Content Marketing: Is There More Than Just A Blog?
If you own a business or work in or around the marketing industry chances are you have probably heard the term “Content Marketing”. What you probably haven’t heard, however, is what Content Marketing actually means. To most they think of it as blogging, having a blog on your website and providing content there to relay to your customers that you are an expert in your field and why they should be doing business with you. But does it stop there? Is that all Content Marketing is … blogging? Far from it. Below I will introduce you to some of the primary avenues of Content Marketing:
Business Blog – What? … Yes I know I just said there is more to Content Marketing that keeping up with a business blog, however I just wanted to reiterate it since it is so essential to Content Marketing. Just think of it this way, if you write a blog post and then share it on Social Media … where does the link go? That’s right, your website! And what are we all looking to get? More visitors to our site, by making information rich and relevant blog posts you intrigue people to visit your site and see how you can help them.
EBooks & Whitepapers – While this route may require a little more time and research than a weekly (or even better, daily) blog post it is a great tool to generate leads. If any of us have perused the internet or Pinterest looking for information on something, we have come across an offer for a downloadable White Paper or EBook. 9 times out of 10 the site is asking for our contact information (or at lease email address) in order to download the information. Right there the person / company that providing the free information (which is relevant to their business) that you want is gaining leads. Not only are they gaining leads they are gaining quality leads. Think about it, you just downloaded something you are interested in, chances are you would be interested in what that company has to offer you as well.
Webinars – Now this one may be shocker since you don’t necessarily “write” webinars but who said content was just writing? Content is information. More and more we see free webinars on how to boost sales, use Facebook for business, or write killer blog posts. In essence this is doing the exact same thing as the free whitepaper but in a more interactive and visual way.
Inforgraphics – Who doesn’t love a good infographic? I don’t care what it’s about I always stop and take a look at the always fascinating facts on one of those colorful images. This is a great tool when you have lots of mind boggling statistics you want to share (and don’t dare just list them out … BORING). Again, if I haven’t relayed this enough, statistics that are relevant to your business. The idea is to get people interested and want to learn more … more about how you can help them.
Email Marketing – While emails have become quite saturated and for the most part people are not reading promotional emails as much as they used to, they ARE reading information emails. Subject lines are KEY in this situation and to make sure that you are providing good, quality, informative content in your emails is essential. No one wants to feel duped into opening an email just to find out it’s a sales pitch. The idea is to present the information in a way where you pin point a problem, agitate it a little, and then provide a solution that, coincidentally, you can help them with.
There you have just a few more ways to integrate Content Marketing into your overall marketing plan that is more than just a couple of blog posts. If you don’t have the time or the resources to implement any of these things feel free to give us a call at SDE-Tech and we’d be happy to help you with any or all aspects discussed here.