What exactly is content marketing?

Content marketing is a way of attracting and retaining customers by producing and sharing regular information that is useful to them. This can be by way of blog posts, whitepapers, video etc.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in publishing information that’s relevant, useful and easy to find for readers, can eventually bring in new business. However, there’s so much content out there, it’s not always easy to know what you should put out or how often.

With Google continually striving to ensure that search result content is relevant to the search term, it is important to make sure that your content is not only easy to find and share, but that it is quality content. Whether you’re producing blogs, whitepapers or producing videos, make sure that the content is relevant to your readers and that any links within that go to other posts are also relevant.

1. What to write and how much

Content marketing is about getting information to customers that they want and need to make an informed decision about buying your products or services when the time is right. That doesn’t mean to say that every piece of information should be about your products or services. You should be informing, educating and even entertaining your customers and future customers about areas in your field of expertise. Make yourself the go to place for an answer when someone has a question about your market or industry.

Key to success in content marketing is to plan a content schedule. This will allow you to focus on topics and subjects that not only meet your existing customers interest, but also those of anyone else you’re trying to connect with; for example a new market or other industry influencers.

The length of a post or article will depend on where you are publishing it. Remember you can always put a link to a very long article or whitepaper within a shorter post, giving the reader the option to go off and read in much more detail of needed.

2. Content versus SEO

If you are writing your content correctly it will not be a question you need to ask. You should always be writing for the human reader whilst at the same time considering and optimising for SEO benefit. After all, how will searchers find your content if you don’t consider the terms they use to search for it. The key is to get the balance right and use the SEO data to help you understand how people are using your content. If you can understand how your target audience finds, uses and acts on information, you can use that to engage and covert them to customers.

3. Where does social media fit in?

The content is where you tell your stories or share your information. Social media helps to amplify the reach and engagement. This is where the ability to share content easily is vital. For example, if you post on your blog, make it easy for people to share via Facebook, Twitter Google+ etc. You may even consider guest posting on other industry sites.
Some of your SEO research comes in handy here too. You can use the results of that information to research and find topics that are regularly in demand. This will allow you to plan content of interest to your market into your content schedule.

Monitoring social media can also enable you to see topics or trends that may be of particular relevance to your audience. There’s some useful information here on Twitter hashtags and trends. This will allow you to make quick decisions over your next scheduled content. These will typically be where people are looking for answers to a question or more information.

In conclusion, by understanding customers, how they search for and consume information and what they do with that information will help you with your content marketing strategy and can bring customers to your door.

You might find this infographic and about content and SEO interesting.

If you need help with your content marketing strategy, contact us here.
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