So before the term “content marketing” was being thrown around the Internet so much I was using it and not even knowing it was a “thing“. It just made since to me to create content, put it in front of people, and bring them to my site with a call to action.
And that’s basically what content marketing is…
Create content that your niche wants to know about, make sure that somewhere in the content there is a call to action to come to your site, and put it in front of them…
Easy right?
Well… It IS, but there are some things you need to know…
1. You’ve got to create content that people actually want to read/consume. If no one wants to read your content then why create it? They’re not going to read it and come to your site, so why waste your time? There are lots of ways to find out what the people in your niche want to know about.
SIDE NOTE: My good friend Arun Chandran has created a guide with 12 different resources you can use to find topics YOUR niche really wants to know about. It’s called the Content Creation Formula and you can see it at http://www.IMWithLiz.com/ProductCreationFormula
2. Your content has to be really really really… Did I say really? GOOD! You cannot just throw something together throw it out into the Interwebs and think people are going to crawl over themselves to view it.
You’ve got to grab their attention with a good headline, a cool graphic, a cool video intro (depending on what kind of content you’re creating), and then keep them consuming your content by keeping them engaged. If you’re not good at this find a professional to do it for you!
3. Have a strategy! If you create killer content and then just throw it on you blog again… People are not going to come running just to see what you’ve got for them. Ypu’ve got to have a strategy!
Example: I have a squeeze page at http://imwithliz.com/sp/ultimate-list If I want to use content marketing to get traffic to that page I need to sit down create 5-10 topics my niche wants to read about, decide what kind of content I want to create (blog posts, articles, graphics, videos, etc) for each of those topics, put a call to action in each piece of content, and then decide how I will distribut my content. I could put it on my blog and tweet about it, share it to Facebook (I have a lot of friends in my niche), use Facebook ads, upload it to YouTube (if it’s a video), upload it to graphics sites (if it’s a graphic), and the list goes on and on.
So all of this should give you a better understanding of content marketing, and the example above is exactly how I use it in my business. I’ll be talking more about creating killer content and how I distribute it in future posts, but for now you should have a better understanding of how it all works and what you need to do so that it actually works for you.
No crap content…
Have a call to action in ALL of your content…
Get it out there…
That’s it!
If you have comments or questions please leave them below…
Liz
P.S. Creating content that people actually want to know about and will actually consume is your first step. I mentioned above a killer resource called the Content Creation Formula from my friend Arun. It’s got 12 resources in it that you can use to find topics to create any kind of content around that you want. That’s where you need to start so make sure you pick this guide up before moving forward! >>> IMWithLiz.com/ProductCreationFormula
