Content Marketing – It Always Was and Always Will Be

It’s been a few weeks since my last post on Neuronimbus blog but hey I come back with something equally relevant and pertinent to the business of online marketing. I know the subject of my blog is something that old but hey don’t go by the age of the subject, its more current and important in present times than any new piece of tech that you read about in a tech blog. Why …. Because anything that needs to be marketed online by anyone needs to be aware of Content marketing in its true essence. If you want to really make success out of online marketing efforts.

Now, for the initiations and the ones that are aspiring to be online marketers and dabble with the search business. Content marketing is all about creating quality content that is engaging and meaningful which helps businesses retain and acquire new businesses. Yes, its that simple to define and yet can take forever to get it right. So the real challenge is not to understand what content marketing is, the paradox is about getting the right content developed that hits all the check boxes.

Why is content marketing so important and what the whole fuss about it, especially in the recent times. Firstly I think quality of online content has always been important because as long as businesses need to communicate with their target audience, it doesn’t matter which platform they are on (online or offline), the content has to be of a certain quality that is meaningful and engaging. So content marketing has been around for as long as the commercialization of internet and it has been reincarnated and termed differently over the years just to keep it fresh and keep the businesses interested with something that’s ‘new’.

Now, coming to how to get this right, well its simple really. Understand the business that you are in, understand your target audience and give then content that they like to see, that has some meaning for them and something that they would like to share, remember or retain. I wish it was that simple… but then you can always start in the right direction and the following points will help in doing just that.

Understand the consumers of your content
These are typically the people who are either your clients/consumers or have the potential to become one. You need to know them better and understand what kind of content connects with them better and plan your content/communication around that

Don’t restrict to just Search Engine Optimisation
For the most part people think that content marketing is only related to SEO work and building good search traffic for the website. Well, it’s not that buddy, sure it does play a big role but its got a lot more to do with the online business. Content marketing takes a look at the content and communication piece at a much bigger business level where it is about creating brilliant content in any digital form which could either be in the form of a video, article, blog post, press releases, infographic. Website content or even email content if I may dare to say so.

Visual Stimulation
When we say content marketing is about engagement and quality, then nothing can beat a good visual or graphic that has the ability to do both. So consider building good visual content in your overall content strategy

Brand promotion through education/information
With so many businesses online and most of them pushing aggressive sales/marketing driven offers, comparisons and ‘buy now’ kind of content to their consumers, it’s important that instead of being one of the many you try and build some brand connect with your TG buy being subtle and share meaningful information with your TG rather than pushing ‘we are the best’ messaging. Subtlety can help build a long term brand association.

This is it for now, and until next time… write good content.