Beyond Whitepapers, Special Reports and Articles
Content Marketing is: Creating and disseminating of content to promote a product, service or organization. To capture leads, drive traffic and increase your database (and customer base) you must develop a content strategy that will help you achieve your goals. Content does not, however have to be complicated, nor lengthy. Some of the best content is simple, to the point and often entertaining. YouTube is filled with this type of content, which is why they have become the number two website in the world (just behind Google).
So you probably think that you have to have a video camera, an account with YouTube and some software to help you edit and upload the video once it has been created. Well, yeah… sort of. But today’s modern mobile phone takes videos, and can even upload it for you. Not into video? If you are more left brained and like to share important statistics, knowledge and information, you can start with PowerPoint slides. Create your PPT presentation and then use Slideshare to upload your own slides and share CONTENT in a visual and interesting way. Better than a whitepaper, it can capture the essence of what you want to share while it educates and entertains your audience.
In this slideshare presentation, Marketo , a leader in content creation and strategy shows how Content is evolving. Accorging to them: “No longer are white papers and webinars the secret to inbound marketing success, visual is becoming the norm. Get ready to kick the tires and light the fires around your content strategy as we show you how to effectively utilize visual content like infographics, video, visual note-taking, memes, and even Instagrams into your marketing campaigns. We’ll show you how to amplify this content using the top visual social channels like Pinterest, YouTube, and Facebook. Give your content a viral shot in the arm.”
5 Rules for Content Marketing
1. Don’t Create Content if all you want to do is show off! By that I mean your one-sheet, flyer or brochure that is 80% about you and only 20% about your audience. Great content should be the converse. No more than 20% about you and 80% about your audience –
2. Keep it simple and relevant – give your audience information they cannot easily find elsewhere. No regurgitation of information that has been said a million times before! Better to give little chunks of useful information, that large doses of information overload.
3. Create a Solution – your content marketing strategy should provide a solution, solve a business (or personal) problem.
4. Create content that showcases your company in a good light, with good design, structure and intellect – that means it is free from errors, makes sense and gets to the point.
5. Share Social proof – good content can be sprinkled with testimonials, statistics and industry standards thereby verifying the validity and importance of the subject matter.
And finally, your content should “support your company or organization’s objectives. Don’t create content simply for the sake of creating content. A series of small informative articles or videos is much more important to our overall goals if they support your company mission and vision.” It just doesn’t make sense to spend all that time creating content if it does nothing to reinforce your overall reason for existing.
