What Is and What is Not Content Marketing?

What is content marketing? Content marketing is now, has been, and is the future of successful marketing strategies globally. When used correctly, content marketing draws the highest level of customer, one that respects himself and his brand. You will understand this as we look at what content marketing is and what content marketing is not.

Strategic Marketing

Content marketing is a strategic tool to draw and keep customers. How can content do that? Content is a place to share valuable and relevant information that benefits your customers. It is written in a way that keeps the customer interested and involved. They will come back, again and again, to find out what is next. It is up to the blog owner what subjects will be allowed on his or her site. For example, the owner of a furniture company may only allow blogs about quality furniture care. But when the COVID-19 hit, they may have opened the doors to that topic to allow people a voice. While he may have no other reason for that choice, it is a safe bet that people will remember him when they need furniture in the future.

Target Audience

As part of your strategy, you will determine your target audience. A great deal of time, money, and effort will go into determining your audience. The reason for this is that many social lines are blurred today. You do not know if the person buying the video game, rated for adults is being played by a 15-year-old or a 25-year-old. You do not know if the new mother is 16 or 40. Physical lines of yesteryear are blended. This means you must be very careful with what you say, do, and give away.

What some writers see as the most important reason to understand your target audience is that knowledge gives you the power to bond with your clients. Bonding with a client gives you a bit of trust when you talk with him and gives him trust for you. This is a relationship that helps you avoid problems before they happen. This is what you want. When a customer doesn’t know you and you come in to solve a problem, the first thing that comes to mind is, you are going to say whatever just to make you happy. It takes a lot longer to bond with a client after damage control.

What Content Marketing is Not

You promised your audience a valuable article with relevant information that they need to know. You have delivered in the past, so you trusted them. But when they got there, all you did was try to sell them your product.

Your content marketing section is not the place for you to sell your stuff. This is not a time for you to break out your bottle of whatever and tell everyone how all their problems will fade away if they will buy from you. People are not stupid and they resent a snake oil salesman. You will lose your clients and your company will have a huge black-eye that you may not recover from.

What if your clients were excited to read your content?

Just think of this for a moment. What if you post your current post every Friday at noon, and you notice dozens of people logging in to read your post. This is a success. You are doing your job and your content is doing its job. You are providing interesting or entertaining content. The word is getting out and people are coming to the website where they may consider reading the site and not just the content. Click here for more information on how long-term and successful companies have experienced.

Multicultural content marketing

We live in a multicultural world. People, companies, and products that may have been produced exclusively in a particular country in the past, maybe being produced in several countries now. International travel makes it easy to visit in other countries,

Who and why?

Including the customs of your audience is important. It is important to know who your audience is and why they are there, You must offer your content in a way that includes all the people that are watching. Once you have discovered who is there and what they are accessing you can be sure to enrich your content to include them and to make the content more unique.

Be Transparent

Blogs are wonderful tools. You are spending a great deal of time writing, emailing, and getting close to your audience. If something has come along that your boss has no problem with, you may decide to add more hours to your webpages.

Perhaps a business associate was burned out of his home. Maybe his family made it out, but he lost everything else. With permission, you have decided to create a Crowdfund Account to help them. Every person interested in giving them money can look at their account and see how much their account is worth. You are simply being transparent and honest. All we can do is give them all the information and wait. Of course, personal information can be withheld for the privacy of the victims.

Everyone in the industry has surely heard the saying, “content is king.”  In content marketing, that saying is surely true. However, before you start pounding away on your post, be sure you understand what content is and what content isn’t. Use it well, and it will serve you well.

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