A lot of what we do here falls under the umbrella of “content marketing.” We may not always identify it as such … as in, “hey, this post is part of our content marketing strategy.” You, dear reader, might take offense at that … after all, who wants to be marketed to?
Content marketing is first and foremost about providing valuable content. It can take the shape of words, images, video, audio … your only limit is your own imagination. “Valuable” is the operative word here. Shouting “buy my stuff” across every available media is not content marketing. No, most of us consider that tactic to be “spam.”
On the other hand, when a company or an individual provides me with the information I’m looking for, I take notice. If they do so repeatedly, they become a trusted information source. If that trusted source, later on, offers me a relevant product that meets my needs, they’ll likely make the sale. This is the heart of content marketing.
Joe Pulizzi of Junta42.com defines it like this:
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
Your blog and/or newsletter, your comments on other blogs, profiles on social media sites, involvement in social networking, articles published off-site, even the articles you bookmark … all of these activities are pieces to the content marketing puzzle. Each activity contributes toward the end goal of driving interested visitors to your site. None of the pieces are highly effective standing alone. But used together, they form a picture of your company (otherwise known as your brand) while providing useful, relevant information to your target audience.
For the micro-business owner, content marketing helps you establish credibility in the eyes of your customers and prospects, while driving sales of your product or service. For the organization, content marketing helps spread awareness of your cause. And for the larger business, well, many are already aware of the benefits. Put simply, it works.
So what’s holding you back? A lack of time to do it yourself? Don’t know what to write about? Don’t know how to go about it? Or are you already engaged in content marketing? (We’d love to hear your success story!
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Internet marketing may be the most talked about game in town, but is it the only game? Not hardly. We get so wrapped up in talking about the latest online strategy, that sometimes we forget that not everyone is tied to their computer.
