One of the most important aspects of digital marketing is content for your business. The old cliche “content is king” holds true still today in the internet age. I would even argue that the single most important thing you can be doing to promote your business online is creating content.
Make Yourself an Authority
The first thing you want to do is become an authority in your industry. If you are good at what you do, chances are you already ARE an authority which makes content creation simple. All you really have to do is talk about what you do, blog about what you do, make videos about what you do. Share your expertise.
Joe Pulizzi is an authority on content marketing. He formed the CMI (Content Marketing Institute) and wrote the book ‘ Epic Content Marketing‘ He suggests that finding a niche within your industry is the biggest factor in becoming an authority. He cites the example of a pet store owner. The “Pet Supplies” marketplace is vast and dominated by well funded players like Petco, PetSmart, etc. So a more lean and nimble organization might begin producing content specifically about “Pet Travel Advice” that will help them to dominate a niche within the “Pet Supplies” industry.
Quality backlinks are a huge part of organic search optimization and the best way to get them is by producing quality content that is shared and quoted.
Evergreen Content for Your Business
A long term marketing strategy is one of those things that never really seems like it’s necessary until you have used one. One of the biggest issues with digital content is the speed with which it is consumed and forgotten. With that in mind what’s best is to create a solid “pillar” theme and then develop small branches off from this.
Content Pillars
Essentially you want to create one large piece of “authoritative” work that can then be broken down into several other more detailed and in-depth pieces. As you do this each piece feeds into the greater pillar and becomes a pathway for a new user to discover your larger body of work.
Positioning Content For Your Business
The best place to source content for your business is from your own daily interactions and experiences. If there’s a question you get a lot you can answer in a simple blog post do it. Chances are people asking this question in Google will find you and use your business for other needs out of gratitude. This of course isn’t always the place but this is more and more the type of ecosystem you’re going to be playing in so it’s a good perspective to have. I’m not advising you to give away the farm, but you can maybe take a couple fence posts out and let people play on your lawn. That’s how you build trust among people who aren’t already your customers.
Make Yourself Useful
When you create content that responds to the needs of your prospective customers they are much more likely find you. A wise person recently told me: “Cold calling & old school sales is dead because everything we want is right at our fingertips” – I don’t think anything sums it up better than that. If you want to get customers you have to make yourself visible to the people searching for what you do. Creating content that is useful is the best way to do that, so get out there and make yourself useful!
