Content marketing is the direction of Internet marketing, the essence of which is to create and disseminate useful and interesting information to gain user confidence and attract new customers.
According to a survey conducted by Latitude Research, 70% of consumers do not trust brands that publish only advertising information. The usefulness of the content to the consumer has become a key factor in the question of whether or not to buy its product or service from the company. Also, filling the site with content gives an organic increase, and the price of attracting a client is reduced. In fact, content marketing is at the same time a plus for both the company and the consumer: you save, and the number of customers increases, but at the same time you give consumers free and useful information. This is the main reason for the popularity of content marketing - users are interested in high-quality, interesting and useful content.
What gives content marketing
You sell your product / service thanks to the content demanded by your audience. Constantly creating new useful content, you strengthen the credibility of your company, become a professional in your field. The level of trust in you rises, and interested users become customers. Moreover, if you publish original content with your own photos, videos, and, of course, texts, you make the brand more recognizable, and trust even stronger.
We must not forget about SEO promotion. Thanks to content marketing, you are improving your position in the search engine results: the constant updating of content on the site increases the number of promoted requests. At the same time, website promotion is natural, and not through paid channels.
Content marketing can solve the following problems:
- Conclusion of new goods / services to the market;
- Sale of technically sophisticated goods;
- Creating the image of the company, managing its reputation, maintaining the status of an expert;
- Business promotion;
- Lower advertising costs.
Where to implement content marketing
Traditionally, there are two types of sites where content marketing can be implemented:
- blog on your own site;
- on the official pages of the company in social networks: Vkontakte, Instagram, Odnoklassniki, Facebook
At these sites, you can promote your content for free, gradually untwist and collect fans. But if you just created a company and you have no customers?
Where to attract new readers for your content
To do this, there are other types of sites and methods for their use:
- Search engines
Even at the stage of scheduling the text, you need to make a list of keywords and use the principles of SEO optimization at the stage of writing text. Then your text will be displayed according to relevant user requests and rise higher in the top search. - Contextual advertising systems
Content can be advertised as well as products / services. To do this, you can configure contextual advertising for low-frequency information requests. For example, queries starting with questions (how, how, why, what, and where, etc.). - Social networks
In social networks, you can promote content using:
- Targeted advertising (the principles are the same as in regular targeted advertising);
- Placements in communities and public. It is possible to post content to similar-themed communities and publics, i.e. where your potential clients "sit".
- Placements in popular accounts. Social media opinion leader profiles are great platforms for promoting content. You need to find those people who understand your topic and offer them cooperation.
- Internet publications on your subject
You can find sites close to your company by topic and post your original articles (both paid and free options are possible, depending on how popular the site is).
Where to look for sites for accommodation:
- Liveinternet (by keyword or by category);
- Stock exchanges of articles (similar in subject);
- News sites (post in sections related to the topic).
- Email Newsletters
You can send content to subscribers from your own database (those who are already interested in your content and subscribed to the newsletter), or use third-party databases (buy them for money). - Announcements of articles
Announcements of articles on third-party sites and forums.
How to create content
- Choose the purpose of the publication. What do you expect from your readers? Purchasing a specific product, service? What action should users take? Start with this goal when creating content.
- Choose the idea of publication. The idea of publishing is based on the interests of users / customers.
Where to find content creation ideas
- Yandex.Wordstat. Using this resource, you can collect and analyze popular queries. Then you can select the most interesting topics and make a plan of articles on these topics.
- Sites with questions and answers (otvet.mail.ru) . To do this, enter a key phrase and find questions that interest users, select the best questions and write detailed articles on them answers.
- Thematic forums. Discussion topics and questions can be found on the forums between your potential readers. You need to study them and choose interesting topics.
- Webinars Competitor webinar topics can serve as a great source for ideas. Webinars themselves can be searched on Youtube or in search engines.
- News. Actual events close to your company by topic (for example, the appearance of a competitive product, any events, incidents, etc.). You can share your opinions in articles on similar topics, people are interested.
- Conduct a survey. Find out what is interesting to readers.
- Blogs of competitors. You can analyze the blogs of competitors and draw from them any ideas for articles.
- Groups of competitors in social networks. Usually there you can find the most interesting.
What should be the content
- Content should be attractive to users:
- Emotional;
- With the absence of any errors (spelling, grammar, etc.);
- Aesthetic, attractive in terms of design. The best and most win-win option is to use a single style when designing content.
- Content should be interesting:
- Informative - answer questions, bring benefits;
- The relevant interests of the target audience.
- Content should be effective , calling for action (buying a product / service, following a link, etc.), essentially containing advertising for your company, but in a hidden form.
According to the form of filing, it can be:
- Expert articles: research, reviews, analytics, etc .;
- Instructions on any topic: FAQ-article, "How is this done?";
- Infographics
- Educational materials;
- Stories from the life of the company, customers, product use, etc.
Often, companies creating content do not think about this process, and many errors lead to the fact that content does not become a tool for promoting services / products.
What mistakes are made when creating content
- Missing target or liar
It’s a mistake to believe that by creating content for the sake of content, you will attract a large number of subscribers and increase sales. In fact, this is far from the case. You need a goal: why are you creating content. There are three liars:
- Brand recognition. You can strive to make your company famous, but you can’t create content just to make the brand popular. First of all, you need to convey utility.
- Measure the usefulness of content using traffic. Content should be educational and engaging in nature, so the most important thing in it is the quality and how your content helped users as much as they liked.
- Increase traffic with lots of content. In this case, the content becomes an advertising jeans. It’s better to create more useful content, but less often.
- Separation of content and marketing
Many companies make the mistake of creating frankly advertising content without any “usefulness” for users. But at the same time, sometimes very interesting and useful materials appear that do not bring the expected result for the company itself. In order to make the content beneficial to both you and the customers, you need to:
- Add informational benefit;
- Know who you are writing for (target audience);
- Choose a form of filing;
- Show the client's need for specific language (for example, use quotes from customer questions);
- Link content to the promoted product / service;
- Promote content.
- PR publications about your company
This is not at all interesting for people - it is better to help them with specific problems, rather than telling about themselves. - Low quality content
For example, SEO articles without any usefulness to users). - Content creation process not built
Content should be created by professionals (either a content manager or freelancers), regularly write articles. - No call to action
Add links to products / services, no need to do charity work. - Content is not published regularly
Not necessarily every day or every week, the main thing is to remind subscribers about themselves.
Content Marketing Guidelines
- For customer retention, company marketers must think through all the details so that the content can retain the attention of users.
- In order for content to be distributed on social networks, companies have to constantly create high-quality and new ones.
- The uniqueness of content is also important for search engines. For the text to move forward in the search, it must meet the needs of consumers, and, as said, be unique.
conclusions
Content marketing is a very effective marketing method that:
- Saves the budget;
- Attracts loyal customers;
- Increases trust;
- Creates the image of the company, supports the status of an expert.
If you decide to work with content marketing, then you need to regularly engage in its updating, creating new content. We must not forget that the quality of the content, its uniqueness and information content is above all. Your content should be interesting to users, only then you can earn trust and gain new customers. Of course, this is a very laborious and complex process. Perhaps I missed something?