What is content marketing and how does it work?

Content marketing is in essence about creating content of interest and value to your target audience and marketing it online in such a way that your audience will discover it. By having your content discovered, you extend your online reach and brand presence and ultimately acquire new customers.

There is allot of confusion surrounding content marketing and how it works. The Internet is essentially a large content marketplace made up of content creators and content consumers. Content marketing is about taking on the role of a content creator. Success however, comes from understanding the behaviors of content consumers.

The role of social media in content marketing is also confused and not well understood. Social media is best utilised as a channel to amplify new content and to communicate outwardly and in a viral fashion that may build your base of followers and expand your brand presence as a consequence. This doesn't automatically correlate into more customers as the content I'm specifically interested in doesn't always tightly align to the interests of my social network connections.

Publish New Content Regularly

Having a plan to identify content opportunities and then creating and publishing new content on a regular basis is an imperative. Content opportunities are best identified through in-depth understanding of what content subject matter is of interest to your target audience what content they are actively looking for.

As a general rule, new content should be published on your website. This can be in the form of new web pages or could be in the form of an article within a blog. Your news or article blog should be an integrated part of your website and not separate.

For more insights, read our article on how to write blog articles.

If your content is image centric, then you should be publishing content in Instagram and or possibly Pinterest depending on your target audience.

New content should be published in a search engine friendly fashion. Content should be uniquely written and most importantly, not scrapped or copied off other websites. Videos and images add richness to content and enhance the visitor experience.

Following publication, you should then communicate your new content through social media posts and or email marketing and newsletter campaigns.

Create a Content Marketing Plan

Content Marketing strategies will vary by business type, target audience characteristics and the nature and form of the content. The following is a general outline of the components in a content marketing plan.

1. Identify and research content opportunities of value to the target audience. Create a list of content ideas and topics to write about.
2. Regularly write and create content from your list and then publish to your website.
3. Follow good search engine optimisation (SEO) publishing guidelines so your content is findable in search.
4. Incorporate appropriate call to actions at the end of your content to further engage visitors. This could include newsletter sign ups.
5. Communicate your content via appropriate social media posts.
6. Communicate your content via email marketing and newsletters.

Embracing content marketing will inevitably lead to more traffic to your website, a bigger brand presence and more followers, enquiries and customers.

If you would like help and advice in establishing your content marketing strategy, then talk to us.