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The Basics of Content Marketing

Companies have been using content marketing for many years, be it a company newsletter, an advertorial or speaking at a conference. The internet has created new and easier ways for us to host and communicate our content. It is no longer purely the domain of large businesses, but something every business can do. It should be at the heart of all digital strategies.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is creating useful and informative content for your customers and potential customers in order to build loyalty, brand awareness and turn prospects into customers. This enables you to show your expertise and add value to your services.

Traditionally, content marketing has taken the form of a corporate or company blog, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Often the term blog is misleading and really what we mean is an online magazine. It could be a recipes area, a review section or your news section - whatever suits your business and objectives.

How content marketing works

There are several facets of content marketing that, broadly, can be broken into three parts:

  • content creation.
  • building an audience.
  • distribution.

Content Creation

Before you do anything decide on your objectives and strategy. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

  • Who are my customers and potential customers?
  • What information will appeal to them and draw them into my website?

This will start to give shape to the form and subject matter of your content. For some businesses this will be very easy. If you are an accountant, for example, you can write about tax, employment laws, best practice and even have a section answering all the hundreds of questions your clients ask you on a daily basis.

If your company sells gadgets and gifts then you may want to present a fun side. You can share amusing videos, suggest alternative uses for your gadgets and review your products. If you sell food related items, then write recipes and share cooking tips. Your content should reflect the tone of your business.

Decide on a schedule, how often you will write, and plan your topics. The most important part of content creation when you start out is discipline, so planning will help with this - you won’t be struggling for something to write in a particularly busy week. You can include quick posts such as sharing a video or images. It could even be a selection of your favourite content from other sites. Sticking to your schedule is important - it helps with reader retention since people know when to expect the latest content.

Once you start writing content continually analyse how many people are visiting your posts, where they are coming from and how long they are staying on your site. This will give you an idea of what is working. Continually review your strategy and don’t be afraid to change it - take an agile approach to your content, which will enable you to change direction if something isn’t working.

Building an audience

Work out where your audience is and what the most appropriate social networks and mediums are. Then create profiles and start interacting in those networks, sharing useful information, answering people’s questions, asking questions. Always ask yourself why should someone follow me? Is the information and content I’m sharing useful?

The information you share doesn’t necessarily have to be your own, in fact it’s better if it's created by other people. Reference the person whose article it is to let them know you are sharing it. For example, if they are on Twitter you can use their handle (their username) as a reference by writing via @*the person’s username* or by @*the person’s username*. This builds good will and means that people are more likely to share your content. This is called aggregating information. The aim here is to be the curator of information selecting

Distribution

There are two main ways people will find your content:

  • search.
  • shared via your network.

Search

Search is still one of the primary ways people will find your content. People will search for information online perhaps before they turn to their network for the answer. To refer to my earlier example of the accountant, people may have an urgent question about VAT and they’re typing it straight into Google. The accountant has written a comprehensive guide to VAT, which she ranks highly for due to the lack of competition for that exact question. The potential customer arrives at her site and his question is answered. He then reads more information and signs up for the newsletter to receive regular updates on changes to tax laws.

Search engines are still a very difficult space to drive traffic from when you start out, so you must ensure that the structure of your site and pages are optimised for search engines. See our resource for more details: The Basics of Search Engine Optimisation

Sharing content via your network

Content can be shared both by you and by other people, but first off you need to turn to your own network. Post on your social media channels and send a regular email to your contacts. If you’ve built your network well and regularly contribute by sharing other people’s content and answering/asking questions, then there is a higher chance of people passing on your content to their network. Give people options to share your posts using social media sharing buttons and including an email forwarding button on your newsletter.

Social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and StumbleUpon can be a useful way of getting content out to a different audience, but it does mean having a presence on these sites. StumbleUpon in particular can drive a lot of traffic, but it’s not necessarily useful traffic and you can expect a very high bounce rate.

Planning for different devices

Lastly, you need to consider how and where people will view your content. Increasingly people view content on mobiles and tablet devices, which makes it extremely important that your content is optimised for these devices.

There are now many different screen resolutions on a whole host of devices (see our resource: Responsive design device resolution reference) which means that a mobile version of your site is no longer the ideal way to optimise for mobile. Not only are there SEO implications of having your site’s content replicated on a sub domain, but it doesn’t cover the huge number of tablet devices. The best way to present your content is using responsive design, which means that your site will automatically resize depending on the screen size of the device it is being viewed on. See our resource for more details: An Introduction to Responsive Design

Other Resources