Content Marketing
How to Build an Audience that Builds Your Business
Content marketing has been pushed for as long as I’ve been online…and that’s been since the 90s. Yeah, I’m old, but it is the one method that has virtually remain unchanged. That is, if you ignore the spammy ways a lot of companies use content marketing to artificially drive up their page view counts.
Content Marketing boils down to writing, creating, and sharing content to attract viewers. The next step with content marketing is to convince that viewer that there is more to be discovered. This would be to get them to the next step in the sales funnel, which could be submitting their email address, watching a short video about the product or service, or flat out buy the product or service.
Content marketing is about increasing the trust level viewers have with you. You can’t just ask for the sale right away, it is like walking into a bar and asking the first person you see to come home with you. Allow the viewer time to get to know you, build trust, and if your solution to their problem is a match, they will buy.
Just don’t make the viewer click 85 times to read three paragraphs of text to increase your pages views. That’s how you get stabbed.
If you’re interested in marketing your business online (and who isn’t at this point), you can’t escape hearing about content marketing. It’s everywhere you look, or listen.
You hear that people don’t want advertising when making purchasing decisions, they want valuable information.
You hear that it’s content that spreads via social networks, generating powerful word-of-mouth exposure for savvy content marketers.
You hear that it’s content that people desire and seek out, and it’s great content that Google wants to rank well in the search results so those people can find your business.
You hear that content is the best way to achieve what advertising is supposed to achieve, but doesn’t do so well online — to get people to know, like, and trust your brand.
You hear all of that, and yet, perhaps you’re thinking …
What does content marketing actually mean for your business?