Having great content and a good website are only half the battle in promoting your brand and selling your products and services.
The fact of the matter is that there are thousands of websites just like yours, selling the same types of products and providing similar content.
In order to take your share of the pie, you have to be willing to go the extra mile. This is what content marketing is all about.
The first thing to understand about content marketing is that you can’t have just a few pieces of content and expect to stand out from the crowd.
It takes constant streams of fresh and compelling content to get the job done.
You have to constantly be adding to your content management, through articles, blogs, white papers, videos and simple tweets.
Even this is not enough. Consistently generating unique content is only half the battle.
You have to market that content so that it is seen by the masses. The easiest way to do this is through social media. Make your content compelling.
Provide your readers with something unique, something interesting, but something related to your brand.
Post it on social media sites, and wait for the shares to begin.
You may not see results right away. It can take months for a new content marketer to see results in social media.
Many times the posts seen the most were made months in the past. It takes many shares for your message to be seen by the most people.
You have to have a long-term strategy that will bring you the traffic you need and give you the results you desire.
But the key here is still fresh and compelling content. The more content you put out there, the more you market that content, the more your brand will be represented.
This is the key goal of content marketing. Every website needs to market their content in these ways.
Of course, there are other benefits of content marketing besides generating traffic to your website.
When you consistently provide readers with interesting and informative content, you establish yourself as an expert in your field.
You build trust. You build familiarity. And this trust and familiarity makes it more likely that someone will use your brand when they do visit your site, or think of the products and services you provide.
It makes it more likely that they will tell their friends and family about your site when they hear that someone else can benefit from your brand.
Content marketing doesn’t just lead to traffic. It leads to sales. Which is, of course, the ultimate goal.