Increased competition has made it tougher for businesses to score high quality projects. Today, clients are under more pressure to create results and can’t afford to take a gamble on creative services. A smart business owner needs these services, but they want to pay less, often times because they don’t know where to start and that can be pricey.
Content marketing is one marketing tool that business owners can put to work to gain exposure and establish authority. The need for this content is never ending so where is the best place to start?
The idea of content marketing came from the need to create educational content that’s focused on the overlap between your expertise and your prospects challenges. Sounds great by definition, but it still doesn’t define a starting point. What kind of realistic results can you expect from your efforts? How much time is involved? And just what kind of content should you create?
Only two things are needed to get started with content marketing: clear positioning and one voice. Remember, you don’t have to be super spectacular or fancy just clear.
4 Simple Steps of Content Marketing
Develop quality ideas
You know more than you know. We take our expertise for granted and don’t realize we’re sitting on a wealth of information. The problem sometimes sets in when we try to extract the data for our minds. One idea is to form topic ideas like, who are you talking to and what do they need to hear. Clarify your positioning.
Other methods of extracting ideas is listening to your own complaints. When you’re venting, what problems do you come across? Which one repeat themselves? Expound upon these ideas and you’ll be surprised how fast that content builds up. Listening to your own opinions helps also. If you’re really passionate about your field, this is the place to let it all out. Lastly, listen to your market. What causes your customers the most trouble?
Quality is the key and to establish yourself as an authority then quality has to be guarded like the family cornbread recipe.
Determine the formats
How does your audience consume information? You have to market to them where they already are for optimal return. Are they reading newsletters? Watching podcast or videos? Are they reading white papers, surveys or original research? Or are they attending events?
There’s no magic formula, so ask them how they like to consume information and what formats are they accustomed to. There’s no magic formula here, this is the information extracted from repetitive conversations.
Find the right people
So now the content is created, what do you do with it? Most people spray it across social media networks in broad strokes. While this make me a person feel like they’ve done something, there are ways to tighten the slack.
If you don’t have a blog, find one, then get yourself on it as a guest blogger. It’s a chance to get direct positioning in front of a targeted audience.
Capitalize on results
It’s important to have realistic expectations about the return from your efforts. Oh how I would love to send a newsletter to someone with a $100,000 job on their desk and that be it. While it can happen, it’s more realistic to assume that from a consistent effort with content marketing and its distribution, you increase your position as an expert in your field, and that can get you in front of the clients with the big jobs on their desk.
Once you start to become know, you being to establish relationships with people and trust results from those relationships. Then the ball starts to roll downhill.
While content marketing can appear to be a hungry beast, with the right strategy and consistency, success will be yours to enjoy. Now that we know how to better create content, we can begin to repurpose it and make it spread to a wider audience. Quality is key, so remain diligent in delivering ideas and strategies people can’t do without.
About Reico
Reico is the owner and team member of The Applied VIsual, website design and development company. He is also available on Twitter @AppliedVisual
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SEP
2013