your company again and again. Show them something meaningful. Tell them something valuable. Describe something interesting. Present your products in a way which will be different than your competitors’. Give life to your products, show their souls through the content that you will offer to the customers.
Create authority on Internet
Content marketing is so much more than just marketing. It’s the message which you are sending to your audience. It is the long-term relationship between you and your customers. And it depends on you how strong it will be. Valuable content is as much important as how often you offer it to your customers. Once they make the decision, you will earn their loyalty, because they will be choosing your brand over your competitors’.
Content is tied to brand. If the content is the information that you want to share with your customers, the brand will be the first association with which your audience will bind the shared info. Brand and corporate identity are the “face” of your company and the content is the “body” which will support the brand and will keep stable at the desired level. You won’t gain authority from the big name of your company – it’s more important what stays behind your company’s name.
Content marketing shows how much you care for your customers – yesterday, today and tomorrow. People like to be appreciated, to be payed attention to. With its unique content, your brand allows you to stand out above the competition and to attract more potential customers. If content is the King, then brand is the Queen and the two are interrelated. Creating and maintaining these two things, the desired position in Google ranking may seem a much easier target.
Why should you choose the content marketing
Content marketing has the power to deliver value to customers. That’s because the content is delivered in a way that your audience wants – according to their needs. That way you can convey your brand identity – excluding all the unwanted techniques and ”cheap” expressions which would lose the trust of your customers. The content which you’re presenting should be filtered so it can be easily understood, and at the same time interesting and useful.
The report of PageFair.com and Adobe, which covers 2015, shows that on average about 200 million people worldwide are using add blockers. This shows us how important it is to integrate marketing strategy that bypasses traditional advertising. And that’s where the content marketing shows up.
Content marketing may not be cheap and easy to implement, but it’s definitely effective. It generates more leads than you would earn with the traditional marketing methods. What you should know is that content marketing requires investment, time, skills and heart. The last one is crucial because your customers can easily distinguish when something is created without any effort or intentionally piled.
Different types of content:
The different types of content supposed to have a different presenting of the information. There are many ways to present your content.
Blog
Blogging shows how transparent your business can be. Sharing information constantly affects to your audience decisions:
- Companies that have active blog receive 97% more potential customers;
- 90% of consumers find detailed information useful;
- 61% of consumers feel more relaxed and well when they know that the company has a blog;
- 50% of consumers say that content marketing has a positive influence on their purchase decisions.
What length should be your blog post?
- 75-300 words – If you want to initiate a discussion among your readers, super short blog posts are exactly what you are looking for. However, you should have in mind that they are not SEO-oriented, even if they have a lots of shares in the social networks.
- 300-600 words – If there is any unwritten standard length of the blog post – this is it. An average size of text that generates a good number of comments and shares.
- ~ 750 words – This is the standard length for professionals – journalists, newscasters. With such articles you can earn good links and shares from other bloggers.
- ~ 2450 words – The highest ranking blog post on Google have the length of about 2450 words (sorry guys, I couldn’t make it that long). With such length of your articles you can seek both perseverance and good positioning on the search engines and get thousands of new readers per month.
Regardless of the length, pay attention to the topic of your article – it must meet the requirements of your audience. If the topic is not interesting to your readers, then it won’t bring you the desired results. Therefore, you should know your target groups well enough and to put yourself in their shoes.
When you start blogging, the preparation is essential. There are a few tricks that will help you in the creation of an outstanding blog article.
It’s possible to have difficulties writing articles and the above mentioned numbers may seem unattainable to you, if you don’t have experience. However you can always find a proper copywriter in freelancers’ websites, such as UpWork. On other hand many companies decide to choose marketing agencies that offer quality professional copywriting services, despite that it is more expensive. This helps save time and efforts in seeking sources of articles, news and information.
Infographics
You’ve seen them on many websites, probably you’ve been impressed with their colors and graphics. Infographics are vertical graphics, including statistics, charts and any other information that can be included in an image. In order to create an infographic, first you have to prepare a strategy that includes research, planning and analysis, which later will help you in the making of the design of the actual infographic. Since this is a long process and requires attention and professionalism, the best and safe option which many companies prefer is hiring a company or agency that deals with this type of activities. However once you have made a proper research and collected data, you can send it to a graphic designer and wait for the result.
Once you have the infographic, you can start promoting it through your blog, to let other bloggers use it or to send it to other media. Popular promo channel is Pinterest – social media where you can upload your infographics and mark them with the appropriate tag.
Video
Many people think that this type of content marketing is expensive and difficult to manage. The truth is that we don’t need any professional equipment to create а good video content. On the contrary! Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example of this. He began with the creation of videos to promote his family wine shop, but gradually he began to develop his ideas through these videos. Now, he is an entrepreneur, author, presenter and one of the most influential persons online. That shows how important is to think outside the box, in which we are often placed in.
But do we need video marketing? Yes. If you run a business, expose your corporate identity and activities to your customers. The video sharing website YouTube is the second largest social media after Facebook. Film a video related to your business, mission and team. Show how spontaneous you can be and film the video with a mobile phone, but don’t forget the good light. Give some value to your videos – share valuable information about your industry, product review, interview or a personal story. This will shorten the distance between you and your customers.
E-books
E-books are a powerful tool of the content marketing. To publish a book would be much more expensive than to put an e-book to your website or blog. However, the preparation is equally complicated for both. You don’t have to be scared by this fact. If you have a good preparation and plan your e-book ahead, you will have enough time to gather enough information and to put it on pages. If you have enough written articles relevant to your niche in your blog, you can compile them into an e-book.
E-books are much more accessible. Most of them are free – another benefit that your followers will notice. Once you offer something free, you might reach much broader audience and new potential customers.
Presentations
Visual content is not just a thing that you should include in your blog or website. It’s an important content that you could share on platforms such as SlideShare – one of the most used platform for sharing a visual content and unfortunately – underestimated by many companies.
If you recently delivered or led any trainings or seminars, don’t be afraid to upload your PowerPoint presentation on SlideShare. Many users probably are looking just for that. Every information and content that you’re sharing to your audience might be important. Especially when it is unique.
Content marketing and SEO
Content marketing provides additional benefits that support other digital marketing channels. It provides additional content for marketing in the social networks and contributes to SEO (Search engine optimization) by generating inbound links and builds good content for your website.
While SEO requires certain requirements, content marketing fulfills them. If you don’t have any content, then there won’t be nothing to be optimized on your website. In order content marketing to achieve great results and the influence your audience, it has to meet the requirements of SEO:
- To meet the requirements of content;
- To create constantly updated content;
- To contain keywords;
- To include links;
- To have metadata, tags and text formatting.
Content marketing and SEO are interlinked which makes them convenient to implement into your digital marketing strategy.
What’s the next step?
The digital world is already part of us and for this reason investment in digital marketing is essential for the long-term strategy for your business. For example, 90% of the “life” of a Facebook post lasts within 48 hours while the “life” of an article lasts within 2 years time.
Statistics of the Content Marketing Institute show that 88% of worlds’ brands are using content marketing and 25% of them include it in their budgets to invest in it.
Content marketing has become a very powerful method that must be directed and managed carefully. The process from the creation of the content, which must be oriented to your business niche, to the provision of this information to the customer, should be carefully planned. Experts in the field of content marketing are those who can analyze the market and your competitors; would orientate quickly and would react most appropriately in the placement of the content. If you are certain of the bright future of your business, you better start planing you long-term content marketing strategy now.
