Content marketing has been gaining popularity for quite some time now and from the looks of it, it hardly shows any signs of slowing down. One of the main reason that’s fueling its momentum are the online businesses have come to adopt this method of marketing.
But what is it exactly that sets content marketing apart?
It’s the approach.
Content marketing strives to deliver value first to its customers before any real marketing or selling is done to them. And it works, really well because potential prospects respond positively to it.
Like many things that are gaining popularity, many people have plenty of misconceptions or the wrong idea about content marketing. It’s actually a simple case of misunderstanding and being informed by those who misunderstand.
But, it becomes damaging when misinformed people start to adopt this strategy with the wrong mindset. With the wrong mindset, these people will be doomed to fail long before they even the true potential of content marketing. Of course, they don’t see it as their fault, and they only see that it is their tools which are at fault here.
So to avoid jumping into content marketing with the wrong mindset, take a look at some of the misconceptions about it :
Content Part Is Easy
Let me save you the trouble and allow me to put it in the simplest of terms.
Coming up with content is NOT as easy as many people think.
In fact, according to a study, coming up with ENGAGING content for content marketing is the biggest challenge faced by many online businesses. This is closely followed by CONSISTENTLY coming up with engaging content. Yes, you have to write great content plenty of times. The quest to constantly deliver value to your readers can be…never-ending.
You didn’t think content marketing would be that easy now did you?
What is important here is to actually sit down and get the creative process going. Adequate research has to be also performed, such as keyword research, market trends, target audience research, their likes, dislikes, wants, needs, desires and such.
Only from then, can you know WHAT to write so that it WILL APPEAL to your target audience. Content is only as valuable as your potential prospects who appreciates it.
Remember, you are writing FOR your target audience, and to do that you need to better understand them, or be in their shoes.
Job Done After Writing
Let’s say you are an artist and you have just painted your finest masterpiece. If you frame it, hang it up on the wall for display and wait for people to come, is anyone going to? Well, unless a miracle happened, nobody is going to come because nobody knows you finished painting the said masterpiece in the first place.
The same goes for your online content. Nobody will come to read about your published masterpiece if nobody knows it exists in the first place. No matter how great a masterpiece is, it is not going to attract crowds by itself. It is a crowd-pleaser, but it isn’t a crowd-puller. Not yet anyway.
You have to optimize your content to be search-engine friendly and you need to distribute it on the right channels to ensure it get the exposure it needs to generate traffic back to your site. But of course you don’t want to pull in just any crowd. To be more efficient, you need to go where your target audience is.
Social Media Is A Better Alternative
Many people abandon the idea of content marketing because it is too hard, it takes up too much time and too much effort. So they turn to social media instead. They think, how hard is it to talk in 140 characters at a time right?
Well, just how much value can you give your target audience in 140 characters or less? Yes, not much either. These people just do not see the bigger picture. When content marketing works in SYNERGY with social media, the potential is many times better than any of these methods alone.
Content marketing can be propelled with social media and a social media strategy can be more effective with great content backing it up. In other words, content marketing can’t really take off without social media and social media just doesn’t really have the “Oomph” without the right content.
So, instead of choosing one, by employing both methods, it can have a far greater impact that can change your business and bring it to new heights of success.
Content marketing is not a new fad or trend, nor is it a shortcut. It is just a new and more effective approach in reaching out to your customers and connecting to them on a deeper level (which was long overlooked). In the end, having 1 loyal customer is always worth more than 2 non-loyal ones. And with content marketing, you are going to have plenty of loyal customers at hand.