This week we have a guest post by Pamela Rodriguez of Terhune Copywriting on, what else? Content!
You’ve heard it before: Content is King.
But what exactly does that mean? If you want me to get technical, the definition of content according to the Content Marketing Institute is:
A marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
In other words, we write awesome stuff that people will want to read, comment on, re-post and re-tweet, and then, because they now think we’re so cool, will make a purchase and tell all their groupies about how cool we are so they buy from us, too.
Content is everywhere.
It’s on websites and in social media; it’s on advertisements and in flyers, promos, and special reports. You hear it in commercials, on the radio, in webinars. Each of the hundreds of newsletters you subscribe to have content. Every Tweet you read, every Facebook post – it’s all content.
So do all content avenues reign supreme?
Let’s look at some quick facts:
• Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors.
• 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company from articles rather than ads
• 65% of companies posting to social media saw an increase in marketing effectiveness (the other 35% weren’t doing it right)
• Almost 50% of a consumer’s buying decision is based on its previous relationship with the company
I could keep going for at least a page and a half, but rather than bore you with all that gibberish, let me tell you this: content is content regardless of where it resides.
Relevancy Matters
You just can’t post a bunch of words, though. Not if you want it to be effective. And the whole point of content marketing is to inform your audience, engage with them, and become a valuable resource for them. It’s here that your credibility takes foot. This is how you become relevant.
So take a step back and think about who your target market is. This is about them, not about your product or service (yet).
What problems do they have running their businesses? What issues do they most frequently run into when promoting their own products? What are their goals?
If you can answer those questions you know where to step in and help them.
A great example comes from a company I recently worked with. They sell security products largely to police and fire personnel. But they wanted to break into the night club scene (without having to flirt with the bouncers). So they brainstormed and researched the above questions and found that a big concern of bar owners has to do with the cooling mechanism that keeps beer on tap nice and cold. Apparently this is a real problem and keeps owners up at night. Go figure…
So to establish their credibility within this new community of prospects, we wrote a series of articles addressing the stresses of night club owners and how best to resolve the problems at hand. We didn’t write about the security products at all.
Did it work?
Heck yeah! We showed these businesses that we cared about and were in tune with their issues and that we were a valuable and credible resource to them. So when it came time to arm their big, burly bouncers, who do you think they called?
Don’t forget Google
When you write content that informs and engages your audience, Google (and all those other search engines) fall in love with you. And that’s great because that means that when a prospect types in a search request, your site could end up on the first page of results.
How often do you look past the first page of results when you are searching for an answer?
It’s the same for your prospects.
The moral of the story? Write. Write content. Write to inform. Write to entertain. Write to help solve a problem.
Put it in articles, blogs, webinars, website content, white papers, social media posts – all the places your prospects visit. And make sure they care about what you write.
This is how you make your content King.
Author:
Pamela Terhune works with businesses and non-profits, large and small, to help them craft branded messages that resonate with their audiences. She loves finding creative solutions for not only achieving goals but getting her clients there faster. A ghostwriter, public speaker, and marketing guru, Pamela’s passion for success stories shines through in all she does. Visit her website here www.terhunecopy.com