What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing strategy focused on the consistent creation & distribution of valuable & relevant content to attract & nurture an ideal audience, and drive an action.

“Content” can be a number of items, including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Blog Posts
  • Infographics
  • Video
  • Podcasts
  • Webinars
  • Social Media Posts
  • Quizzes, Checklists, and More!
 

Content marketing should be at the core of any good marketing strategy, and good content should always be the goal.

WHAT DEFINES GOOD CONTENT?

What do I mean by “good” content?

Put yourself in the driver’s seat for a moment. 

In the back of your mind, you’ve been looking for someone, anyone, to explain the concept of content marketing to you. 

You hop online & begin your search either on Google or Social Media, and somehow you happen upon this article. 

This article is the answer you were looking for when you began your search. It provides the definition, and it gives you exact examples of how to implement content marketing into your own strategy. 

This CONTENT provided you with value.

 

Value is the basis for good content. If your content doesn’t provide a value to someone, then all content marketing efforts fall flat.

YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE. 

Take another look at that definition I provided at the beginning of this article. See that term “Ideal Audience”.

Who is your Ideal Audience?

Let’s say you’re a marketer, like myself, and you’re building a seminar around the basis of Content Marketing. Who would find “the value” in that particular content???

Other Marketers? Business owners looking to broaden their marketing strategy? The car salesperson who is educating his/herself on the basis of good marketing?

I think it’s safe to say that there are many people out there who may find that content valuable, however, a clearly defined audience is pertinent in providing the maximum amount of value with your content.

So, what particular qualities might those individuals mentioned before have in common?

A desire to learn more about what makes a good content marketing strategy, and particularly, how they can implement it into their own marketing strategy.

The more you define your audience, the more you can tailor your content to provide the most value to them.

Age. Career choices. Lifestyle choices. Location.

All of these characteristics can have an impact on the value your audience will find in your content, and it is important to establish who your content is for from the very beginning.

I’ll discuss more about defining ideal audiences in future articles, let’s get back to the topic of Content Marketing, shall we?

CREATING & DISTRIBUTING VALUABLE CONTENT

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, content can come in many forms, and everything we have discussed so far can help you determine which types of content you should create.

Let’s continue with the example of Content Marketing with the ideal audience being individuals with an interest in marketing who have a desire to learn more about how to implement content marketing into their own marketing strategy.

What types of marketing channels might this audience be on?

  • Facebook, Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Google Search
  • Pinterest
  • Apple Podcasts
 

When you determine the channels your audience lives on, you can then specify the particular content types that may grab their attention.

Let’s use Instagram for now.

With Instagram, you have many choices for the types of content you can distribute, but the general basis is either Image or Video.

  • Reels (short to moderate video)
  • IGTV (moderate to long video)
  • Single Static Posts (video or image)
  • Carousel Posts (video or image)
  • Stories (vide0 or image)
 

It’s vital to know that each of these require a different form of content. For this example, I will use the following, Carousel, Reel, & IGTV.

The Instagram Carousel allows up to 10 images or video, and each video is limited to longer than 3 seconds and shorter than 60 seconds.

An Instagram Reel is a short form video format that can be 15 or 30 seconds long. They typically use music or soundbites, transitions, and text.

And IGTV videos can be up to an hour long and up to 4 hours if you’re doing a Live video.

So obviously, based on these three examples your content that you create will be very different. See the examples below:

Don’t limit your content to a single distribution. The more channels you distribute on, the more content you create, and the better your chances of capturing more of your ideal audience. 

DON’T FORGET THE CALL TO ACTION

What’s the point of your content if it doesn’t drive a desired action?

You should define the action you want the viewer to take with each piece of content you create.

With the Instagram examples above, those actions may be to Save the carousel, Follow you for more informative reels, or comment with questions that your IGTV didn’t answer. All of these are great actions to take place on Instagram and tell the algorithm that what you’ve provided is good content.

The Call to Action for this Content Marketing Article?

Be sure to sign up for the startsmall.THINKBIG! email list, so you can receive more valuable content in the future! And share this article with your friends and others you think would enjoy it.

And if you have any questions on how to implement Content Marketing into your own strategy, click here to Contact Me!

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