Content Marketing is a big deal. Some even say it's the only game in town. I tend to agree, with caveats.
First, let's talk about what “content” is, and then let's talk about how to create and market it. According to Wikipedia,
Content is information and experiences that may provide value for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content may be delivered via any medium such as the internet, television, and audio CDs, as well as live events such as conferences and stage performances. The word is used to identify and quantify various formats and genres of information as manageable value-adding components of useful media to the target audience.
So, it's basically everything you see…but the trick is making it useful to the target audience, right?
It can be a web post, a sales page, direct sales copy via mail, a YouTube video, a PDF or eBook, a podcast or mp3 file, a presentation, etc. I'm sure I've left out some forms of content, but you certainly get the point.
How do you publish content that your audience wants to consume? Well, it's easy. Just press “Publish” 🙂
[su_note]A nice free resource is First Site Guide[/su_note]
Seriously, you can either create original, unique content, or you can curate other people's content. Once you publish the content, you then need to let people know about it, right? For if nobody ever “stumbles across” your material, it will never be consumed (read, watched, bought, listened to).
Promotion plays a HUGE role in content marketing. Not only must you produce something, you have to get the word out.
According to CopyBlogger,
Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.
I'd remove the “free” part, but I agree with this 99.7 percent!
Content promotion is best done through various marketing channels like blogs, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, and Pinterest. Each of those places has its preferred “media” (text, video, audio, presentation, image, etc.) so you must tailor each channel with content that is appropriate for that particular site.
You do that through “multicasting” or “casting” for short.
Bottom line: Content marketing is big and you have to do it. You can make it hard on yourself and try to create all of your own content in multiple formats, or you can use a system.
Learn more about this system in Content Four Play (it's a free download).
Remember, the report, “Content Four Play”, is a free download. Get it by following the link at the end of this post.
The SEO in 2014 is all about content creation and marketing. Now it is very necessary to write unique, quality, original and interesting contents on the basis of your readers so that your visitors found new and interesting information and share with their friends which means more people are going to visit your website. Content marketing is very important for your website’s traffic and I am happy to read the 4 pillars of content marketing discussed by you here.
Yes, agreed Stephanie. Content marketing is where it’s at. Provide your target audience with what they want and encourage sharing and engagement. It’s what the web is best at 🙂
Good post. Agree with most of your points. Kind of surpris earned media was omitted from channels. Why?
Great question! I think I was focusing on what you ultimately control and while creating great content and promoting it may lead to earned media, it’s mostly out of your control.
BUT you bring up a great point – all this effort really is to get others to recognize your work, so I’ll incorporate that into future posts 🙂
Thank you.
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