Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing

Content is King!

Well, you might have heard this quote by Bill Gates numerous times already. What next?

Content works!

You heard it right.

With an increasing focus on online and digital marketing all organizations from SMEs to Fortune 500 companies, everyone is in a rush to adopt quality content marketing strategies to build empires around.

Now when everyone is in the race, where do you stand when it comes to content marketing efforts?

In this article, we will discuss content marketing and content strategies in detail to help you get the answer to this. In this content marketing guide, you will get answers to:

• What is Content Marketing?
• Content Types
• Benefits of Content Marketing
• Creating a Content Marketing Strategy
• Content Promotion Techniques

 

What is content marketing?

 

In its simplest terms when you market your products & services with content, it is content marketing. But ahead of this simple definition, it has more to offer.

Here, it could be separated into two parts:

• Content Strategy
• Content Marketing

While content strategy answers your basic questions of what, how, why, and when the content should be created. It also answers the ways it should be managed, updated, and archived.

When it comes to content marketing, it focuses on tactics and execution part. It includes the actual creation of content, its curation, editing and above all its marketing. It could be any type of content that is aimed to educate, update, or entertain.

 

Content Types

 

The major content types include:

• Blog posts
• Infographics
• Videos
• Guides & White papers
• Podcast

 

Benefits of Content Marketing

Content marketing ads value: Most advertisement platforms solely promote their product and services. Here, not necessarily all advertisements on TV, radio, or other platforms provide any value to you but with content, marketing companies try to add value to the user’s life. Here, they provide content that is helpful to educate, entertain, or update the users. This education helps readers turn their customers eventually.

It builds relation: When users spend considerable time reading, listening, or watching content, it builds a relationship with you. Here, you not only manage to provide necessary information to users but also build a rapport with the user. When users consume a lot of content for free, they also try to give back for your efforts. In such a case, you can easily promote your product & services and try to build trust.

Cost-effective manner: Content marketing is not only effective to educate the users but is also a cost-effective marketing method. It costs very less in comparison to traditional marketing methods. Here, you simply need to create a quality piece of content that could rank on the search results page and get traffic for free. With paid marketing, you manage to get the customer on your site for one time, but content marketing helps build relation and trust with customer that helps in the long run.

Word of mouth promotion: When you create quality content it brings more share, this means more people talk about you. This way your quality content gets promoted in the most cost-effective manner and reaches more users. With this, your content may go viral and benefit you over a period of time.

It brings more traffic: Now when your content gets more shares, it brings more traffic for free. Here, you can create content on a regular basis to attract more and more traffic on your site in a cost-effective manner. Furthermore, with more traffic, you get better revenue and profit. Content marketing also gives you the freedom to connect with a highly targeted audience in the most efficient manner that is another benefit of content marketing.

 

Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

Creating an effective content marketing strategy is the next step you should follow. Here, first, you need to set your goals & mission and decide what you want to get from overall content marketing efforts. In fact, before start writing, you should know & research your target audience. It will help you select the right keywords and content tone for easy communication.

Once you know your goals to achieve you can start working on the content marketing process. Here, you can distribute work to your team and decide what type of content it would be. It could be a how-to guide, tutorial, editorial, checklist, news, or anything else as per your needs.

During the process, you also need to do keyword research using the best keyword research tools. Before publishing the content make sure you proof-read it and made necessary edits before it goes live.

 

Content Promotion Techniques

Once you have created the quality content next thing you need to do is to promote it. To do this, you can follow multiple channels. It may include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing (SMM)
• Email marketing
• Paid advertising campaigns

 

Search engine optimization: SEO brings you an opportunity to gain from the efforts in the long run. It is one of the most cost-effective methods that benefit you in the long run. Here, you can perform on-page and off-page optimization techniques to promote and optimize your content for users and search engines. Link building plays a crucial role in overall SEO efforts that not only brings you traffic but also helps you build authority for your domain.

 

Social media marketing: If you think of promoting content online, then you can’t miss utilizing the power of social media platforms. Here, you can share your content on various social media platforms to spread word about your content, product & services. To do this, you can share content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Flipboard, and other platforms. It not only gives you quick visibility, but it also helps build brand awareness significantly.

 

Email marketing: Email marketing is an effective tool for marketing for a long time. It has tried & tested method to spread the word about your business. With advanced email marketing techniques, you can get effective results for your email campaigns that bring more traffic and revenue.

 

Paid advertising campaigns: Next in the list is paid campaigns. Here, all major marketing platforms allow you to run paid campaigns that help you bring instant traffic on your site. To do this, you can run Google AdWords campaigns, campaigns on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and other channels.

 

 

TL;DR

Well, knowing the fact that content marketing plays a crucial role in promoting your products & services these days, it becomes important to do it right. It includes knowing the right content types for your business, implementing right content marketing strategies, knowing the right tools, avoiding content marketing mistakes, and more.

Here, we have covered the most important aspects of content marketing to help you understand its usage & benefits. If you have any suggestion or if you are a content marketer, then feel free to share your experience trying different content marketing strategies. It will surely help others too.

Don’t forget to reach us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Next Read: Beginner’s Guide to Start a Blog