So guys, what is content marketing? You know, several definitions out there but you will see that they all hinge on similar themes mainly about producing value. It’s not about selling, it’s producing value to your audience, educating your audience and then if they trust you, if they see you as an authority in your service or your product or industry or segment, then they’re going to buy from you basically, or if they’re not going to buy from you, at least they’re going to talk about you and their friends, the friends of their friends will know about your business and that brings in traffic and eventually, ultimately sales.
Let’s look at some of the more common definitions of content marketing and let’s get it from the experts. First one is Wikipedia. So according to Wikipedia, content marketing is any marketing that involves a creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. So this information can be presented in a variety of formats including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, and etc.
So that’s Wikipedia’s take. You’ll see that they highlighted value because you know, in order to acquire and retain customers, definitely you need to be projecting a lot of value in your service or product.
So next one is from the Content Marketing Institute. They’re saying that content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it.
So same as with Wikipedia, it’s all about value. So we talk about attracting and retaining customers and then creating and curating relevant and valuable content, alright. And then we continue with CMI as well, still. So basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling, so just educating them. It is non-interruption marketing. So that’s a pull marketing as oppose to push marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.
Look, if your product or service is excellent, right? And you turn your audience into intelligent buyers, then naturally they will go for the excellent alternative or the excellent product or service which is yours, right? Okay, so next definition.
This one is from Copyblogger. Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you. So there you go, the same thing.
Let’s move on to some samples of online content used for marketing. Each type of content has its value, has its perks, and has its way of communicating to your customers. So it’s important to know what these types of content are and then later on when you’re researching, you’ll know whether a certain topic works best visually so therefore creating a visual infographics or visual resources, or if it’s better posted as a blog post, stuff like that. So yeah, another good aspect of research.
Types Of Content Marketing
- Blog posts are just something that you post on your blog. When you have a website that’s really a must that you have a blog on there as well or a new site, it’s the same, basically the same thing but yeah. It depends on your business whether you’d like to be posting news or posting blogs, alright.
- Infographics are visual, can be visual resources, visual aids, also like a visualized blog posts and stuff like that and they can also support a lot of other content.
- Guest posts/contributor posts are blog posts only they are posted on external (other peoples’) websites. And you can also of course, call for contributions onto your own blog, so that’s also an option.
- Videos can be great for lead generation. You know about YouTube, you know about Vimeo and Vine and just videos onto Facebook, those are going viral day in and day out. So that’s a good sample of online content that you can produce.
- Social media posts are also considered online content because you’d plan it out really. It’s no longer, you know, five years ago it was about ranting on social media, it depends on the social media you’re in. But at this point, crafting solid and engaging social media content that you post on the platforms themselves, that has really some good effects on to your overall content marketing.
- E-books: You sign up for a newsletter and you get a bonus e-book. You should be reading those because especially the big ones who are producing lots of e-books for their customers, I mean you can provide a lot of value in e-books. These are resource materials with a lot of information, two pagers or even 200 pagers.
- You also have white papers or reports. So again, with the sole purpose of educating and not selling. So you’re educating your readers about not only your products and services but the industry, educating them about their needs.
- Free or paid courses which you can run using videos or using email marketing, that’s another type of content. Good thing about this is if they sign up, you know, it’s not going to be a one day course. So when you email them, you’re basically connecting with your customers or your subscribers like once a week if it’s a seven-part course via email marketing, then that’s seven weeks of trying to get into the head of your customers but by educating and not merely by selling.
- Guides and resources. A good sample would be e-books but you know, just e-books like two-page e-books with just a list of for example, for interior design like what are the types of kitchens that you can have designed in your home and what works best for which type of home and stuff like that. So these will educate and engage your users to also share this piece of content of yours.
So quick review, blog posts, infographics, contributor posts, videos, social media posts, e-books, white papers, reports, free or paid courses, guides and resources. These are not the only ones, there like a hundred or even maybe a thousand types of content that you can actually produce online. And here’s a challenge for you, invent one because before there were no e-books and someone invented it and it’s just doing wonders in marketing at this point, so there you go.
So that concludes this video at least, a quick take on content marketing. The next thing we’re going to do is talk about why we need tools and why you need to research in the first place. Alright, next.
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