Content Marketing is essential to any internet marketing strategy in this free-flow of information frenzied environment. Ages ago my mom told me a story of getting a job in a delicatessen and the heavy set, accented supervisor continuously insisted upon her, “Speed is Essential”! In these search engine marketing days, “Content is Essential”!
Content marketing includes more than just a written blog article or home page blurb about your company. There are so many uses for video content, picture or photo content, infographics (like the one below), white papers – or PDF’s that talk in depth about a certain topic, DIY guides, case studies, slide presentations, specific landing pages for targeted campaigns and much more. All of these content opportunities provide valuable resources to the user or reader. Once it is found to be valuable, natural linking will occur.
The fundamentals to making your content valuable is through making it useful, interactive, relatable (relevant, applicable) and having some emotional impact. Another perspective is to write with your character – focus on the key characters that make up the author and the company. Some of these might be honesty, integrity, professionalism, hard-working, unstoppable, creative, etc.
When writing or designing these content marketing assets, allow the writing to flow organically so the target keywords happen naturally in the copy. Basically, content marketing’s altruistic use is to inform the public; to help a seeker find the answer for which they are looking. However, providing great content is also very useful in search engine optimization (SEO). Strive to accomplish both. We all love a win-win! Also, don’t forget to sprinkle a call to action every now and then. After all, this is the real purpose of the content – to engage the reader in an influential way so they will consider moving to customer.
Finally, always return back to measurements to see that you content marketing is on the right path. Go to your analytics to prove you are finding the right people, that your branding is working, your message is valuable, interesting and engaging. Finally, make adjustments as necessary and repeat the process.
