Have you ever heard of the expression "Content Is King"? This is probably one of the two most often-quoted sayings in internet marketing circles (the other one is "The Money Is In The List!"). Do you know where it comes from?
In 1996, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, began an essay entitled "Content Is King" with the following statement…
"Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet …"
(Source: "Content Is King," an essay By Bill Gates, WayBack Machine - http://web.archive.org/web/20010126005200/http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/columns/1996essay/essay960103.asp)
Almost a decade and a half after Bill Gates wrote that "Content is King", Seth Godin, a very well-known and highly respected internet marketing pioneer, entrepreneur and the author of many best-selling books about marketing in the digital age, declared that…
"Content Marketing is all the marketing that's left."
(Source: ContentMarketingInstitute.com)
So … about a decade and a half after the "Digital Age" began, content became "king," and then a decade and a half later it became the only effective form of marketing left.
Here are some other interesting facts about content marketing:
- Consumers trust content not ads
- Consumers actively seek product information and reviews first
- Consumers needs to see marketing messages multiple times
- Consumer purchases are influenced by content
For stats and figures relating to the above, just visit the information source below:
(Source: http://heidicohen.com/infographic-how-to-make-the-case-for-content-marketing/)
As we discussed in our last section, the essence of "content marketing" is creating valuable and relevant content that teaches your customers something that benefits them and gives them the resources to believe in you and to want to do business with you.
All websites need content. No matter what business you are in, if you plan to build a successful business online, then your website needs an effective content strategy for publishing valuable and relevant content to your target audience, and this strategy needs to be implemented on a regular basis.
Preferably every week if possible.
If you can't publish new content on a weekly basis, then aim to get something posted on your site or blog at least every 2-3 weeks.
Now ... this content cannot just be a description or a commercial for your services, and you can't just post content once and then expect to succeed online.
Your content marketing strategy has to involve publishing content regularly and it has to benefit your readers, engage with your visitors and subscribers, and teach your customers something new, in order to ultimately reward your efforts with great results (e.g. a continuous pipeline of new visitors, prospects, leads, subscribers, sales, customers, clients, etc.).
So ... if you completed the exercise in our last section and you are clear about all the ways you can provide value to customers, the next step is to begin exploring the types of content you can start creating to get this information out there.
CONTENT MARKETING - TYPES OF CONTENT
Take a look at the list of content types below:
- Blog Posts
- Guest blog posts
- Memes, cartoons, comics and animated videos
- EBooks
- Infographics
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Testimonials & Case Studies
- User Generated Content
All of the above formats can help you market your business using content.
Let's take a look at some of these in more detail ...
*** Blog Posts ***
Blogging has become the most popular and flexible way for businesses to communicate with their customers and potential customers. A blog gives your business a "voice" and lets you share all kinds of content, including text, images, videos and more.
Blogging is probably the most cost-effective, accessible and immediate way to start implementing your content marketing strategy. If you don't have a blog set up for your business, then get one.
The only thing to remember about blog posts is that you have to post consistently to keep people coming back to read your blog posts. As stated earlier, you don't have to post everyday but you do have to post regularly.
If you are going to blog about your business, then use WordPress. WordPress not only lets you easily add, edit and manage all types of content like text, images, videos, audios, downloadable files and more, but there is something else you should know about WordPress that not too many people know about:
An expertly-configured WordPress site lets you instantly announce, publicize and distribute your content automatically to search engines, social media sites, RSS feed directories, bookmarking sites and other types of traffic-generating web properties as soon as you publish new content.
Isn't that great?
As soon as you hit the publish button, your content can be immediately distributed to lots of different places all over the internet, all automatically and without you having to lift a finger. All you need to do is to get your site expertly-configured one time.
We have blogged extensively about WordPress on our own blog, and we'll be publishing a lot more content, tips and tricks about using WordPress, because it is simply the best platform for blogging out there.
To start marketing your business with blogging successfully, all you need is a domain name, web hosting, a WordPress site, and just stay subscribed to this training series. Once we get the basics out of the way, we will be sharing with you lots of great ways to market content about your business using WordPress and different blogging strategies.
In the next section, we'll look at some of the other content types. In the meantime, if you have any questions or need any help about domain names, webhosting or how to get WordPress expertly configured, just get in touch. We're always happy to help.
IN SUMMARY
"Content Is King" and "Content Marketing Is The Only Marketing Left".
ACTION STEP
Review the list of content types provided in this section and make a note of the types of content that your audience needs in order to do more business with you. Once you have made this list, go through the list and mark the content types that you would feel comfortable creating yourself, and those that you would need to get outsourced. In a later section we'll give you tips and resources that will help you research the cost of outsourcing these content types.