Content Marketing For Beginners: What Is It, Why It's Important & How To Get Started
We've all heard the famous quote that; ‘Content is king' – which is entirely true.
If you create a ton of valuable content for your business, you can potentially get some free organic traffic to your business for months (if not years) to come.
Thus, you must look into content marketing if you want to stay in business long term.
In this post, l will quickly discuss the basics of content marketing – with regards to the following:
Without wasting much time, let me jump straight into more detail.
What Is Content Marketing?
In simple terms, it’s a form of marketing whereby you create & distribute some free-valuable content i.e. in the form of blog articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.
Most big brands & companies engage in this form of marketing – since it helps a lot when it comes to educating potential customers about their products and services.
This is unlike paid ads – which are only aimed at pushing customers to buy the products ASAP – which is ok in the short, but it's not sustainable in the long term.
Thus, you should definitely look into content marketing if you want to stay in business long term.
Why You Should Consider Content Marketing
• It allows you to warm your target customers – through educating them about your products & services
• It allows you to get some free organic traffic – thus, you wont have to stress about paying for expensive ads
• Content sticks longer i.e. YouTube videos or blog articles keeps getting traffic even after years – thus, allowing you to keep getting leads & sales long term. This is unlike paid ads which only gets you traffic in the short term i.e. during the period of the campaign
• It's passive in nature i.e. you only create content once – and you'll keep getting eyebrows on autopilot
• It helps to build trust with your audience i.e. your customers wont see you as someone who's just trying to push for sales if you're constantly providing some free value to them
Now that we've covered the core principles of content marketing, let's quickly dive into how you can get started with this form of marketing.
Stay tuned!
How To Get Started With Content Marketing?
1. Choose A Niche
First and foremost, it's important to choose a niche from the onset.
This is so important as it helps to attract the right audience for your business i.e. people who're really interested in what you have to offer.
If you try to be that guy who serves everyone in the market, you might end up serving no one.
Thus, you should clearly define what your actual niche is i.e. based on your business.
2. Choose A Platform
Once you've chosen a niche, you should choose a platform that you want to use to deliver your content i.e.
Is it YouTube?
Is it Google?
Or maybe it's through podcast?
You should really pick a platform that you're comfortable with i.e.
If you like to get in front of the camera, then you should go for YouTube.
If you enjoy writing, then blogging might be ideal for you.
If you're that type of person who likes talking, then starting a podcast might be the right option for you.
You should choose a platform that resonates with your personality – so that you'll enjoy the process of creating content.
NB: You can also repurpose your content in order to serve multiple platforms at once.
For example, if you film a YouTube video, you can extract the audio file & upload it to your podcast.
Alternatively, you can translate the video into a blog post – thus, allowing you to get some additional traffic from Google – without having to put-in too much extra work.
3. Come-Up With Content Ideas
Once you've chosen a platform, it's now high time to come-up with some content ideas for your platform.
You should try to find some topics which people are constantly searching for – so that you can target those people with your content.
And there's various tools out there which helps with this process – thus, you wont have to crack your head trying to figure out what content ideas to work on.
If you're using YouTube, then you can use tools like TubeBuddy or VidIQ – since these are great when it comes to YouTube keyword research.
But if you're a blogger, then tools like Ahrefs, Ubersuggest or Google Keyword Planner can help to facilitate the process.
Either way, you just have to come up with a handful of topic ideas to work on.
Quick Tip:
You can also spy on your competitors – so as to see which topics are doing well for them & you try to produce some more detailed content around those topics.
4. Create A Publishing Schedule
Once you've some content ideas to work on, you should create a publishing schedule i.e. content calendar.
This is so crucial as it guides you in terms of which topics to work on & on which dates.
Without a schedule, you might end up procrastinating i.e. delaying the production of content – which is toxic to your business.
Tip
Don't try to produce too much content at once since this might lead to burn-outs – thus, affecting your productivity levels.
At the same time, don't produce too little content – since this might slow down your progress.
Try to find a sustainable spot – which allows you to produce decent amounts of content consistently for a pro-longed period of time.
5. Execute
Once you have a schedule in place, it's now high time to execute.
This is whereby you do the actual work of creating & publishing content for your platform.
It's important to show up every single day of your publishing schedule i.e. whether you like it or not – coz that's the only way you can accomplish much in your content marketing campaign.
Because if you don't show up, you wont see desirable results – it's simple & straight forward.
Wrapping Up
So that pretty much wraps up our today’s discussion on content marketing.
It's a great form of marketing to get some free organic traffic on autopilot – because once you create content, it will keep getting traffic even after years.
Thus, l highly urge you to look into this form of marketing if you want to stay in business long term.
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