I first of all would like to apologize for my lack of posting in the blog lately, but I assure you that during the time that I have spent away from writing for the MorePro SEO blog, I have found some very insightful information that I am excited to share with everyone.

If you’re new to content marketing, allow me to catch you up to speed with what I like to call the “Readers Digest Version”. Content marketing is the strategy of using informative and persuasive content writing as a way of reaching your target audience.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently, reading marketing blogs, books listening to webinars and so on… and it’s all been about content marketing. I’ve come to several conclusions through them which I believe break down into two separate categories; absolutes and variables. Now keep in mind, content marketing goes hand-in-hand with SEO so even the absolutes could at one point be variables because of the shifting nature of search engine optimization.

Let’s do WORK!

Absolutes

Your Audience (needs)
Even in regards to SEO, I think that the needs of your audience will always be consistent.  I cannot stress enough that 100% of the time, throughout ALL SEO, you need to have your audience at the top of your priorities. If you shift your focus towards meeting the needs of your audience instead of worrying about sales, competition and so on, I VERY STRONGLY believe you’ll find that the output of your content marketing will inevitably change for the better.

If you’ve decided to take on content marketing for anything other than trying to reach the needs of your customers, then the point is completely useless – YOU’VE ALREADY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE AUDIENCE.

(Please check out my other post on SEO content building and rhetorical thinking for more helpful tips on diagnosing your audiences’ needs)

Quality Content
Ok – Please don’t duplicate content from your vendor, silo in some keywords and call it good. You will fail.  It’s a very crucial to have compelling, unique, keyword rich and helpful content for your site visitors, without making it look spammy while developing your marketing content.

Also keep in mind that not every writing strategy is universal. Find a style that will help your customers the most (informative, entertaining, etc…) and run with it. If you can manage to get feedback from your customers on how your content was helpful to them, PLEASE LISTEN TO THEM AND CHANGE YOUR CONTENT BASED ON WHAT THEY SAY!

It can be hard to instill confidence or a style into a particular subject because not everything in the world is as exciting as buying a new Delorean (which I found out is possible today). Again, if you continue to stay focused on the customers needs, the rest should come to you.

Promotion
For the same reason you don’t plant a tree and expect it to grow without water, you don’t create and post new content without telling someone about it. There are many different link building strategies that you can take part of to get that page indexed by the Search Engines and traffic driven to it.

Consider trying to find your audience through targeted mediums and social media marketing such as blogs, forums, social networking sites, email lists or guest blogs.

There is not one perfect way to drive traffic to read your new content, but the point is that unless you go out and tell people about this new content, THEY WILL NOT COME AND READ IT!

Reflection of the Business Model
If you’re not reflecting your business model then your content writing is useless. Quit now and go back to getting links at the footer of casino and prescription websites (if you’re new to search engine optimization, don’t really do that).

Variables

Explain what you do vs. How You Can Do it Better
I have read several blogs talking about how you absolutely have to do one or the other and I disagree completely.

In Example, if you own a carpet cleaning business, would your content marketing aim to tell people that you clean carpet? “Well thank you Captain Obvious! How would I ever know?!”

How about… SEO? If you jump the gun and just start telling a client that SEO is better than advertising in broadcasting, print and billboards, people will start to ask “What’s SEO?”

There ARE choices. Don’t degrade the IQ of your audience by pointing out that the sky is blue, but don’t withhold useful information that could be crucial to the customer’s buying process.

Your Audience (Knowledge)
Your audience may have more than one dimension

Don’t assume that as time goes on your audience can be convinced by the same information. With so much information available at the tip of our hands, you should consider writing different content for the various levels of experience with your service or product.

By adding compelling, unique and keyword rich content for customers with different levels of experience, you’re opening your market up to so much more. In regards to the previous point, perhaps you could be answering BOTH what you do for a new audience and how you do it better for a previous audience.

You really can’t go wrong with having too much quality content.

Type of Content
As I mentioned earlier, there is not “one way” to the top through content marketing. As times change, your customers may be changing as well and may need to see your content on a whole new platform.

It’s always a good idea to leave your options open for the type of content marketing you want to use (newsletters, on site content, articles, etc…).

Try out a couple of different strategies to get started with and watch your correlating numbers closely. Because sometimes you have to scrap the approach to stick to the plan-

SEO
There is really not too much to say about this, SEO is changing daily and SEO strategists everywhere are seeking out new ways to keep up with the changes. I can’t guarantee that this blog will be relevant in a week. However for now, it seems to be proving somewhat successful-

Now I can sit here and type up all kinds of ideas for you and your company to keep in mind while content marketing but the fact of the matter is that there is not “one way” to the top. Content marketing completely relies on creativity and finding a means of harnessing it reach your audience. Whether this be email newsletters, on site content, articles, micro sites etc. etc. etc…  I believe that if you apply these principals in regards to your own means of creativity, you could see some great success.

As a small company, you don’t always have to outspend your competition; sometimes you can simply outsmart them. Your advantage lies within your ability to have a more personable approach to your customers instead of making them feel like corporate cattle going down the line to be slaughtered.

If any of you have anything to share, please do! I would love to hear it.