What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing can go by a lot of different names such as private media, branded content, customer media and so on, but they are all essentially content marketing. This is probably one of the best ways to make sure your marketing is being truly effective.
One definition of content marketing is: a technique of making and distributing valuable and relevant content to bring in a much defined target audience with the over all objective being the creation of sales. Basically this is a way to reaching out to your customers and potential customers in a way specifically designed to attract them to you and keep them coming back.
Content marketing is all done without overtly trying to sell a product; it is intended to educate and inform the customers. With typical marketing, the goal is to make a sale and the product or service is the main point of the approach. Content marketing is very different from this approach and has proven to be very effective.
The idea around content marketing is to deliver consistent and useful information to the customer. In return, they will reward the company with their business and, over time, their loyalty to the brand. This form of marketing creates a bond between the customer and the company. This bond is a very hard one to break and results in ongoing business over time and a loyal customer.
Traditional marketing is becoming less and less useful as customers are able to skip commercials or change the channel on the TV. Ads in papers and billboards are not interactive and provide no real help to the customer. Pop-ups on the Internet are another way advertisers try to market their products but this can be ineffective as more and more people use their pop-up blocking tools on their browsers to avoid these invasive marketing tactics.
Content marketing breaks the mold completely and as odd as it may seem, the customer is the one who searches out the information they need. Not only do they remember where they found what they needed, they remember who provided the useful information as well -and this is where the marketing comes in.
Potential customers will buy from a company they trust and feel has the same interests as they do. This is why providing helpful advice and information is so very important to this marketing strategy. Most of the time, the people reading information on a web page don’t realize they are being marketed to as they read the content.
Recent studies have shown 70-80% of people who were surveyed, felt more comfortable buying something from a company they trust. Content marketing builds trust, because the customer begins to look forward to your next content installment and may make decisions based on the information given.
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5 Tips for Choosing Effective Marketing Content
Content marketing is the best way to get information to your clients or customers. This is also the perfect way to gain the trust of your customers and increase your sales. The problem is choosing the most effective type of content and presenting it in an attention getting manner. Here are some tips on choosing the most effective content for your content marketing.
1. Point out the competition’s mistakes. People, in general, want to avoid painful experiences as much as possible. Pointing out all the ways your competitors fail to make life easier for your potential customers works to your advantage. Top ten lists on this kind of thing such as “10 most common mistakes” or “10 things you don’t want to do” are especially effective in driving people to you, rather than your competitor. I’m not saying you should specify or point fingers at specific competitors here. That’s not professional. Instead, use general statements and point out what makes your company better than others.
2. Give out industry “secrets.” They are not really secrets but if you let people think they are then their trust in you grows. Create content with bulleted lists showing how to do things faster and easier or how to make something work better. People love lists about things because lists are easy to filter through and pick out those points that pertain to them specifically. They also help people retain the information.
3. Organize it for them. One of the biggest hurdles for some people is the organization of certain things. Do the work for them by giving them plans and ways to organize things to make their life simpler. If you can make something straightforward and easy for someone, they will appreciate it and repay you with their business.
4. Answer common questions. When you're discussing a common problem or situation, people tend to have the same questions. By providing the answers before someone even asks the questions, you make them feel more comfortable. It gives them the impression your company truly cares about them and their needs because you’ve taken the time to learn what they want or need.
5. Latest trends reports. This is a way to help your clients and customers keep up to date with the latest information from your company. This type of content lists the newest information or technologies and explains them in an easy to understand fashion.
Effective content marketing is all about continually giving the client or customer whatever information they deem useful. It demonstrates to prospects your company is paying attention to the needs of their clients and responding in an resourceful and expeditious manner. If the frequency and/or quality of information begins to slow down, your client base will begin to find another source of information, taking their sales dollars with them.
Making use of a freelance writing service is a good way to fulfill the needs of consistent and effective content writing. By using writers to help create your content, you can easily continue to provide fresh, new content. Once you have the articles, reports and other documents, offer them to your customers freely through email or a blog. Not only will your customers thank you in replies and comments but, more importantly, with their continued loyalty.
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5 Ways to Distribute Your Content for Free
Once you have your content ready for people to read and use, you need to make sure they are able to find it. There are a number of ways to get this accomplished for a price but there are also ways to get your content distributed free. Here are five ways to distribute your content that won’t cost you anything at all.
1. Social Networking - Social networking is the hottest promotional tool available online at this time. There are a lot of sites such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Digg and others who have opened up a world of marketing for online businesses. Through these tools you can establish trust, expertise and gain a sold following of people who want to know what you think and can do for them.
2. Article Directories – These sites are comprised of article listings written by just about anyone and on any subject. The articles are placed specifically for use on these types of sites. They rank well on search engines because they rely heavily on SEO and also provide links back to your website. This is another great and free way to show your expertise and knowledge in your chosen field thus bringing more people to you and your site.
3. Blogging - Blogging is probably one of the most useful ways to bring someone to your information and website, specifically, guest blogging on other websites. Doing this can increase your exposure to an increasing number of people as you are able to link your information in your blog posts. The owner of the blog can also promote your site by placing links to your site around their blog. You can also offer to swap posts with other blogs and increase your traffic by bringing their followers to your site.
4. Give it Away on Your Website - One of the easiest ways to distribute your content is to offer it as a free bonus on your website. Everyone loves getting something for nothing, so package your content as a PDF or even an audio download and let your site visitors download it for nothing. Don't even ask for an email address in exchange. Instead, just give it as a gift and you'll generate good will.
5. Using Local Listing Services - This tactic is especially useful if you have an offline business with an online presence. Google and other search engines have local area listings, so when someone does a local search they will find your website. This increases your chances of being closer to the top of the first page in search engine results. This is a great way to increase your online visibility with absolutely no cost to you. When local customers find your website, they will be even more likely to look to you for their information needs, which will in turn lead to more sales.
The biggest tip is to never stop the process of using new content to promote your business. There are always new ways to get your name out there, but providing free content that solves a problem for your customer will never go out of style.
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Content Marketing: Using SEO for Better Exposure
Once you have decided to populate your website with great information through content marketing, you need to make sure people are able to find the information. The best way to do this is through Search Engine Optimization. Also known as SEO, this is a way to properly optimize your website for search engines which can bring more hits to your website via your content.
SEO is mainly accomplished using keywords throughout your articles and website. Keywords are specific words picked up by search engines when people are looking for a certain term and the more you use them, the more likely you will be placed near the top of search engine results. There are ways to see how effective your keywords are through specific tools available online.
The first of these is a Google keyword analysis. You can run this program on any site you have. This tool will scan you website’s content and list all of the specific keywords contained on the site. It will appear with a rating showing how competitive the particular search is at the current time. This tool is designed to help you discover what keywords on your site are the most commonly searched to find the type of services you offer.
Another tool is called Wordtracker and it does a little more in depth searching than the Google tool; however, it’s not free. This software works through inputting either your entire site or the individual keywords you want to use. It will then scour the net and deliver the most commonly used variations of your keywords so you know what words to add to your site to increase traffic.
Using keywords based on your website's content is the key to having SEO be truly effective in bringing more people to you. Using keywords just because they are popular, but are not related to your content won't bring you any traffic interested in your services or products. You can also add keywords in several ways, other than simply adding them to your content. One of the best uses of keywords is within the titles and subtitles of your pages, as well as the meta-tags of your site.
One trick is called keyword bubbles. They are a collection of your keywords, all of them, in one spot. These bubbles can be placed on every page of your content. This opens up the site to more potential search hits, which will list your site higher up on the search results pages. While bubble keywords are visually appealing and will help with your search engine rankings, the most effective way to use keywords is by including them in relevant content on your page. Bubbles of keywords that don't relate to useful content won't keep you in the higher search engine rankings for long.
SEO is important for bringing people to your content because, without traffic, your content does you no good at all. It may take a little time and effort to get the keywords in place, but once you do, the traffic to your content will increase.
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Content Marketing: How to Generate Leads
Content Marketing is a type of marketing used to increase sales by creating and delivering high-quality information to potential customers as well as current ones. Content marketing goes hand in hand with another type of marketing called network marketing (or social networking) because more people can be reached by using both together.
With the use of network marketing, you are able to reach out to more people and create more leads. This can also generate more sales over time. By combining the two types of marketing, you are able to reach more people with your valuable and informative content. This will create more interest in your products or services thus increasing sales.
You can generate ongoing leads using both content and network marketing. You can create your content in almost any form imaginable, using articles, videos, audio, e-books and teleseminars. All of these forms of content can be spread across a massive social networking base using websites such as MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Here are some important things to remember when beginning this form of marketing:
Set yourself up as an expert in your industry. When people feel more comfortable coming to you for information they are more likely to listen to your suggestions. They will see you as someone who is giving them loads of useful information and content they can use to solve problems, save time and make money. Over time, they will begin to follow you and want to know more about you and your business, which will lead into sales down the line.
Your prospects or customer base will begin to share what you have taught them. This is called viral marketing. The basic premise involves people becoming so impressed with the information you have shared with them, they then share it with other people. This process goes on repeatedly. In fact, through the Internet, it can go on for years. This is, without a doubt, the best part of content marketing since the information is being shared with no further interaction from you.
It is very important the content you are sharing is valuable and informative. If you are providing people with useless information, no positioning in the world will matter because they won’t feel as if they are being helped in any way.
Generating leads with content marketing is not hard to do. The process just takes a little practice to find the right places to place your content for your target market and the right type of information to share. Once you have some ideas and information, get involved on social networking sites. Join like-minded groups and start contributing tips and tidbits to the group. Don’t go in for the immediate sale or use spam as a selling tactic or this will immediately turn people off.
Start slowly and offer short nuggets of highly informative content and then offer a link to read more. Once people go to your collection of articles, video or audio collections you can really let loose and bring them to you and your products.
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