In the modern creative industry, everyone is talking about content marketing – but what is it, and how can you use it to effectively raise your profile?
Put simply, content marketing is the term given to the process of creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert potential customers into customers, and customers into loyal brand advocates. The type of content you share should be closely related to your products, services and industry which you operate in, to educate people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.
Content marketing isn’t a new thing – it’s been around for many years with numerous businesses already successfully implementing content marketing campaigns. However, it has changed. It’s evolved into an indispensable pillar of any successful marketing strategy in more recent years thanks to the availability of instant information through blogs, social media and online news platforms.
The key to a successful campaign is to create engaging, educational and actionable content – think about what your consumers would want to read, what they would be willing to sign-up for and where they would want to read it. There’s no correct content to write, and the topics will vary depending on what industry you’re in and who makes up your target audience, but regardless of this, you need to produce content that captures consumers’ attentions. This will help you establish trust with your audiences and reach new customers.
An effective content marketing strategy can also help you in other areas of your business. What about using your content to gain PR exposure so that your media contact is not only inspired by your story, they are inspired by you as a person or your brand?
By raising your profile with interesting and knowledgeable content, you are effectively promoting yourself, not just to your customers but to the wider industry, potential employees and the media. Your media contacts become inspired by you as a person as well as your business, and interested in what you have to say because it comes from you, which increases the likelihood of your future PR campaigns being published.
Juicy content can also provide additional benefits in that it supports many other digital marketing channels. It provides additional (and much more natural!) content for social media and contributes to search engine optimisation (SEO) by generating links to your website and other content articles. Good website content is also found by search engines, which can help you move up the rankings too, so it’s win-win for you and your brand! Google ranks websites based on the unique content that’s written for humans to read and enjoy, rather than search algorithms. When your audience finds your content appealing and useful, that will naturally drive social shares and organic links to help move up in search results.
SEO is an ever-changing industry. Gone are the days of writing articles heavily-laden with ‘keywords’ that exclusively promote your brand and products. Consumers are seeking solutions to their issues and answers to their questions, so serve up content that directly relates to their needs. Of course, your products and services may ultimately provide those solutions and answers, but purely promotional and ‘salesy’ content risks pushing your audience away. People want to feel like they’ve been helped, not sold to.
For more information on how an effective content marketing strategy can help your business, get in touch with The Creative Alchemist today.