If you’re a regular reader of marketing blogs, you’ve probably heard the term “content marketing” quite a bit. But what is it, really?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
So what does that actually mean? Let’s break it down:
Strategic: Content marketing is not haphazard. It starts with a plan. You set goals and objectives, and then you figure out what kind of content will help you achieve them. Everything else flows from there.
Marketing: At its heart, content marketing is about marketing. It’s about using content to achieve your marketing goals.
Attract and Retain: The goal of content marketing is not only to get people to your site or blog, but also to keep them coming back for more. That’s why creating valuable and consistent content is so important.
Profitable Customer Action: The ultimate goal of any business is to make money, and content marketing is no different. Your goal should be to use your content to drive profitable customer action—whether that means getting people to sign up for your email list, buy your product, or anything in between.
So that’s whatcontent marketingis in a nutshell. But there’s more to it than that… much more. In fact, there are entire books written on the subject (which we’ll get into later).
For now, let’s take a look at some of the basics of content marketing: why it’s so important, how to get started, and what kinds of content you can create.
Why Content Marketing Is So Important
If you want your business to succeed online—and these days, that pretty much goes for any business—you need to be doing content marketing. Why? There are four main reasons:
1) People are looking for answers online
These days, people are going online first when they have a problem or need answers to their questions—and that includes both personal problems (like how to lose weight) as well as professional ones (like how to start a business).
2) Google loves great content
Google’s job is to give people the best possible results when they search for something online—and one of the primary ways they determine which results are the best is by looking at the quality of thecontent on each site. So if you want your site or blog to rank well in Google search results (and who doesn’t?), you need great content.
3) People share great content
Another reason why qualitycontent is so important is because people love sharing great stuff with their friends and followers online—whether it’s an article they read, a video they watched, or a photo they saw. And when people share your content with their networks, it can do wonders for your visibility and reach online.
4) Content builds trust
Finally, one of the most important thingscontent can do for your business is build trust between you and your audience. When people read great information on your site or blog—information that’s helpful and relevantto them—they start to see you as an authoritative source of information on whatever topic it is you write about most frequently
