Part 4 Fundamentals of Digital Marketing: Content Marketing

This blog is the fourth in a five-part series all about digital marketing. In this post, we’ll dive a bit further into Content Marketing.

In Part 1 of my series on the different aspects of digital marketing, we covered a brief overview of all of the elements that make up a well-rounded digital marketing plan. In the rest of this series we’re going to look at each of these elements separately so that we can get a better understanding of each, and then use them to create our own digital marketing strategy.

What is content marketing?

As we covered in Part 1, content marketing is the creation and distribution of high quality content tailored for your users. It can encompass content in written, audio and visual form for your audience to consume across any channels you’re active on. I think the important part is that, no matter what part of digital marketing you want to make the most use of, content marketing is going to be an essential part of your strategy and process, not something separate. The Marketing Helpline has a great article here that outlines how content marketing is integral to every element of digital marketing. Neil Patel also has tons of great info and resources about content marketing on his site.

What type of content should I create?

Your content is anything in written, audio or video form that you create for your audience. Which of these you choose will depend on what you feel most comfortable with. Video is great, but if it makes you feel too awkward if will probably be obvious and not look too natural. Podcasts are great and becoming increasingly popular; people can listen to them while doing day-to-day tasks where they otherwise wouldn’t be learning or consuming anything, and as such you can get more of their focused attention (i.e. while they’re driving to work, going for a run, doing the dishes, etc).

Written content is also hugely valuable and easy to share on your website and social channels, and can take less time than writing a script for video and creating a good quality clip. Whichever form of content you choose to use in your content marketing (or whatever mix you’d like to do!), you need to think about what is more useful for your audience and what can give them the most value. Here are some ideas for types of content that people love to consume:

How do I use content marketing for my business?

The content you produce is integral to every part of your digital marketing strategy. You can create written blog posts on your website which you can then publish to your social channels as part of your social media marketing efforts and then send an excerpt to your mailing list as part of your email marketing strategy. You can create videos that you upload to YouTube or Vimeo and then share them across your website, to then go out to your social channels. Regular, high quality content will also greatly help your SEO efforts. Publishing new and relevant information on a blog page or news section of your website will help keep your website relevant and useful for your consumers, which will help you rank more highly on search engines. All of this combined will also help build your brand, which makes you more memorable and relatable to your followers while also strengthening your SEO.

Where do I start?!

Rather than try to cover all your bases and risk not doing a thorough job of each, you should choose one form of content to produce and start creating one piece of high quality, long form content on a weekly basis. Focus on content that will be useful for your followers, something that will help them solve any problems they might have. Ask them what they want to hear! Choose a form of content to create that you’ll be comfortable with, brainstorm a list of ideas, and set aside a block of time to start creating. Often, it can be easier and more productive to spend a whole day creating upcoming content, rather than dipping in and out a couple times a week.

Using content marketing to build your brand

Ultimately, content marketing will be a part of the process of your overall digital marketing strategy, rather than a separate factor that you can take or leave. Marketing can’t exist without content to market! There are so many great resources around to learn more about specific parts of content marketing, and you can learn so much with really in-depth tools provided by key industry leaders these days. Content marketing is a means of telling a story to your followers that helps them solve their problems while building your brand.

Up next: best practice and pointers for Email Marketing

If you need to catch up, you can read Part 1,  Part 2 or Part 3 on my blog. Next up in this series is the final instalment, where we’ll take a look at social media marketing. As always, I welcome your comments and questions below!