When trying to publicize your business, blog or website, there are basically two methods:
- Content Creation: This involves any kind of content produced for your website: Blogs, videos, infographics and more. This is used to attract visitors to your site within the realm of digital marketing.
- Content Marketing: This has been a buzzword as of late, taking off in recent years. What is it, exactly? To some extent, it depends upon whom you ask, but, today, it generally refers to off-site search engine optimization. It is a way to drive traffic to your site from other websites or in traditional print publications, like newspapers and magazines.
Contention Creation
Blogs
You want to rank higher in searches? Then you need a blog. Right now, if not sooner. Search engine optimization (SEO) is strengthened with regular blog posts.
A powerful way to increase traffic to your website, improve your search engine rankings and offer solutions to people’s needs is through a blog. It really is that simple. However, the execution is not so simple.
An interesting thing about blogging is this, and it seems like a paradox: SEO is good for blogs; blogs are good for SEO. It’s kind of like a win-win situation. If your website follows the best practices of SEO, then the likelihood of people finding your site and your blog improves. At the same time, by regularly and routinely writing and posting blog posts, the odds of people finding your site and blog improves greatly.
Think of it this way: If your site has just the basic pages, like Home, Contact Us, Services, Photo Gallery and a couple others, then there are just a limited number of pages for searches to put their “hooks” into your site.
Here are just some reasons a blog is important on your site:
- Improves SEO rankings
- Provides fresh content on your site
- Delivers valuable, relevant information to turn visitors into customers
- Helps build relationships with site visitors, which develops trust, name recognition, and confidence in your company
- Offers more opportunities to develop keywords and long-tail keywords
- It will entice people to subscribe to your blog to get the latest information about something they care about
- And, so much more.
Blogging requires effort, consistent effort. If you are not a writer or you simply do not have the time to write, then contact us to see how we can be part of the solution. You can reach out to us here.
Other content services
- Optimize content: Google likes fresh content. Producing new material is one way to achieve that goal. Another way is to optimize existing content. When optimizing content, it is important to re-evaluate keywords, make sure you are targeting search intent, focus on what kind of information people are wanting to know, and updating your publish date.
- Videos: Businesses, on average, have 18 videos produced each month, according to HubSpot; 92 percent of mobile users share videos; and 56 percent of videos produced in the past year are less than 2 minutes. Videos are a good way to engage clients and customers across different channels. We produce short-form and social media videos.
- Social Media Management: Social media marketing has to be a part of your marketing strategy. The different networks have their strengths and weaknesses, but your business or blog needs to be there. We’ll tell you which ones we like and what they have to offer.
- Ebooks: A good way to encourage potential or current customers to give you contact information by offering them a free ebook with relevant information. And, we have a strategy that can lower the cost of production significantly.
- White papers: Once just a product of government agencies, these can be a useful tool for some businesses.
Content Marketing
James O’Brien of Contently, writing a piece for Mashable, gave an excellent overview of what content marketing is when he wrote:
When we talk about “content marketing,” we mean the creation of storytelling material that attracts readers, viewers and listeners to a brand.
Content marketing is not an ad on a billboard or a one-page spread in a magazine. It doesn’t have to be a commercial on cable television or the 28 annoying seconds before the start of that next YouTube hit.
The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return. Instead of the commercial, be the show. Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story. The value returned is often that people associate good things with — and return to engage with — the brand.
The Content Marketing Institute summarized this way:
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
Some say content marketing represents a departure from the marketing of old, in that the brand/company is not creating or driving demand. Rather, through carefully crafted content (stories and/or videos), these companies are building relationships with existing or potential potential customers, delivering relevant information to help them make informed buying decisions.
Content marketing is for everybody. Do you sell shoes? How valuable would it be for someone to visit your site and read “5 Things You Need to Know Before Purchasing Your Next Pair of Shoes”? Do you sell pools? What kind of help would a blog post about “3 Tricks to Lower Pool Maintenance Costs” be for someone interested in purchasing a new pool? Are you a physician? Chiropractor? Massage therapist? How much value would a potential customer find in a blog post like this: “Do This One Thing to Make Your Next Visit a Success.”
Do you see what is happening here? You are providing valuable content to the public. In turn, you are developing a sense of trust with them. This will help convert website visitors into customers.
This field of marketing is not new, it has just been renamed. The heart of it can be summed up in one word: Storytelling. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring the impact a story can have. All of your marketing strategies, including content, will cultivate and qualify future customers.
We can help you come up with a digital marketing plan and show you how to leverage your on-site content creation with off-site content marketing. Let us know how we can be of assistance by clicking here.
