What is Content Marketing?

You may have heard the term ‘content marketing’ floating around lately, but how many of you know what it means, and how to apply this strategy to your business’ marketing plan?

First of all, to understand content marketing as a strategy, we need to define content marketing. All forms of advertising have content, of course. Types of marketing content include:

• Headlines
• Taglines or slogans
• Advertising copy (online or offline)
• Coupons
• Direct mail content
• Press releases
• Web content
• Blog posts
• Video scripts
• Presentation text
• Whitepapers
• Email content
• Social media posts

Traditional forms of marketing, such as print or broadcast advertising, or even online advertising, still have their place in your overall marketing plan. Your audience still reads the newspaper or magazine (even if in digital form), and gets news from print, websites, television, radio and more. But this style of marketing is more of a direct push strategy to drive people to make a purchase decision.

In contrast, a new mindset of content marketing as a strategy involves developing and using content as a way to differentiate your company from competitors, and uses more of an inbound rather than outbound approach to attract an audience. Some of the more common content marketing strategies include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO): Developing ideal content on a company website with the purpose of attracting customers via search engines. This is done through the use of a number of tactics, including the use of specific, commonly-searched keyword phrases, which companies can integrate into their existing website content.
• Blogging: Companies who use blogging as a content marketing strategy are also looking to boost their website’s SEO. By writing timely and industry-specific blog posts, companies can attract new users via search by becoming an authority on a topic. This also gives them sharable content on social media and other platforms.
• Social media: Another very popular content marketing strategy involves social media marketing. Companies create and post regular updates on social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram as they work to build a fan following. Social media marketing involves engaging with customers, sharing others’ content and can also provide an outlet for sharing blog posts and other marketing   information to customers, prospects and the media.

As you can see, a good content marketing strategy can help your business attract new customers via search and is also a great way to position your business as an expert. With an instant (and free) platform to share your content, it’s a marketing no-brainer to use content marketing to expand your business.