A Brief Guide to Content Marketing 

Traditional marketing talks at people but content marketing talks with them. In the arena of digitalization, content is the king. For online marketers, content marketing is the best way to engage and market their business to potential customers. Content in online marketing is anything that communicates the right message to the audience. 

 

What is Content?

Anything! Every email, tweet, product description, blogging, and landing page – they are all content. Doing business online is vast and has great competition. To have a win-win situation, content marketing is the ultimate choice to go for. Content marketing brings you online traffic, online authority, and sales. 

However, content marketing is just not about words. By following this beginner’s guide to content marketing, you will have the in-depth knowledge needed to develop the right content marketing strategy. 

 

What is content marketing?

In simple terms, content marketing is marketing the business with relevant and engaging content. It sounds deceptively easy, but it is a lot more. The content can be in any form, like an article, guest posts, podcasts, blogs, and videos. Now, what about marketing? Marketing is telling your audiences about your business. What is the best part? With content marketing, people come to you and not you approaching them. Content marketing is bliss, as customers are now capable of disregarding the noise of the irrelevant marketing efforts. 

 

Tools of content marketing

While no content marketing tool can replace a solid strategy and a talented human with a keen eye on content, having the right tech stack can certainly get your job done better. This list of best content marketing tools will act as a brief guide to start. 

  • HubSpot
  • WordPress
  • Google Docs
  • Airstory
  • Grammarly
  • Yoast
  • BuzzSumo
  • Ahrefs
  • Vidyard
  • Airtable
  • HotJar
  • Google Optimize
  • Adobe Photoshop

 

Why content marketing? 

2020 is a great year for content marketing strategies with everything getting online. Find out how content marketing can bring colors to your business as well. 

  • Builds brand awareness
  • Help in building links
  • Search engine optimization
  • Educate and engage with your audience
  • Generate leads for your business
  • Focuses on online media rather than borrowing it
  • It is a great PR strategy
  • Enhances your social media strategy
  • Cost-effective

 

When should you use content marketing?

Content marketing is best to use for the marketing of online businesses. Your customers are media savvy. Instead of just selling them the products, you can provide the information without interrupting their space. If your goal is customer engagement, brand awareness, and lead generation, it is the right time to build your content. If you are consistent with content, you will gain customer loyalty. 

 

Who should use content marketing?

Content is everything. It is the key to having a successful marketing campaign. For a successful online business, you must incorporate content marketing into your marketing strategies. If you are having a registered online business or planning to start one, content marketing must be your priority! 

 

Content marketing techniques

  • Guest blogging
  • Gated content (white papers, articles, and videos)
  • Content repurposing
  • Content curation
  • Urgency
  • Geo marketing

 

How to do content marketing?

  • Set your mission and business goals. You need to be clear on the targets and expectations. 
  • Establish the key performance indicators
  • Know your audience well. Be aware of the audience and the potential customers who can be converted easily. 
  • Access your current business standard and position. Judge the position so that you can track your performance after content marketing.  
  • Figure out the most popular and defined content channels
  • Decide on the types of content you want to work on. There are various types like blogs, podcasts, videos, webinars, forum content, guest posts, and articles. 
  • Identify and allocate all the resources you can afford. Arrange the resources and distributed well so that you can make the best use. 
  • Create a content calendar to keep track and post consistently
  • Create your content
  • Distribute the content on your website and various social media platforms
  • Measure your results

 

Types of content marketing

  • Blog posts
  • Social media posts
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Emails
  • Newsletters
  • Podcasts
  • Recordings
  • E-books

 

Common Content marketing mistakes

  • Keyword stuffing
  • Thin content
  • Hidden text
  • Cloaked links

 

Content marketing trends

Content marketing is the trendiest strategy of marketing for the online business. It keeps changing. Being aware of the latest trends to keep your strategies updated is important. The latest trends include live video, podcasts, quizzes, polls, interactive content, and video. 

 

Wrapping up

Refer to this short guide and keep your focus on the quality of the content. That’s it! You can be well versed and acknowledged in content marketing by starting it under an expert’s guidance. Content marketing is here to stay and for a very long time. With the increase in online business, content marketing will grow. This inbound form of marketing is surely going to set records. It’s up to you how better you can reap the maximum out of the content marketing world.

About the Author Shamsher

Live Instructor-Led online digital marketing trainer, a consultant, and an affiliate marketer with over 8+ years of experience View Course Details if you want to grow your business online or want to learn digital marketing online from anywhere.

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