Your Strategy to Sell Your Image Through Content Marketing

Everyone is talking about how content is so important (which is true) but no one is really talk about WHY content is king and WHY content is critically important. The buzz words these days are content marketing. But what exactly does it mean and how can a business implement its use to bring value to their customers?  Basically, content marketing is publishing information through various media outlets that will educate your customers.

Some of the biggest companies in the world today didn’t exist just 10 years ago. Companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to name a few. And the one thing that all of these huge companies have in common is their product: information. Welcome to the Information Age. (Also referred to as the Digital age) 10 years ago, if you wanted to do research on any given topic, you would find yourself traveling to a library. Not today. Today we have an entire world of information at our fingertips

Nowadays, words have shifted from being on books, magazines and billboards to living on computers, smartphones, laptops, televisions and tablets. First of all, great content is something that can be easily read by a person browsing your website. But that’s not where it ends. In fact, that’s where it starts! 

The benefit of publishing good content is that your targeted audience will come to rely on you as an information resource for their decision making.  It is important to understand that content marketing is more than just information about your products or services. It includes relevant and useful information that will be used to develop opinions about your business and help build a relationship with your customers. 

Great content serves a very important purpose: it informs the reader about the topic of the page. When great content is smartly developed and used strategically, it easily accomplishes the following tasks:
1- Helps people understand the topic
2- Demonstrates your unique expertise or angle on the subject
3- Makes people want to come back and read it again
4- Makes people want to link to it so other people can access it from their website, blog, social network feed, etc.

5- Let people buy something on the site
6- Let people download a document, a file, or an app
 

Great content is what the Web was originally designed to facilitate. Write what you know, make it compelling, and people (and search engines) will respond accordingly. It may take time, of course, but even viral content starts with an initial post. For instance, Expact Women website did not reach hundred thousands of people by accident. Its founder was smart, or more importantly, had smart strategies.  When I was doing my research on some articles in expatwomen, I found out that the blog wrote one article last month that generated more links and shares than 46 of their posts from 2013 combined.  This post is about effective blogging, and going beyond the the strategy that built a big community of audience.

Think about how often you search for information before making a purchasing decision. Your customers do the same, so it is important to position yourself to be a credible resource for them.

 
But How Do You Create Great Content? 

Great content is, well, great! Of course, that can also be a relative thing. It’s like the old story of being in the woods with a bunch of your coworkers when you accidentally encounter an ill-tempered bear. When the chase begins, you personally don’t need to outrun the bear (good luck with trying that). You only need to outrun the other people you’re with.  Sure, that’s a grizzly (pun intended) tale with a morally ambiguous message, but that’s why I made the other people your coworkers. Business is business, after all!

I’m sure you’re thinking “sounds like a great idea, but how do you go about publishing relevant content?” As usual, it takes some planning and the first thing you need to do is develop your content marketing strategy.  There are four main areas to consider: audience, media, timing and topic. 

Audience
Who is your intended audience? This relates back to who your target customer is.  You need to understand your customers, what their needs are and purchasing patterns are. I tell my clients that you need to know your customers like you know your mother. What do they like and dislike? Who do they go to for an opinion prior to making a purchasing decision? Where are they located? What is their age, income and education level?  Once you understand your target customer, it is easier to determine what media to select, when you should publish content and what topics would be of benefit to your customers.

 
Media
Where does your target customer go for information? Would they read a newspaper, look for online reviews, articles, videos or blogs? Do they reach out to their friends and families for recommendations? Would they like to get their information in an online newsletter?  If you are not sure, ask them when you see them or send out a small survey. Or just research the various social media resources and see who’s using them. By “Googling” the various types of social media for statistics on who is using them you can determine the best media to use for your target customer.

 
Timing
How often should you publish? The medium you’re using will dictate how often you need to publish your content.  Twitter and Facebook could be several times a day, blogs at least weekly, LinkedIn can be every couple of weeks, and online newsletters can be monthly or quarterly.  Realistically, think about how often you can develop content and publish it. This is a big task and often it needs to be delegated or shared among several people. Starting a weekly blog may seem like a good idea at first, but remember there are 365 days in a year. 

Topic
Most important, where are you going to find relevant content? After publishing for a while you can run out of ideas to write about.  Places to look for content are trending topics, newspapers, blogs or your customers’ tweets and posts. What are they talking about and interested in? This is where you can find topics for content that will be of interest to your target audience.  Remember, developing and implementing a content marketing strategy is a lot of work and requires planning, but the rewards can be tremendous.