As an entrepreneur, you face a lot of competition from businesses producing similar products or services to yours. With the increasing ease with which customers can search for products and services online, the competition is even more intense. If you cannot be found online when a customer searches, no one will know about your product or service. If this happens to you, the probability that your business will be short-lived is high.
You have heard that for you to increase traffic to your website and hope to turn visitors to buyers; you need to produce content that they can consume. You have heard that Content is King,
And this is because in its nature content has the power to reach consumers in ways that encourages them to engage with the message being communicated rather than being interrupted by it. It is a key concept of marketing, especially in the digital space.
This has been a popular saying over the years now. While I agree with this assertion, I would rather look at it as Quality content being King and it needs to be in the right place at the right time. It has to have the right impact. In my opinion, content that is not strategic does not speak to your audience and does not engage this audience, then, Content is not King. It will go unnoticed or it may be seen by a person who does not need it.
So content needs to be marketed appropriately for it to achieve the purpose for which it was created.
Content Marketing
DIGITALMARKETER defines “Content Marketing is the creation and distribution of valuable content to build and engage your audience to your brand”-
Quality Content can attract and engage your audience because it has been written specifically for them, now this kind of content is King every time and your business needs more of it in the coming years. This is also known as inbound marketing which has the purpose to attract your customers, gain their trust and hopefully convert them as opposed to outbound marketing which predominantly uses sales tactics.
You can see from the definition Content Marketing above how Digital Marketer, makes use of 2 keywords, Creation and Distribution. They are both equally important to make for a successful Content Marketing effort. The distribution system has to be the right one to create impact and you have to leverage all the platforms that you would expect your audience to spend some time.
So consider these points to make your Content truly King
1. Content Creation
Content can be in the form of:
· Text
· Videos
· Audio
· Infographics
Whatever form you are using to convey your message you must make sure you are targeting the right audience. You know exactly who they are and what kind of information they are searching for. Your content must be able to engage them by creating information that helps them at a particular point in their buying journey. You don’t want to spend a lot of time writing something that does not resonate with your audience or your client’s audience (if you an external writer for a company).
A typical customer buying journey
According to Business2Community social media success and marketing campaign success depends largely on companies creating engaging content and using content creating tools at your disposal to market brand.
2. Content Distribution
It is not the end of the job once you have created your content and posted on it your blog. You have to distribute the content as much as possible to increase traffic to your site and hopefully convert a lead and sell your product or service.
Yes you have used your blog as a distribution channel, but there are others, such as
· Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc, all of such places where your audience is likely to be. And believe me, they are online. According to Statista.com in 2018 2.65 billion people were using social media worldwide and this is expected to increase to almost 3.1 billion in 2021. So you can see that the potential is huge.
· Audio podcast
· Digital Magazines or books and many more
And with each media used, you need to make it interactive and engaging. Get your audience to do something with the content. Like it, share it, download it, retweet, etc. encourage comments where possible.
So to recap, Content is King and will be so for a long time, therefore businesses whether small or large need to be taking content creation seriously. However, for content to have the desired effect, it needs to be of high quality, consistent. It needs to be speaking to and engaging the audience and it need to be distributed and promoted on the appropriate forums.
