Understanding the definition of content marketing is the first step in developing a content marketing strategy that will work best for your business. Every digital marketing strategy requires good content marketing. Content marketing is focused on the customer and their needs rather than the business’s needs to sell goods or services. In this article, you will learn the definition of content marketing and how you can apply it to your own content marketing strategy, as well as content marketing solutions that can help you create and organize your content.
Table of Contents
Definition of Content Marketing
In the simplest of terms, the definition of content marketing is creating and distributing content online to generate interest in a brand or product rather than explicitly promoting them. You want to generate as much content as you can while maintaining the quality of your content. Content marketing materials come in many forms, including articles, videos, newsletters, social media posts, and other content demonstrating a company’s expertise. The best content marketing strategies involve an array of different mediums and consistent content.
How Content Marketing Differs From Traditional Marketing
The biggest difference between content marketing and traditional marketing is the purpose. The content produced through content marketing is meant to be helpful to prospective customers rather than just trying to sell them something. They can apply the information in the content to solve a problem they have. Content marketing adds value to your customers. While traditional promotion informs customers of what you sell or the services you offer, content marketing allows you to form a relationship with your customer. Through content marketing, you can make old and new customers feel like you have an interest in their success rather than just trying to sell them something. If you can nurture this kind of relationship with your customers, you can create customers who will be loyal to your brand.
Getting Started With Your Content Marketing Strategy
Now that you know what the definition of content marketing is, you need to understand how to apply it to create your content marketing strategy. Before you can begin to generate your own content, there are five things that you will need to consider related to the definition of content marketing. Below are the five things you need to consider though they are not in any specific order. Each decision you make regarding one of these ideas will inform the decisions you make regarding the rest of them.
Identify Your Audience
Who will be or who do you want to consume your content? This decision will inform every other decision you make in the content creation process. Everything you create needs to also keep your audience in mind. They need to understand, need, and enjoy your content. The definition of content marketing emphasizes the need for generating interest in your brand. If it is not shaped for your desired audience’s needs, they will have no interest in your content and you will miss out on a potential customer.
Identify Your Goals
After you create and distribute your content, as stated in the definition of content marketing, what do you want to achieve from it? A useful method of goal setting is the SMART method. Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Keep in mind that your goals should be informed by your audience and what you want to get from them. Perhaps you want to generate a greater amount of interest in your brand. This is a key part of the definition of content marketing, after all. To make this a SMART goal, you could rephrase it as “I want to increase the number of blog post viewers by 10% by the end of the year.” Google Analytics is a great tool to measure how close you are to meeting your goals.
Set or Be Aware of Deadlines
An effective content marketing strategy requires content to be posted consistently. You want potential and current customers to keep coming back to your content. Constant interaction creates relationships, and relationships create sales.
As such, you will want to keep a consistent schedule that generates as much quality content as possible. In some cases, the deadlines might already be set for you. In this case, you need to keep track of these dates. Writing these dates down in a planner or calendar could be an easy way to stay on track. If you are setting your own deadlines, the same strategy could work. The only difference is that you are making up your own schedule.
Meeting deadlines can be difficult when they are self-imposed. Try your hardest not to procrastinate or miss your self-imposed deadlines. You will thank yourself later when you have a slew of content ready to be posted and enjoyed by your customers.
Brainstorm Ideas
If you are going to generate the quality content referred to in the definition of content marketing, you are going to need a lot of ideas. Write down as many ideas as you can; do not worry about the quality at this point. Once you have this list, choose the best ones and develop them further.
Choose a Medium
Once you have an idea, you will need to choose what medium will best convey your idea. Consider your audience and what medium will best meet their needs. You will want to use a variety of mediums.
Articles and Blog Posts
An article or blog post is a great way to generate awareness for your brand. You can take advantage of Google’s algorithm and use search engine optimization techniques to get your article to the top of Google’s search results.
Infographics
Infographics are perfect for simplifying complex information. They can give your viewers a snippet of easily digestible information from which they can read about further in other content. This medium is a great way to generate interest and connect consumers with more of your content.
Video
The video medium allows you to show rather than tell. For example, a demonstration or tutorial is much easier to follow when you can see the steps. This is an advantage that mediums like blog posts do not share.
Interactive Quizzes
Interactivity equals a higher level of engagement. Quizzes are a perfect way to introduce interactivity and personalization into your content marketing strategy. For example, a customer can take your quiz and then receive a personalized solution to their problem. Interactive quizzes offer an easy way to provide customers with a message customized to their needs and build customer-brand relationships.
Choose a platform
Choosing a platform is the distribution aspect of the content marketing definition. The medium you choose will impact which platform you post your content on. You can post a long video to YouTube or a business website. Or, you could post a short video or infographic to Instagram or Facebook. An article or blog post would likely be posted to your business’s website.
The platform you want to post on could also impact the type of content you make. Perhaps you want more engagement on your Twitter account. Creating more content on Twitter would be the logical way to go. Your audience and goals will inform what order you need to consider these items.
Content Marketing Solutions
Producing the high-quality content described in the definition of content marketing can be difficult and time-consuming if you are doing it all on your own. By using content marketing solutions like the ones described below, you can make your job easier.
Hubspot
Hubspot is a content marketing solution with search engine optimization tools and guides for creating blogs, emails, social media, and landing pages. It also has guides on how to use analytic tools and marketing automation. Hubspot can be used to create an automated marketing funnel.
WordPress
WordPress is an open-source content marketing solution that allows you to create websites. It is highly customizable and offers a wide variety of templates to make content creation easy. It comes with search engine optimization tools, Google Analytics integration, and other tools to help you with your content marketing strategy.
Cronycle
Cronycle is a content marketing solution that is great for collaborating. It is easy to get content out through this platform. It will also save you time on curating content. Cronycle uses artificial intelligence and experts to sort through and find the best content for your needs. This platform can integrate with other platforms like Microsoft teams, Twitter, WordPress, and many others.
Curata
Curata is a content marketing solution designed to help you curate content to share with your customers. This platform learns what you like, so the more you use it, the more helpful it becomes. Curata is also helpful for content distribution. It integrates with e-mail and social media to make distribution easier.
Creating and Distributing Your Content
Now that you know the definition of content marketing, what you need to consider when designing your content marketing strategy, and some content marketing solutions, creating a content marketing plan for your business should be less intimidating. It starts by learning the definition of content marketing and building on it until you create a strategy suited for the needs of your business.
FAQ:
- What is content marketing?
- How do I set a content marketing goal?
- How do I generate content marketing ideas?
- Why should I use content marketing solutions?
- How much content do I need for an effective content marketing campaign?
Contact Us Today!