Content Marketing IS King

It bears repeating:

CONTENT MARKETING IS KING

And, long live the king.

So, who died and made content marketing king, you ask? Well, black hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for one. Before Panda and Penguin combined forces to foil black hat SEO operators, they abused the Google algorithm (which determines WHERE you show up when users search for keywords). Black hat SEO used tactics such as keyword stuffing (putting your keyword every other word rather than fitting it in naturally), buying links to irrelevant, high-ranking websites, and other dastardly deeds that meant content didn’t have to provide value to users, it just had to fool the Google bot into thinking there was value.

But, Google fixed that problem and many websites were REALLY hurt by the changes — my site saw significant increases because I’d never worried about the Google bot, only my readers.

What is content marketing?

In an earlier post, I talked about creating social media success using content marketing. Today, I’ll expand on the concept of creating value with your content marketing strategy.

New, fresh content

Unique, fresh content creates significant value to visitors by solving problems. Maybe their problem is how to paint a wall. If you’re a business that sells painting material, you might include some instructions and a video on your website. Maybe their problem is they’re bored. So, offer some entertaining content such as videos or interactive games to solve their problem.

When users search for solutions, your website will come up and the better job you do in helping them, the more money you make.

But, what do you write about?????

That’s the issue we all struggle with EVERY DAY! And, there are 2 parts to that answer:

1. Discover what’s important (valuable) to your target audience
2. Learn about those issues that are important

These are BIG topics, so I’ll save them for my NEXT POST. (Grab my RSS feed or subscribe to make sure you get updates on this topic)

Curate valuable content

Creating content is time-consuming and difficult, especially if you’re not a good writer or don’t have time to write. Curated content comes from scanning other sources out there — blogs, news sites, and social media sites. But, how do you find content?

1. Invite others to contribute their RSS feeds. For instance, many repeat visitors to my site recognize that most of my posts are re-published by Business2Community and many are posted by Social Media Today (thanks for the vote of confidence for the value of my content). That’s their model. They curate content from a large number of related blogs and publish the ones they think most appealing to their readers.
2. Create Google Alerts for topics related to your products and services. Google Alerts grab content, mostly from blogs, press releases, and articles posted online, related to the keywords you enter and deliver them to your inbox. Because there are SO MANY posts, I ask to only get the top posts for a particular day. You can then share articles you think your audience will find valuable.
3. Subscribe to the RSS feeds for blogs you think are high quality. Just like with Google Alerts, you’ll get posts from the blog delivered to your inbox and can share them with your network.
4. Follow people who post good things on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, etc. Share their content when you think your audience will find it valuable. This is also a good way to build and engage a network to help share content you created as boost your content marketing strategy.
5. Trends. Twitter posts trending topics. So does Alexa and several other sources. If they fit the interests of your target audience, sharing content related to these trends gives you a little lift.

What NOT to do in your content marketing

1. NEVER, NEVER copy content you found somewhere else. It’s illegal as it violates copyright laws and Google doesn’t look favorably on people who cheat. BTW, if you’ve copied this content illegally (and you know who you are) STOP!
2. Don’t SELL. Sure, your goal is to sell something, but your content marketing strategy shouldn’t involve selling. If you provide value, you’ll attract more visitors and convert more because they feel obligated after you solved their problem. So, don’t sell in you content. Solve.
3. Never write about something you don’t know about. Don’t just try to fake it. Spend the time necessary to learn about something before you write about it. And, keep learning.
4. Don’t just keep writing the same thing over and over again. Branch out or find different angles or different topics your audience will find valuable. It’s ok to update and old post periodically, but never just republish and old post. Google will slap you.
5. Don’t write superficially. Try to give value in your posts. Your content shouldn’t look like teasers designed to get visitors to buy your book or training program to get in-depth information. Give…..

Some final thoughts to help your content marketing strategy

1. Proofread. Use a spell checker and grammar checker to help.
2. Make your content visually appealing by using breaks and images.
3. Invite commentary — BTW, you’re ALWAYS invited to comment on my posts.
4. Make content easy to share.

OK, enough to digest for 1 day. Stop back for more on content marketing and other marketing tactics to make your marketing SIZZLE.

Have a great day.