Content marketing has been around for a very long time, but has grown sharply in popularity in recent years. Google’s crack down on just about every easy link building tactic and the growth of social media marketing have made content marketing a compelling choice for growing a business.
Content marketing can benefit just about any business. By creating useful content targeted towards your desired audience, you can generate more leads, become an authoritative source of information and build brand awareness.
More website content through activities like blogging and tool creation can also result in more traffic through search engines, social media and people sharing your content with others.
Why Develop a Content Strategy?
A lot of people think that content marketing is just blasting content out on a blog, but developing a documented content strategy often produces much better results.
According to Content Marketing Institute, only 35% of organizations have a documented content strategy. Out of those with a documented strategy, 60% say that their organization is effective versus 32% with only a verbal strategy and 7% for organizations with no content strategy.
For Small Business Ideas Blog, traffic grew at a slow rate when there was no strategy at all. Once I approached blogging more strategically, traffic increased considerably, including a 1,310% increase in 2014.
Referral Candy also saw a significant increase in their website traffic when they developed a content marketing strategy.
Taking the time to define your objectives and create a content strategy is a necessary step if you want to experience the best results.
What’s in This Guide
Why Create a Content Strategy? – This page which explains why taking the time to create a documented content strategy can be effective in terms of increased traffic, conversions and sales.
Content Creation Strategies – Coming up with content ideas on an ongoing basis is one of the challenges that content marketers face. This chapter gives a few effective ideas for generating ongoing content ideas so that you never run out of things to write about.
Content Marketing Tools – To be effective at content marketing, you will need to use some tools. This chapter gives an overview of some popular tools that content marketers are using to save time, manage the whole process and increase traffic to their websites.
Promotion & Conversion Tactics – Content creation is not enough to succeed at content marketing. This chapters goes into some promotion and conversion tactics to drive traffic to your content and convert that traffic into sales.
Content Marketing Audit Template – This list of questions will help you identify the weak points in your current content strategy. Even if you don’t have a content strategy yet, go through this list to start formulating an effective content marketing plan.
Top Companies for Content Marketing – Although there are many companies that are doing content marketing profitably, these are some of the most well known. An analysis of these content marketing companies should give you an idea of what other real companies have done to achieve success and even thought leadership with their content.
About Brian Liang
I agree with all six parts of your content strategy guide. I very much in agreement with “A lot of people think that content marketing is just blasting content out on a blog”. It is very true.
Thanks George! I see a lot of companies blasting out content, including some digital marketing companies and then quitting when it doesn’t work out. Hopefully people will start working more on creating real value in their content as time goes on.
Content marketing is a good strategy of growing business but over doing of anything can harm the visibility as previously Google penalized lots of sites used this strategy to build links.
Marketing is always a diversified process where we have to build lots of strategies, implement lots of execution plans and then we need to measure the ROI and accordingly we need to change and adopt.
Thanks for sharing this article, enjoyed reading this!
Thanks Sonia – content marketing definitely needs to be done the right way.
Great post Brian.
This makes so much sense. I see SO many blogs that post content that is all over the place. One post will be about internet marketing, the next will be about the latest smart phone. Sure doesn’t make sense and I doubt they get much traction, with, as you said, the shotgun approach.
Enjoyed the read 🙂
Thanks Ron, I’ve seen that too. Thanks for stopping by!
Guess there are only two options in generating visitors. Pull marketing with google adwords or content marketing. In both ways you have to pay, it´s just a question if spending time writing articles is worth the effort and helps attracting the right kind of visitors that convert into clients.
Hi Joern. I’d say those are 2 of the more popular options nowadays, but other tactics still work including outbound sales, PR and other tactics depending on what you’re selling. But there’s a lot more buzz around content marketing and it does tend to be more of a long term strategy.
Hi,
Content marketing is a best way to increase their bussinss.I totally agree to your all strategies which you mention here.
Thanks to share with us.
Thank you Sonam for stopping by and for your comment.
Hi, Brian,
A strategy for content is really what makes content king – not the content as much by itself.
Great article!
Sue
Indeed, Sue! Strategy and processes certainly can create some nice results.
Hey Brian,
I have to agree with you on this!
When I first started I didn’t have any type of strategy for content marketing. As a matter of fact, i didn’t know you had to have a strategy LOL.. This went on for a couple of years, but within those years I learned that it’s vital that you have strategies and act upon them. This will measure how far you came, what you need to do to improve, and how your audience respond to your content.
Great reminder and share Brian! Have a great weekend!
I found your post on kingged.com under the category of content marketing
http://kingged.com/content-marketing-guide-how-top-companies-generate-1000s-of-visitors-each-month/
Thanks Sherman, you too! A lot of bloggers start out with no strategy, but coming up with strategies and systems definitely makes a difference.
Hi Brian,
Good stuffs man. Enjoyed it and guess what?
I’m sharing this around! Definitely coming back for more and keep up the AWESOME job!
Reginald, you rock! I appreciate the support!
Every blog I see out there preaches the same mantra over and over again: Content is King.
That’s all fine and dandy, but for some people, writing content is as hard as rocket science.
Seriously, I am the absolute worse when it comes to writing, let alone engaging writing.
I can’t really dish out hundreds of dollars to pretentious freelance writers nor can I dedicate 10s of hours for a 700 word blog post.
Believe me, I write a lot. It’s just I can’t write great. So, can one of you bloggers out there focus on DEVELOPING your writing as opposed to saying the same thing over and over again?