The title if this blog post is in no way intended to undermine the importance or value of content marketing but an indication of my want to demystify some of the ambiguity surrounding the term ‘content marketing’. I will hopefully give you some clear content strategy to help you gather momentum in this area.
If you are sitting at your PC scratching your head at the terminology used so far you might want to take a look at a recent blog I wrote on the topic of ‘what is content marketing’.
I’m a pretty creative thinker so these ideas are laid out in the order I think of them as opposed to any order of importance.
Blog content
Blog content is one of the single most valuable online content types and by nature should be quick and easy to create and offer many online marketing benefits. Get every business unit to write blog content weekly and have their content fairly reflected in the pagination of the blog.
News articles and news feeds
Driving volume traffic and social engagement, news articles and breaking news stories that are relevant to your industry offer great value adds to any website. Set up Google alerts for key terms reflective of your website and business areas and be creative in repurposing and tailoring breaking news into digestible and relevant articles for your target audience – Stuck for something to say on social media? Then think news.
Evergreen content
The really valuable content that can drive continual traffic to your website. Invest time to develop in depth white papers, “how to” guides, resource papers and informative documentation that helps your target market. Readers will keep coming back to visit you and see what other valuable information you have developed, they will see you as a true thought leader and they will eventually buy from you, recommend you and appreciate you.
Content promotion
Getting your content out there (wherever ‘there’ is for you). This includes creating social content that people will want to read, share and ‘like’. This also means self promotion of great content. When you write a new white paper tell people about it. Go on to Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Twitter, Reddit, Google+ (and more) and shout about how great this free content is. Explain why people should visit your site and download it and go into detail about the unique value you have in your industry and why people should care about reading what you write.
Guest blog comments
Being passionate about what you do and how great you are at what do you is great. Being active in some key industry blogs as a guest author and sharing some of your greatness is even better. Building your authorship, enhancing your brand awareness and getting people to trust you is awesome.
Take any of the above, take all of the above – whichever you do, take something from this blog post and run with it. Tell me your successes, tell me your failures and comment at will.
