Dave Conklin
Source: Unsplash.com
I’ve had the opportunity to work with more than 1000 brands and companies over the last 18 years to create and implement digital business growth strategies. I’ve sat in countless meetings with business owners trying to “sell” them on the idea that creating amazing content and spreading the word about it will actually have an incredible return on investment. Some companies believe this. All I have to do is show a few positive results from other clients in similar industries, and it all makes sense. However, many of the more, let’s call them “old school,” companies can’t ever seem to wrap their minds around how website sales and leads come from people seeing their website first.
It’s Not Optional To Create Great Content
In order for people to see their website, they have to either rank in the search engines or be talked about in social media.
In order for them to be ranking well in the search engines, they have to make sure they have other websites linking to their site. For them to be talked about in social media, they have to have content on their site that someone is actually willing to talk about. Oh, and “something others are willing to talk about,” does not mean your latest promotion or sale.
Back to the “ranking in the search engines,” requirement. No one’s going to link to your website from another site if your site and/or the content isn’t worth being linked to.
Traditional Businesses Are Starting to Come Around
RiverwoodCabins.com’s content marketing campaign includes a 12-Step Guide on Building A Cabin. Source: riverwoodcabins.com
Lately, things have been getting a little better. We’ve had a lot of meetings with companies in the trucking industry, the manufacturing industry, and the building industry lately were the concept is completely understood.
One great example is a company called Riverwood Cabins. They not only invested in creating a great piece of content that shows how their prefab log cabins are actually made, but they also invested in video. 10 years ago, companies in the marketing industry (I guess this should be obvious) were doing content marketing and experiencing the benefits from it. But someone in the building industry? Especially a more manufacturing focused prefab building company? No way would that have happened. For Riverwood, however, it’s incredibly important for this reason:
Source: SemRush.com
40,500 people per month, according to SEMrush.com, are searching for the phrase “log cabin kits,” in Google. If you’re in the business of selling people log cabin kits, you better believe you want to be at the top of the first page when that happens. It’s not just that keyword phrase though. There are tens of thousands of other keyword phrases people are typing in, so not having content to link to, ultimately makes those people not see your brand when they’re at the very moment of trying to buy your product or service.
Once again, that only happens when people are linking to your site. No one is going to link to your site if you don’t have something worth linking to. This is the very idea of the content marketing and search engine optimization mashup.
How Do I Know What “great” Content Looks Like?
Source: buzzsumo.com
One of my favorite things to do, is go to a site called buzzsumo.com and put in some random topics. On this website, you can see specific content that’s getting talked about all over the Internet. So, if you type your industry into that search box, you’ll be able to come up with many ideas, and know for sure that they are actually going to be topically relevant.
Once you have great topical content created, you then get to spread the word about it by simply telling website owners about it.
So, Go Make It Happen!
Hopefully, your business is a business that’s focused on growth. If you are, don’t be like most traditional business leaders and ignore content marketing because you really don’t understand what it means. Find somebody who’s an expert and has a history of taking content and turning it into a revenue-producing asset and make something happen.
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