According to Dictionary.com, content marketing is a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.
In other words, sharing content to get people interested in your brand, products or services.
It has been discovered that people are drawn to brands that share knowledge often rather than just selling all the time. ( Why else are you here on she learns here.com? Learning of course!).
Lets take a quick look into how content development and marketing works.
In the image above, you see 4 media by which content is created and shared with the target audience.
1. Owned media: This includes content shared by you on platforms you own like your website, blog, apps, landing page and so on. Your owned media should be the center of your content marketing strategy as it is yours for keeps. All other media should link to your owned media. Having rich content on your website’s blog for example, will attract readers leading to increased traffic on your website. This improves your SEO ranking and increases your chances of making sales through your website.
2. Shared media: This includes content you post on shared platforms (social media) such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and so on. These platforms are not yours, but you get a chance to share information with others on them and people can also share these Information of yours with their own friends but sharing, reposting, retweeting and so on . As I earlier mentioned, make sure you find a way to link this to your owned media. For example, share a few lines of your latest blog post on your Instagram account and direct readers to your blog to read the full article or post (the link must be in your bio for easy access) a link of your latest post on your Facebook timeline.
3. Paid media: This is content that you paid for to be shared with more people than you can reach organically. This includes pay per click ads like the ones you see in Google search (SEM), Facebook ads, sponsored posts and listings, and so on. Once again, try to link this to your owned media. For example, create a post on Facebook about an interesting topic and lead people to your blog, Landing page or mobile app when they click for more.
4. Earned media: This happens when you have built people’s trust/distrust and they begin to create content about you. This includes blog posts by others (not paid for) reviews by clients and so on. You don’t have control over this as it is created solely by third parties. But if you have done a good job with Linking the first 3 to your owned media always, people will most likely do the same when writing about you.
In conclusion
Everyone should include all the four in their content creation strategy to attract and retain the right audience.
If you would like to know how this can work for your business, you can book a personal strategy session with our experts here.