What is Content Marketing and how can it help your business grow?
Content Marketing is a new term invented by marketers. It most probably stems from journalism and PR. I believe the first company to coin the term “Content is King” is Hubspot.
It is gaining traction as marketers continue to reinvent themselves and as new media channels such as Snapchat are born to create more publishing platforms for us to use.
The users who use these platforms are not always on Snapchat, Twitter or Facebook. Maybe some use Instagram exclusively.
Regardless these platforms exist for one reason – sharing engaging content. Which is why we have to get smart on how we use this content.
What I like about content marketing is the fact that it gives us digital marketers special powers using words in order to bring about a starving audience to our business.
You could say this is the same as copy-writing.
Copy-writing is a skill usually highly sought after by advertising agencies when they do campaigns for print or TV and need someone to sell product in print.
Good copywriters get paid a lot….and yes, the good ones are very skilled.
So what is content marketing then?
Well my definition of content marketing is that it is a blend of copy-writing and marketing together to create a fantastic digital publishing platform. I think it is a combination of both.
Writing good copy takes time. Writing good content takes time.
It also requires that we all know who our customers are, intimately. Good copywriters research, research and research their clients’ customers before they write anything. They use the tone and language of that consumer to convey their message. They get personal.
This is the same case for journalists.
When journalists publish stories they have to understand their own audience and what content is relevant for them. Then they go out and find stories to match their audience’s interests. Again, a lot of research and planning goes into creating stories.
This is what we do in content marketing – we seek first to understand before being understood – (Read: 7 habits of highly effective people)
We must first understand who our customer is before we can write engaging content. Not to mention all the research we have to do!
I think anyone who has passion to tell stories, and can empathize with their audience can become a great content marketer.
Let me know your thoughts? You agree or disagree? You can reach out to me here.