You’ve heard it time and time again: “Invest in content marketing!” But what exactly is content marketing, and why is it such a big deal? Do you even need it?
Simply put, content marketing is a way to help your brand find its voice and stand out from the competition. When done correctly, you will be able to reach your audience on both an intellectual and emotional level.
If you want to get your brand’s voice heard and your company found, content marketing can help.
Keep Your Content Up-To-Date
One of the main benefits of content marketing is that it provides your site with fresh content on a regular basis. If you have a company blog, it is easy to forget to update it and find yourself with a zombie blog, which can negatively impact your site. When people come to your website in the hopes that you will have the information they need and find that it is several months — or even years — out of date, they will look elsewhere for the information.
With a steady content marketing strategy, your brand will be seen as current and reliable.
Increase Your Brand’s Reputation
As a brand, you want to have a reputation as being knowledgeable in your industry. You want people to come to you for the answers they are looking for. With the right content marketing strategy, your content will inform, engage, and help users find valuable information about their desired product or service.
With increased brand reputation and recognition, your potential to convert users is higher. However, you have to remember that it is not an advertisement. Yes, you want to link your content and information for your products or services, but you don’t want to get pushy – it looks spammy and is likely to turn potential customers away.
Search Engines Love It
In general, search engines like Google tend to dislike static websites, meaning if you create your website and just let it sit, Google won’t have any new pages to index. This means if another competing site is creating new content for targeted industry search terms, they will most likely outrank you in the search results.
When you write an article for your blog and publish it to your site, Google will index that page. If those pages are high quality, you have a higher chance of ranking for more search queries. A solid content marketing strategy can help optimize your website to rank higher for industry search terms, leading to increased traffic.
Higher Domain Authority
Continuing along the lines of search engines, content marketing can help raise your website’s domain authority, or how much search engines trust you. This can be done with quality internal linking and backlinking to reputable sites. As a result, your site can get more visibility in organic search results. Good linking will also increase your reputation with customers
If you have a low domain authority, don’t freak out – we promise it’s not the end of the world — though steps should be taken to improve your authority.
Get More Social
With a majority of people now spending a lot of their time on social media daily (Facebook now has 2 billion monthly users), content marketing can help spread your message. When you create new content for your site, you can post that to your social media to generate social traffic, followers, and even leads. Or, you can simply use social media as your company blog.
To get the most out of your social media, a content marketing agency can help you manage your accounts and effectively spread your message.
Remember, Content Marketing Is Not A One-Size-Fits-All Solution
You may be tempted to think of the phrase “Build it, and they will come” when beginning content marketing. It’s not as easy as that. What works for one company may not work for another. It takes experimentation to find what will work best for you.
It also is not instant. Some companies will grow frustrated if they don’t see results immediately or after a month or two. Be patient.
Content marketing isn’t something that you can just pick up and start doing. It takes knowledge of the search engine’s algorithms and rules to ensure you’re making the biggest impact you can without engaging in shady or outdated tactics to boost your rankings, like keyword stuffing.
Contacting a professional content marketing agency can help you get started and dedicate their resources to a long-term strategy that works for you and your business.