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  • What Is Content Marketing?

    What is Content Marketing?

    Content marketing is a component of online marketing in which business or content marketers create content which can be of any form such as blogs, videos, ebooks, etc…

    Content marketing is a way to attract users and this helps establish you as an authority in your niche. We all love freebies, and would it not be better if the freebie would be a how to ebook?

    Through content marketing you can gain an audience which is highly relevant to your business and eventually turn into paying customers.

    How Can I Start Content Marketing?

    Find Your Niche & Build Reader / Customer Personas

    Before you create any content you must know who your target audience is. There are a number of ways to find your audience, but the proven way to work is to build reader or customer personas. These explain intricate details of your target audience. You think of every aspect of that person. He is your ideal customer.  The one whose life will become a while lot better when he starts to use your services and he will know of this and will reward/compensate you in return.

    Your persona will typically contain the following information:

    1. name
    2. age
    3. income
    4. education level & occupation
    5. family size & dynamics
    6. interests
    7. primary sources of information which your customer uses to get his information, news, etc…
    8. what are the challenges that your customer faces
    9. what are the motivations that drive your customer

    You can add more information about your customer in your persona. The main idea of this is to help you to understand your customer intimately and to be able to get into his head.

    Ways of Doing Content Marketing

    Once you have developed your reader’s persona, and have your niche it will be easier for you to find a topic to write on. You can write blog posts, or e-books targeting your users.

    Following are some ways which you can create new content:

    1. writing ebooks
    2. writing blogs
    3. producing video
    4. producing podcasts
    5. designing infographics
    6. sharing good quality content on social media sites and content curation sites

    The main idea of content marketing is to create unique high quality and relevant content (or share high quality and relevant content prepared by others) which is of use to your target audience and helps you cement a place of authority in your niche so that your business can be attract new traffic and  customers.

    You can also share your own articles or articles written by others on content curation sites, where you can find your target audience is most likely to attend as well. Like you there will be others who will also be sharing useful content which you further can share as well.

    How I Conduct My Content Marketing Activities

    To give you an example i will be explaining how i myself perform content marketing to build an audience.

    You can do this either as a brand, or personally. I started to do this a few years ago with my personal Twitter account where i started sharing articles on business and entrepreneurship which i found interesting and valuable to my followers. Steadily my following and engagement have grown over the years.

    I also create content in the form of blog articles. I have been writing articles related to entrepreneurship and business on this website, and also have written app reviews on Android and Web Apps on our app reviews website.

    After writing the articles i then share it on a number of social networks, especially on Twitter. I am also conducting SEO activities which will further help attract organic traffic when people search for the keywords that i am targeting.

    Conclusion

    Content marketing is a really affordable and usually free way (in monetary terms) to get customers which are highly relevant to your business. I highly recommend this for startup owners who have a limited budget to conduct their marketing activities.

     

    January 26, 2015 • Entrepreneurship • Views: 5867