Today there are a lot of marketing strategies that you can use to grow your business. One thing a lot of strategies have in common is the use content marketing. There is a reason for this. One reason is that content marketing is one of the most flexible and versatile marketing tools that can be used in a marketing plan. Content marketing is not only videos, audio, or written, it is all of the above and can be combo of all of them. More businesses are using content marketing but if you are reading this article you probably are not using content marketing and are wondering; why should you use content marketing?
What is Content Marketing
Before we go into why you should be using content marketing, what is even content marketing. Well to put it simple content marketing is creating written content, video content, or audio content that gives your audience value. Now let’s make it even simpler what does audience mean? Well your audience for all of your marketing should be your customers and potential customers. What does bring value mean? That one is easy also. When it comes to value and content you want to answer your customers questions. When you answer your customer questions this will lead to the building and make you the go to source for all of your customer needs and questions.
There are 3 main types of content marketing that anyone can do:
- Written Content
- Video Content
- Audio Content
What is Written Content Marketing
Written content marketing is exactly what it sounds like, this is written content. This is where written blog comes in. Also there are some other places that you can use written content like medium, linkedin articles, and other website’s blogs. Most people think now a days that people will not read content or that blogs are dead. Well this is not true. A lot of people still read blog posts and use them as a source of education. Also written content still does really well for search ranking.
Want to learn more about written content marketing and blogging? Here is another article for you!
What is Video Content Marketing
Video content marketing has become one of biggest and most effective ways to use content marketing lately. Video marketing is the use of videos to present content to your audience. Video marketing has become the most popular format due to the ability to communicate with your audience in more creative ways. Video content also has the ability to hold people’s attention longer than a piece of written content. On top of all of this video marketing has the ability to have your audience have a deeper connect with your content than written content. The one thing a lot of businesses start to do when it comes to video marketing is by making corporate videos and product or service videos that do not benefit to their audience. This is a big mistake to do. It goes completely against the idea of content marketing.
What is Audio Content Marketing
Audio content is something a lot of people overlook when it comes to using content marketing. So what is audio content? Well Audio content is mostly considered right now audiobooks and podcasts. But we are currently moving towards an audio first world. Audio content will become a bigger part in everyone’s lives in the near future due to the rise of smart assistance and smart speakers.
Why Should you use Content Marketing: Attract More Visitors
One of the big attractions to using content marketing is to get more people on your site and staying on your website longer. This will help with SEO (search engine optimization). When people stay on your websites longer than 5 secs this will increase search ranking. When you create a piece of content you should only concentrate on one specific topic. This will help your audience not only understand exactly what the content piece is about. But it will also help search engines figure out where to rank the article. When your article has started to rank in Google and other search ranks you will start to attract more audience.
Also when it comes to content marketing, if you make content that is great and worth sharing people will share within their community. This is a great way to hit your target audience without having to figure out where they are.
Why Should you use Content Marketing: Build a Community
One of the biggest things that content marketing can do is build a community. Now a lot of businesses will not understand what will come of building a community. Well one of the biggest things is that it is a lot easier to turn a community member into a customer. It is a lot harder to do the opposite. A community is a lot stronger and tighter than a group of customers. A group of customers will only come and get what they need from you. But when it comes to a community they will stay and keep coming back and this is where the difference comes to. Most customers are hit and go while a community will follow you.
