If you haven’t heard the term before, Content Marketing is the use of really high quality, interesting, useful, and entertaining content to market your business. Content can mean anything from blog post, to tweets, to Facebook updates, to Instagram photos, newsletters, videos; anything that has your information, brand, and genius in it, in any way, shape or form, small or large. It could be as tiny as a tweet or as big as a book, it doesn’t matter. If you’ve created it, it’s your contents. There are various ways content marketing can uplevel your business.
If you have a blog, you are already using content marketing whether you realize it or not.
If you have a vlog the same is true.
If you have a Twitter feed, you’re already using content marketing.
The likelihood is that what you’re currently doing is a little haphazard, and you may be frustrated that you’re not seeing better results. But the more you focus on your content marketing, the more consistent you are, and the more you tailor your content towards a specific goal, or goals, the more powerful it becomes.
One of the main concerns people have about content marketing is the need to constantly produce tons of content. But if you’re smart about it, you will find that there are a great many ways to repurpose your content and get loads of mileage out of a small amount. For example this blog post was originally recorded as a video, then transcribed to form the written post. At some point I will almost certainly convert it into an audio and use it as a podcast. In addition to that I will be pulling bits and pieces from it here and there and using it for tweets, posts, memes and various other things for all my social media.
That is one piece of content I’ve created that goes a very very long way.
If you can regularly create high quality content and learn to repurpose it in this manner, with a really clear idea of how you need to use it, and who you are targeting with it, it becomes an incredibly powerful marketing tool. If you’re searching for a way to uplevel your business and really supercharge your sales, content marketing is the way to do it.
Here are just seven of the really awesome ways that content marketing can up level your business…
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Content Marketing Drives Website Traffic…
This is the most obvious benefit of content marketing and it’s the easiest result to achieve. Quality content naturally generates an awful lot of traffic to your site. So if you have a website and you’re struggling to get people to visit it, the more content you publish, the more people will visit it. It really is that simple. The higher quality your content is, the more focused it is, and the better your SEO is, the more successful your content will be at driving traffic. The long and short of it however is this: content drives traffic, and traffic drives sales.
Raises Brand Awareness…
Content marketing is also really good for your visibility. It’s a great way of raising awareness of your brand and really making you and your business as recognizable as possible. The more content you produce, the more people will see you. The more people are exposed to high quality, really cool content from you, the more they’re going to remember you, the more they’re going to think of you when they need that particular thing you do, and the more your brand is going to become a recognisable, visible brand. Visibility can only be a good thing.
Builds Lasting Relationships With Your Ideal Clients…
This is absolutely key to upleveling your business – content marketing builds lasting relationships with your ideal clients, the people you most want to work with. Rather than relying on ‘spray and pray’ advertising techniques, content marketing creates a community around your business which is specifically designed to attract the exact type of people you most love working with. They will come to you. Content marketing is the fastest, easiest, and most effective way to build that all important, know, like, and trust factor with your audience. If you’re blogging, vlogging, tweeting, whatever, the more you say, the more people get to know you, the more they get to know you, the more they like you, the more they like you, the more they trust you, and the more they trust you, the more likely it is they all to give you their money, which again is good!
Provide Real Value To Your Readers…
Content is a brilliant way of giving your audience, your existing clients, and your potential clients really good value with no strings attached.
When you produce quality content, you’re not saying, “This is my awesome stuff, give me money for it!”
That’s a hard sell.
Instead, you’re saying, “This is my awesome stuff. This is how cool I am. This is how great I’m going to be able to do this job for you. This is how awesome this product is going to be for you. This is just a taster, and it’s yours to try for free. No strings attached!”
That’s an easy sell!
Content creates endless opportunities for you to market to people in this manner. You give them high quality content that is extremely valuable to them, because it teaches them something, helps them, informs them, or entertains them. That value is given freely, and it means a great deal to your audience. They appreciate it, they remember it, and because it clearly demonstrates just how good you are at what you do, when they make the decision to pay for more of that information, or help, or entertainment, they’re going to come to you first.
They know how valuable what you have to offer is.
Content achieves this for you in a way that is very difficult to do with anything else. You can write blog post, after blog post, after blog concerning your area of expertise, your niche, and really help people with your content. You’re giving your audience something immensely valuable and you’re asking for nothing in return. You may at some point ask them for their email address, to sign up to your newsletter, and further down the line you may try and market a paid product or service to them, but they are never ever going to have to give you anything in return for the privilege of reading your content.
That is theirs, it’s for them, it’s free forever, and that is a really powerful thing, because the more people devour your free content, the more that will say, “Oh my God! This woman is amazing, this guy is great! And this is just their free stuff! Imagine what their paid stuff is going to be like, if the free stuff is this good!
Content Marketing Positions You As An Expert…
Content marketing is hands down the best way of building your credibility and establishing yourself as an authority figure. You can position yourself as an expert in your niche (your specific area) simply by producing quality content about that area. For example, I talk a lot about blogging and content marketing because that is my niche.
When it comes to establishing someone’s expertise, people respond a lot better to content than any other form of marketing. It’s one thing to stick an advert in front of people and tell them that you are good at something. It is quite another to actually demonstrate it in a tangible way that they can use for their own benefit, at no cost to themselves. That is what content marketing enables you to do.
Starts Conversations…
Content marketing also opens up a free line of communication between you and your audience, through social media, the commenting functions on your posts, sharing, and all the wonderful stuff that happens online. The second you have content published people can like it, they can comment on it, they can share it. They can also enter into an open and free discussion with you, your other clients, and other people who are interested in what you’re do. They can talk to the people who are already working with you. They can get ideas from each other, as well as from you, and suddenly a whole little world opens up. You have a real community going, rather than just a static website that doesn’t do anything but try and sell stuff to people.
And Helps People Make The Decision To Buy From You…
And finally, the part you’ve all been waiting for… Content marketing helps potential clients make the decision to buy quicker and more easily.
If you are establishing that you know what you’re doing… that you’re really good at what you do… if you’re giving people great value and expecting absolutely nothing in return… if you’re constantly building that know, like, trust factor, people get to the point where they are willing to invest in you and your products or services an awful lot quicker, and a lot more easily than they would if you were just blasting them with adverts 24/7.
As marketing goes, content marketing is the nicest, softest, and easiest way of convincing people to like you and get on board with what you’re offering.