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Content Marketing

What Is Content Marketing?

Posted in Content Marketing

Content marketing is probably one of the newer terms you’ll hear in digital marketing circles. But content marketing is not a new thing. I fact, the earliest recognised examples of content marketing is over a hundred years old! So, what exactly are we talking about when we talk about content marketing? Want to get straight into it? Checkout these content marketing ideas.

How content marketing came to be.

To understand what content marketing is, it helps to first understand what it’s intended to achieve. For that, let’s take a quick dive into not so distant internet past. When social media first became a thing, marketers quickly realised the unique opportunity it presented for reaching audiences. Suddenly, everyone was on Facebook. So instead of relying on people typing in your website address, or finding your website on search, social media could be used to go to them. What’s more, overtime, platforms like FB began making it possible to define and segment audiences based on things like age, gender, location and interests. For marketers, this was – and is – gold.

Naturally, many marketers would approach social media in the same way they approached traditional advertising. That is, it was all about selling. The trouble was, they were selling in an essentially social space. Imagine turning up at a friend’s barbecue and spending the afternoon “selling” your business. It would wear thin pretty quickly. The same thing happened with social media marketing. Marketers realised that to be truly effective in this space, they had to change their approach. Discover the elements your inbound marketing strategy should include.

Content marketing metrics. Measuring what works.

At the same time, marketers began to realise that the metrics they were using with traditional advertising, didn’t translate so well to social media marketing. Now, it wasn’t simply about how many people saw your ad and how many people bought your product or service. Now, things like engagement became relevant metrics to measure your effectiveness. This was partly driven by platforms like Facebook using algorithms that meant the content with a higher engagement rate would be shown to more people.

As a result of all these factors, the social media marketing focus swung more toward sharing engaging content. Or relevant content which was educational for their audience, or simply entertaining for their audience. Think of a surf wear brand focusing on sharing surf videos instead of selling board shorts. Or a camera brand sharing photography tips rather than selling cameras. This approach has a range of great benefits. It will generally improve engagement – meaning people view, read, like, comment and click more. This in turn is more likely to result in your content being shown to more people.

Content marketing benefits.

But there is a deeper, more enduring benefit that can be difficult to quantify. This type of user-centric, engagement-focused marketing lets businesses and brands create more meaningful relationships with their customers. Depending on the focus of your brand and your digital marketing campaign, it can also help you build trust, credibility and authority. These are invaluable brand assets which can convert to increased sales.

Let’s return to our camera store example from earlier. Even the most enthusiastic photographers aren’t buying a new camera every day (even if they’re taking photographs everyday!). You would say that the buying cycle on new cameras is likely to be quite long. So if you’re a camera store owner, and want to market your business on social media, you have a couple of options.

Firstly, you could regularly post new camera sales. No doubt you have lots of product images to use, so all you need to do is keep uploading product pictures and specials, right? Well, you could, but your audience is going to quickly become disinterested at best, and likely to unfollow your page at worst.

On the other hand, you might regularly post photography tips or guides. You could also feature work by your customers. In short, you could provide content that your audience finds valuable in some way. It might be educational or simply entertaining (your focus will depend to an extent on the nature of your brand or business). But what about my sales? I’m not spending all this time on giving away free info for nothing!

Creating value with content marketing.

To think about this effect could have on sales, we need to look at the effect of all this value you’ve been providing. Hopefully you’ve created something of a following of enthusiastic photographers. While cameras might have longer sale cycle. But when it is time to buy, is a local photographer more likely to buy from that annoying camera shop they unfollowed 6 months ago? Or are they more likely to buy from the camera shop which has been consistently demonstrating their knowledge of photography and understanding of the needs of photographers? The same question could be asked any time that same photographer needs a new lens or accessory. Other things being equal, buyers are more likely to go to someone they trust and feel is credible.

Content marketing. Search, social, video and web design.

This is the principle of content marketing in a nutshell. Providing share-worthy content that highlights your brand values without explicitly selling. It applies equally to social media content, email marketing content, YouTube content and website content. In fact, your web design should support your website as the hub of your content marketing. In the next post we’ll look at some content marketing ideas. We’ll also take a deep dive into coming up with your own content marketing topics.

Posted in Content Marketing

7 Content Marketing Ideas For Small Business

Posted in Content Marketing

Think “content marketing” is a new internet thing. Think again. One of the earliest recognised examples of content marketing dates back to 1895. Yes you read that right – 1895.

But I thought it was an internet thing? Well, it turns out the internet is perfect for content marketing.

Okay, so what is content marketing anyway? Well, remember that 1895 example. John Deere made tractors and farm equipment. Not quite the kind of business or brand we imagine doing content marketing in 2021. Back then, John Deere created a publication just to give their customers helpful information – and talk about their products and expertise at the same time. The result was The Furrow – a publication that’s still going today – and yes, you can find it online.

Before we dive into today’s 5 content marketing ideas, let’s recap on what content marketing is and what we’re trying to achieve.

The essential principle of content marketing is that your audience have specific, common interests. Producing relevant, useful content for your audience allows you to connect and build deep levels of trust. At it’s most basic, content marketing could be a company blog. At it’s most imaginative the Burberry Kisses content marketing campaign. You want to produce content that educates or entertains (or both).

Trying to build your local surfwear brand? Consider interviewing some local up and coming surfers (entertain). Making your Facebook page the go-to for local surf updates (educate). IN this way, content marketing not only keeps your brand front of mind, you’re constantly building crucial trust and credibility with your audience.

The humble blog should not be overlooked as a super effective form of content marketing. In fact, it’s a great example of how producing blog content is not only good for your existing audience or customers, but can of course connect you with brand new audiences and customers.

Content Marketing Idea #1 – Free Downloadable eBook

This works really well for businesses associated with products or services that have long ‘research” periods during the buying phase. One client working in a specialist area of SMSF property investment. It’s an area of many myths and questions, with clients likely to undertake considerable information gathering before deciding to proceed. As industry veterans, they decided to put their key knowledge into a book and make it available to website visitors to download on providing their email address.

Idea #2 – Create a FAQ Video Series

Many small businesses find it difficult to come up with content ideas. Putting together a list of your customers most frequently asked questions is a great way to come up with instant educational content. As the internet gets faster and faster, video is becoming a built in part of our browsing experience. Did you know – around one million minutes worth of video is watched every second! A series of short (even a minute or two) videos gives you compelling content to share on your website, YouTube and Facebook.

Content Marketing Idea #3 – Commit To Blogging

There are not too many – if any- businesses that can’t benefit from having a well-maintained blog. The lasting power of an effective well, written post cannot be underestimate. I’ve worked with clients whose websites are still drawing heaps of website visitors from single blog posts written years ago. Carefully targeted, optimised posts have this potential.

#4 – Back to Basics SEO

If it’s worth writing about, it’s worth optimising! Many blogs provide great value content but just aren’t that accessible for search engines – and could be missing out on valuable search traffic. Simple steps like ensuring your page titles and descriptions as well as headings and text include relevant keywords can make a lot of difference. Professional web design ensures your content looks great – just make sure it’s optimised as well.

Content Marketing Idea #5 – Make It Easy To Access and Use

The biggest internet players like Google are increasingly recognising that accessibility is paramount. This shows in the increasing importance G gives to website accessibility – how easy it is for visitors to load and navigate your website – especially on mobile (G have indicated that this is now a ranking signal). It’s no use having great content if its not easy for people to access.

Most content marketing will reach your visitors on mobile. Take some time to check your content on various devices and locations – like when your in poor service area. That awesome 15 minute video you have embedded on your website might look fantastic in the office, but might not go so well for someone browsing out and about.

#6 – Make It Multichannel

Creating great content takes time and resources – so you want your effort to go as far as possible. If you’ve previously been publishing YouTube content, start creating transcripts and posting them as articles on your website. This is a super easy to create top written content (there are cost-effective transcript services online). You might also think about taking key snippets of video and posting them to your socials. Or you could add key quotes from the video to simple branded images and post to Instagram.

Content Marketing Idea #7 – Stop Creating Content.

Huh? Yep, some of the very best content marketing comes from – you guessed it – your customers and your audience. Running a local pet store? Think about running a FB competition for cutest / whateverest pet! A surf school could encourage clients to upload / share their own video. Finding ways to have your customers and audience create content for you is invaluable. It deepens their level of engagement which means a stronger connection between them and your business.

Most often, successful content marketing is a long-term strategy. Remember, your goal is to provide value. By its nature, content marketing might not deliver immediate results – and bottom line results can sometimes be difficult to measure in the short term. An important consideration with content marketing gives us our bonus tip.

Content Marketing 2021 – Make It Last

An often overlooked advantage of content marketing is its ability to deliver returns well into the future. Here, we have clients continuing to get daily enquiries directly from single blog posts published 5+ years ago. Those posts might have cost a couple of hundred dollars to produce – and have returned many factors of that in income!

Posted in Content Marketing

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Matt is an experienced digital marketer who’s trained, supported and provided digital marketing services to hundreds of small businesses. Matt delivered AusIndustry’s Digital Business Advisory Service and the Department of Communication’s Digital Enterprise Program – providing digital business advice to over 200 local businesses.

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