The beginning of content marketing can be traced to one person – just you!
That was back in 2013 when YouTuber MarkEdison published his recipe for success
Surprisingly, publishing video tutorials on YouTube helped him tremendously. Word spread through fans who subscribed to his channel, which eventually grew to over 1 million views.
And how did he pay for it? Ads.
He started by creating ad units directly into his channels and then slowly expanded to business-related topics through advertisers.
Resulting in more subscribers and increased income. Now, what if you created content that could help people with things they were struggling with? This is the basis of most blogs and websites.
They create helpful guides and resources designed to speak to specific audiences and their needs.
Such is the reason why content marketing has been getting so much buzz these days. Web users have come to expect reliable sources of information across all platforms. They want to know that whatever site they are reading comes recommended from others.
The idea of offering valuable information in your own platform instead of going out elsewhere is the concept of content curation. Many bloggers start here. Instead of linking to other sites, they will create informative posts that lead readers somewhere else (usually another trusted blog).
It’s not really content marketing unless someone pays for access to it, right?
In 2011, TRS (Ten Most Asked Questions About Community Building) was created, which gets downloaded thousands of times per year. And then there are the daily tips and guidelines that are put out there for others to read and follow.
You build off previous efforts and have fun adding new things to keep it evolving. Content is what catches people’s eyes and stays in their mind.
It’s how people discover you and your business. If you want more people to find you and buy from you, writing good content is important. According to research, written quality content keeps customers longer. People who do not use technology should know that visual content isn’t always better, it’s just cheaper.
Content marketing starts with thinking of interesting topics and projects. It continues with finding ways to make articles and tutorials accessible to as many people as possible. Finally, write down everything you've got to say and organize them into issues or lists. From there, it's way easier to produce quality content.
For most small businesses, content marketing starts with creating email newsletters. You can use this same process to send out freebie items, special offers, events and news updates.
Content marketing is about being relevant and valuable to your target audience. So rather than focusing on how you’re going to sell them something directly, you focus on providing information that they will need or want for their own reasons.
For example, if your customers are looking for ways to increase productivity at work, you might create a short article showing many different methods for doing so. Rather than selling me an ebook or audio program, you help me solve my problem by giving me usable info.
You also may provide tutorials, guides and other helpful resources that I can access anywhere, any time. Your advice can be as simple as offering great tips and tricks or as complicated as writing entire books focused on productivity apps and tools.
The goal is to attract and keep readers who wish to learn more about boosting their productivity. We do this by providing good ol' fashion information as well as testing new products and techniques to make people's lives easier.
Online media began with blogs in 2005. Dave Morgan (founder of Pinaki) said that digital content has been around since the beginning of time, but it was not really content until you put it online and gave people a way to link to it.
Content marketing is just taking offline content and putting it online for the world to find. Blogs are very popular among companies because they can create helpful resources free for anyone to access.
Companies pay Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter fees to promote their content to their members and subscribers.
Some say that these is no difference between online and offline advertising; others claim there is a clear distinction.
What hasn’t changed is the importance of storytelling. For years now, brands have relied on stories to convey messages about themselves and what they offer.
Stories tell consumers why someone deserves your business, why you deserve theirs, or what making yourself available will cost them.
Without a story, even the best-branded product is without appeal. A few words describing how something works may be enough to close the sale – but more often than not, potential buyers need to know why this thing should belong in their home.
The rise of content marketing has been linked to the increase in digital advertising. Many brands have started creating rich media campaigns using things like blogs, videos, images, and social posts.
Content is what attracts people in their own way. It’s interesting and creativeand sometimes that takes place after you do something. People are drawn to it for many reasons — maybe they want to know more about a topic or brand, or maybe they want to know how to do something specific.
The key part here is “more”. More content provides both new opportunities and old favorites — increased exposure and easier access, as well as guidance and information (about topics, products, services, etc.).
Brands can use content to drive customers and sales efforts through increasing conversion rates, but also website traffic coming from organically grown sources.
Getting into a rhythm of regularly producing high quality content will help your audience respond better to it. Similarly, if you put out content that needs improving, you’ll get improved results when you re-run the same content with improvements.
Consistency is your friend!
In his excellent book “Content Magic”
Kyle highlights several differences between marketing before content awareness days and today. One major difference is tone. A website built out in the era of content marketing aims to inspire people to take action by offering unique stories and information that appeal to the reader.
It uses language that inspires confidence or curiosity in the reader, rather than urging them to perform a task (e.g., buying the product). The style goes for storytelling instead of data-heavy text. It focuses on developing trust with the readers.
In my opinion, good content marketing starts with a story. Whether it is written word or graphic media, I believe stories have a much more powerful impact when it comes to selling products or services. A good story will evoke an emotional response in the audience, helping them connect with the brand or its products.
According to Kyle, we live in the age of broken music. Music used to be a piece of art, but artists would play songs from their own albums at their performances to create emotion.
Now musicians pick songs they think others will like and play them for free! To make money, you have to buy tickets. \$5–10 per ticket may seem expensive, but if you put any thought into who you are as a person and what you love to do, then why not pay something closer to how much it costs to see a band?
The best part about concerts is
For me, content marketing started in 2009 when I worked at The Guardian. We had just introduced our blogging platform and were beginning to develop quality content for readers and advertisers.
We assigned teams of reporters and editors to cover specific topics that were related to blogs. And we invested even more in creating good-quality content with video projections and additional materials (like eBooks).
The key here is to focus your efforts where you can add value. It’s hard work investing time into building an audience, but it pays off in terms of growth and engagement.
Content is what makes people come back to your website or app. That includes returning visitors (who maybe ready to buy) as well as new visitors.
Having high-quality content will attract people looking for information, while providing them with a helpful resource. If you connect your content to social media sites, they’ll share those resources with their friends, which helps build awareness around your product.
Blogging is not something that started recently. If you look at the early roots of blogging, it’s about as old as the internet itself.
However, its rise in popularity has been fast-paced since the end of the 2000s. You can credit the advent of social media with stimulating the boom in web content marketing.
Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ all have dedicated blogs. It seems like every week there’s a new website to keep up with so you’ll probably run into them on your travels.
In fact, 92% of businesses claim to use blogs to generate traffic. That number rises to 97% for B2B companies.
What are blogs used for? Web development tool suppliers surely know how to write, but here’s what they’re made for.
In 2013, more than ever before, quality content marketing is an important ingredient to success. But how did we know that being heard through content was even possible?
Well, according to Eli Davidovich, founder of digital advertising agency Dataloop, it started with one thing…
Audiences.
Before there were audiences, why would you create content? “You’d have these moments in time where people had stories about what worked and didn’t work for them,” says Davidovich. “But once they started sharing those stories with each other, things shifted.”
By the early 2000s, people were starting to share stories from their lives via social media platforms like Facebook. What made those stories unique was not just the fact that they were told by someone personal to the storyteller, but also because the audience knew exactly who they were talking to, and could relate to them.
“When you tell a story through your own experiences, everyone can connect to you because they feel like they know you,” says Davidovich.
