The Basics of Content Marketing

With Google stressing more and more on the quality of the content, all businesses had better brush up on their content marketing strategies. Let us go back to the basics of content marketing to get a better hang of it.

Content Marketing is creating and sharing of content in order to increase number of customers. This can be in various forms- news articles, press releases, product information, videos, images, e-books, infographics, FAQs and more.

How Content Marketing is different from traditional marketing is it is directed purely on dispensing information and does not focus merely on selling. Keep churning out valuable and readable content consistently and reach out to customers. But these days many businesses are straying from this basic purpose of content marketing. Their sole focus is to sell and acquire customers; the purpose of giving out information and educating has been forgotten somewhere down the line. They are resorting to hard core selling. That is where Google felt the need to make them toe the line.

The basic intention of Content Marketing had to be revived. Google came up with various algorithms to keep a check on the malpractices growing rampantly. It all finally boiled down to content reigning supreme. The sites with relevant and informative content scored highly over other sites; the ones with dubious and low quality content were penalized. At times, some sites have lot of information but none of this is relevant or of any value to the customer. That also goes against the principle of content marketing.

Marketing is near to impossible without excellent content. Whatever marketing strategy you resort to, content marketing has to form a major part of it. Content is integral to reach out to customers. Without content, how can you present your product or services to your prospective customers? Without impressive content how will your website appeal to your target audience? For PPC to click or to get increased inbound traffic, content is the key.

With social media marketing gaining a foothold, the importance of content has increased manifold. You can use the social media to drive the focus on your content rather than on your business. Eventually you can draw the customers to your business too.

Get over the notion that content marketing is equivalent to advertorials. Do not make this mistake. Selling will happen but your content should not be directed solely towards that purpose. Use your content to engage your audience and inform them about your product and business. Do not resort to hard selling; that may often backfire. Just keep in mind the basic rule of content marketing- that to engage your customers and educate them- not to palm off your product to them. That will happen consequently of course but the content you create should not reflect that.

Content Marketing is an ongoing process. You need to upgrade and update your content on a regular basis. Do not let your content become stagnant. There is always scope for improvement.

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