One of the things I often find myself explaining to business owners and marketing managers is the difference (in my opinion) between content marketing and relationship marketing. I believe it is important to understand which type of marketing the business wants to concentrate on and therefore which Social Media tools are most appropriate for the business to use. In this blog post, I will discuss the benefit of content marketing in more detail – and give you some insight into how I see content marketing working in my business.
Content marketing should be used when a business can create a variety of added value material on a regular basis. Content should add such a large amount of value that visitors want to sign up for more information and talk about the content.
To give you an example, I have written blog entries for a while but have been particularly concentrating on the distribution of them since Christmas. As a result of writing regular, useful blog entries and using Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn) to distribute them, my website hits have increased 50% over the month and I have a decent increase in newsletter subscribers. I also had the content on my website recommended to others in a recent networking group I attended!
Once people have found me via the blog, they can take advantage of other free content available including my newsletter and video channel. I aim to produce presentations and infographics during the next few months to extend the type and variety of content available.
It is all very well, you may say, giving content away for free – but we are in business to make money. I have a number of offerings when people are ready to find out more. At the first pricing level, my Social Media Simple book will give you more advice and value. For a small monthly fee, you can join my exclusive Social Media Professionals group – to gain access to monthly updates of all the tools as well as a webinar every other month (contact me to find out more). As visitors have a greater need and want to know more, training courses are available in the form of workshops, bespoke or distance learning training courses. At the highest level of content, the ITQ Social Media qualification is still proving popular.
By giving valuable content away initially, I can encourage visitors to engage with me further down the value chain at the pricing level they feel comfortable with.
Next week, I will discuss the importance of relationship marketing and how both content and relationship marketing can be used together. In the meantime, let me know how you implement content marketing in your business.