Content Marketing, Like Building a Business All Over Again
You spent how many years to build your business to where it is today?
You mean…it didn’t happen overnight?
Exactly. While there is always an anomaly. Chances are, your business like so many others took time to build.
So what makes your content marketing strategy any different?
Your Blog Wasn’t Built in a Day
Truth be told, it doesn’t.
A content strategy has to be backed with a commitment to creating the content that your current and ideal customers will want to read.
People are exhausted by the “Sell Job” that they encounter day in and day out.
What they seek now is information that will help them to make better purchasing decisions; either directly or indirectly.
That means consistently delivering quality content is really the only way to win in the long run. Obviously coupling the content with best practices (up-to-date) for the search engines will help create the synergistic effect that we are looking for.
But what is for certain is that you can’t write one or two posts (even if they are terrific) and expect to move the needle.
The only thing those first two posts accomplish for you is they reflect the start of something critical to your business long term.
Why Your Business Needs Content Marketing
This isn’t review, I promise…
Did you know that businesses with a blog drive 55% more traffic than businesses without one?
I actually thought that number was pretty low, but nonetheless it is a reflection of the “Average” increase in readership that a company that blogs versus a company that doesn’t.
Because basically a company site without a blog is likely just a lot of stale “marketing” content reading like one billboard after another.
This is where “Context” comes into play.
Making it Make Sense – Context Marketing
So if content is the fuel that you feed your site to drive more traffic, then context is the steering wheel that drives the right type of audience.
And the difference while subtle is tremendous.
Having 5,000 visitors to your site in a day may sound great.
Having 5 visitors to your site in a day may sound terrible.
But would you rather have 5k visitors that never buy anything or 5 that are great candidates for what you have to offer?
When you blog, you create content, but when done well you create context.
Which in all likelihood will help you to drive influence that will make someone want to take action.
A Formula for Digital Success?
So if I tried to plug it into a formula it would look something like this…
Now adding a dimension that comes from consistently building meaningful content the formula further expands and will look more like this…
And Influence drives behavior; and in the case of most businesses, the decision to buy something.
But here is the kicker.
The formulas while overly simplistic, are still very representative of the work that needs to be done. And like the business you have built, your online presence and most specifically your community is built in time by providing meaningful content that continues to feed the minds of those that need to consume it.
Because when your audience sees you as the source for the information, it is quite likely they will see you as the source for procurement.
After all, we buy from the people we like, and the people we trust. Which is exactly who you will find in a well built community.
