What is content marketing and what exactly does it have to do with you? Well content marketing is a buzz word we seem to be hearing a lot about lately. But it’s not a new concept at all. Content marketing was around a hundred years ago and it’s just as important today. Only today with the advent of the internet, it’s become a more prevalent part of our lives.
Let’s look at our friends over at Porn Doe. Their Alexa rating is something around 7,301 at the time of this posting. That means out of the millions of websites out there (according to Alexa.com), Porn Doe is the 7,301 most popular website.
As I’m sure you can imagine, their website gets thousands and thousands and thousands of visitors a day. According to one source, they get more than 130,000 unique visitors per day. That means that more than 130,000 actual unique people visit their website each and every single day.
But you know what I’m sure they would like? Even more visitors per day. I mean, who wouldn’t, right?
Content marketing is a strategy they can use to draw in even more traffic. But what does that mean?
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
For example …. infographics. You see them all the time now on sites like Facebook and Twitter and they are in fact a perfect example of content marketing. Some company took valuable information they have from their own website, and put it out there in a way that not only informs and educates you about (whatever subject) but in doing so, promotes their own brand at the same time.
Case in point: When people visit the Porn Doe website they often times will use the search feature to try and find a specific type of video. Porn Doe can then release that information to the public letting us know the most popular type of videos right now.
(I’m making these number numbers up for example purposes)
51% of all visitors from the United States prefer “teen” videos while 64% of all visitors from India prefer “lesbian” videos.
One company posted an infographic that said “Leading bloggers outsource 25% of their blog posts to external staff.” It’s one simple fact that some people will find interesting and pass it around and every time someone does, that promotes their business.
Let’s look at a sample infographic from The Wall Street Journal. Now every time someone shares this picture of internet social media facts, it promotes The Wall Street Journal.
Think it’s not a big deal? Think again.
78% percent of chief marketing officers think content marketing is the future of marketing.
It’s better than your typical advertising methods like banner or text links for a variety reasons but I think the most important is that if it’s helpful, it’s usually more memorable than normal advertising.
Content marketing builds trust and grabs people attention.
Infographics aren’t the only form of content marketing but they are probably the most popular.
You can also do it in the form of eBooks. Create an small eBook about a specific subject that is relevant to what your website is about. Save that bad boy as a PDF and then give that eBook away for free. Now every time someone shares that eBook with someone else, it will promote your website.
Just remember, the rule of thumb here is to educate and inform, NOT SALE! Sure you can put your website name on the footer of every page of that eBook but don’t do anything else to push your website. Instead make an actual eBook that is informative and helpful. Create something that people will want to share with others.
You can also create helpful and informative YouTube videos (as long as they are G or PG rated. Remember YouTube hates porn!)
Look what this guy did.
Creating videos like this inform and educate and at the same time promote the guys website. That video is a perfect example of content marketing.
So if you aren’t content marketing, get on it! You have no excuse now that you know exactly what it is!