To the newcomer, content marketing might appear more confusing than a Game of Thrones family tree. But we’ve got some good news: It’s not.
In fact, content marketing’s core ingredients can be boiled down to two simple things: good content supported by good promotion. Talk about your easy recipes! Not since Ovaltine and milk has there been such a surefire formula for deliciousness.
It Starts with Content…
Of course it all starts with the content. Blog posts, videos, podcasts, ebooks, white papers, and more; this is what you produce and what your prospective customers will find valuable. And it needs to be just that: valuable. If you try to promote middling, subpar content, no matter how fanatical you get on Facebook ingenious you are on Instagram, you’ll consistently be disappointed with your results. Makes sense, right?
The movie theater with the most ads in town and the biggest marquee still won’t get much action if they’re consistently showing Norbit.
…and Continues with Promotion
But what many people forget about is the all-important second step: promotion. Even if you’re consistently churning out informative and entertaining articles on say, how to retire by age 50, if you’re not promoting it, odds are no one will ever see it.
You’ve gotta go to where those people are – the ones thinking about retirement, nest eggs, or just the people who love to dream about retiring early (aka, all of us) – and show them what you have. For your content for it to be truly effective, you have to actively promote it.
Off-Site Content
Let’s say you run an online shoe store. You might write a blog post on your site called ‘How to Keep Your Shoes in Shape for a Decade.” That’s your on-site content. Then, you might go to a top-ranked shoe polish company and write a piece for their blog called “The 5 Benefits of Great Shoe Polish,” and within that article, you link back to your website. This is your off-site content. Working with other website owners to publish similar types of content on their site is a vital component of content promotion.
Focusing on these two areas, generating valuable content and the effective promotion of that content, is the killer 1-2 combination for building your business.