In a nutshell, Content Marketing is an indirect way of connecting with consumers through materials that do not directly promote a product or service but instead sparks interest and thoughts around products or services that you do sell.
The intended outcome of using Content Marketing would be to gain a new customer but the path at gaining that new customer is very different than your traditional marketing efforts.
If you are able to provide relevant and useful information to consumers that perhaps answers a question or educates them on something that you do, you are taking steps towards showing the public that you are an authority in your industry and a trusted source on that topic. This will give you credibility and increase your audience. Once your audience increases, you will now have a larger and more engaged group of individuals to directly advertise to.
Furthermore, Content Marketing is great for your Search Engine Optimization. The greater content that you produce and share on various platforms, the greater the chances your content will be shared by others, sending positive signals to search engines like Google on how relevant and authoritative your website is.
There are various forms of Content Marketing and we will cover some of them off in this article.
Blog Posts
Posting regular and informative blogs on your company’s website is a great way to educate consumers on your products or services. To really make this work though you should always try to write your blog in a way that answers a question or educates consumers on something that they may have never known.
One of our partners, AWealth, has a very informative blog on Financial Services on their website. Here is one of their blogs on ‘What is an RRSP Loan?’.
As you can see, AWealth wrote this blog to answer a question. At the same time, it also served as an educational piece. The key part about the article was there was no hard sell on getting an RRSP or RRSP loan from them.
Social Posts
Being active on Social Media is perhaps one of the most popular forms of Content Marketing. As of January 2018, Statista reported that Facebook had 2.2 billion active users on its platform! Talk about a wide audience to market to.
The important thing to remember about your posts is to answer a question or to educate. With social media, you can also diversify what you’re posting. Get your customers involved with sharing their photos of them using your product or service. Share other companies or individual blogs that relate to your business on your social site. You can even use this opportunity to showcase pictures of your product or your service in action.
Our partner, Bamboo Legend, does a great job with content marketing on their Instagram account. Their posts showcase their mouth-savouring food but they also take an opportunity to educate the masses on Thai culture.
Infographics
Infographics are graphic visual representations of data or information that are intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. (source: TheNextWeb)
Pinterest is a popular platform where infographics are commonly used. We’ve posted some infographics on our Pinterest page to quickly summarize some of our blogs in a more visual manner.
Infographics can also be used nicely within your website to visually show steps or processes that your company uses to get work done. They can also be used within your blogs to better explain detailed points within your article.
Do you have a lot of statistics that you want to better explain to your audience? Infographics will definitely be your best form to represent that.
Other Forms of Content Marketing
Videos are another great form of Content Marketing. There are 1.5 billion active YouTube users in the world. Video is steadily becoming the most served up content on the Internet. Google searches commonly show video results on a lot of question-based queries and Facebook also gives greater organic reach on videos.
In the spirit of answering questions and educating users, consider adding a ‘How-To’ section on your website. How-To guides are another form of Content Marketing and are sure to draw a lot of attention giving you once again more authority as a subject matter expert. Mix in some of the suggestions in this article like infographics and videos.
Putting together case studies on previous projects is another way you can indirectly promote your company. Give visitors real-life examples of how your product or service helped a previous client.
Hosting webinars and or seminars is another way to utilize content marketing. This is a great way to communicate with your consumers immediately and directly. Remember, cater to these webinars and seminars to answer a question or to educate.