A Beginners Guide to Content Marketing

Content Marketing falls into various categories such as posting videos, blogs, ebooks or infographics; essentially it is focusing on the creation and sharing of valuable information intended for your target audience in order to stimulate interest in your service and/or product.  Be very careful to understand that content marketing is not intended to promote a brand so blatantly but instead to attract an audience in the hope they are interested in your services.
If you are new to Content Marketing don’t worry you have to come to the right place, I will be going through the very basics of what content marketing is and hopefully by the end of this short article you will be well on the way to a better understanding allowing you create your own content.

1. What exactly is content marketing?
   

   You need to understand in today’s market whether you are selling a product or service people are always going to research way before even thinking about buying what you are offering.
   Think of Content Marketing as great way to advertise your brand and create awareness with the best part – it’s free!
   Creating and sharing informative content surrounding what you are offering as business not only shows your knowledge on the information but also shows you are being helpful and supportive in this particular area of interest regardless of the outcome.  This in turn will make your audience want to purchase from you, since like them, you share an interest with them.
   Currently the most popular type of Content Marketing is blogging, however it is by no means limited to just this.  Well informed infographics are also quite a popular tool along with videos which have become increasingly successful since 2017.
   Whichever style you choose to adopt your main focus should be to make it informative and attention grabbing.  You want to be memorable and stand out from the crowd so that you are the reason why people will buy your product or service or more importantly, when they are ready to purchase your name is what comes to their mind.

2. Why do I need content marketing for SEO?
   

   If you have a basic understanding of SEO you will know that Content Marketing and SEO go hand in hand.  It may even be fair to say that content marketing makes up a huge part of 70%+ of SEO strategies. If you dont have a basic understanding then be sure to read Getting Started With Search Engine Optimisation to get to grips with how content marketing ties in.
   Providing you perform your Content Marketing correctly i.e. White Hat practices – then it can only be beneficial for you going forward and more-so as a long term investment in your brand.
   Ensuring you have keyword specific content will generate your website into search related queries on Google.  The more content you publish, the higher your website will be ranked on Google which will in turn increase website traffic and inevitably increase sales.

3. How do you set up a content marketing strategy?
   

   What approach you take honestly boils down to whether you are a B2B or B2C company, however Blog content works extremely well for both in majority of cases.
   Something many people forget to think about is cornerstone content when setting up their marketing strategy, its all well having hundreds of blogs but if a handful of these are not valuable and the foundation of your content then it can be worthless.  To start you need to think about your business and what it is that you want people to know about your company then transform this into a handful of articles which are informative and easily accessible.
   Once you have your cornerstone articles/pages, continue to create related articles every other day until you build your content and target demographic rapport.

So get writing!
Or if you want the experts to take your content to the next level and design your strategy then head on over to our content marketing packages or get in touch to speak to an account manager today.