Business Content Marketing is a process of engaging the audience through various mediums such as a blog, podcast, videos, infographics, e-books, white papers, pictures, and case studies to retain existing customers and attract new prospects.
Over the past few years, online marketing trends have continuously been changing, which is why businesses are forced to adopt intelligent customer engagement strategies.
Ever wonder why many companies have blogs?
In this article, you’re about to learn why companies including Facebook, Commission Junction, MailChimp, AWeber, and Mozilla each publish on their own official blogs.
The purpose of this article is to share why companies use content marketing and create content.
Why Business Content Marketing?
NewsCred published an article on the top 25 most influential content marketing brands. The purpose of that article was to describe the importance of content marketing for brands.
Hubspot is a leader in online marketing management services and provides a unique marketing automation dashboard which integrates a list of online marketing services. They published this article explaining the basics of content marketing. It clearly shows how important the understanding of content marketing is.
Brands are curious to find ways of keeping their customers abreast and adding new ones to the list. Content marketing is a way to engage the audience in order to avoid them going off the hook. This infographic from adweek.com explained the ideal size and length of the articles, videos, podcasts, SlideShare decks, and much more.
In order to start implementing content marketing concepts to get your brand off the ground, it’s necessary to understand three basic elements of content marketing:
1. Target Audience
You need to know who exactly you’re targeting. If you know whom your customers are, the rest of the process gets easier. It’s not that difficult to figure out who your target audience is. All you need is to ask yourself whom you want to reach. There are multiple types of audiences out there; you have to pick a certain type of audience in order to reach, communicate, and help.
2. Creation of Content
One of the important elements of content marketing is the ‘creation of content’. You have to create some sort of content in order to communicate with the audience. If you don’t produce any type of content, you don’t have any leverage to approach the audience. Whether it’s an article, infographic, video, or a podcast… It doesn’t matter, what matters is, what are you good at?
And more importantly, what can you deliver in the content?
3. Benefit and Solution
This is something which makes your content really interesting. When you offer some kind of knowledge, information, and benefit in your content, it becomes valuable for the audience because it transforms the time they invest consuming it into value and benefit for them. Make sure you have something helpful and useful to offer.
6 Steps to Start a Business Content Marketing Campaign
Every company uses these strategies differently, but the ultimate goal remains the same which is improving the brand’s image and positioning. Here are the 6 steps which will take your brand to the next level:
Step #1: Identify the Company’s Goal
In order to create a content strategy for your business, you have to sit down and brainstorm a bit. Think about the moment when you’ve had a vision of this business. Recall the very same passion and stance. We need similar energy back in the game. Nothing would help us at that time than the purpose of the company.
What was the mission?
Why was the company created?
When you recall that purpose of the company, you need to use that in the content marketing for your business. When you write a blog post on your official blog, make it worthwhile for the readers, so that it resonates with them, and they think it’s written just for them. When you publish an infographic, the audience must find it useful, and when you release a podcast, listeners should find solutions in it.
Lauren Kaye, the Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. also believes that the strategy should be built to make those goals happen. She wrote a blog post about this.
“Once you know your goals and how you want to measure them, you can start to build a content calendar that supports those objectives and targets the results most important to you.” says Lauren Kaye.
Evan LePage, the Blog Specialist for Hootsuite also agrees with me. He wrote a detailed blog post on the official blog of Hootsuite and explained how to align the content marketing goals with business goals.
Step #2: Choose the Target Audience
It’s extremely important to know who is the target audience. The purpose of the content is to establish a connection between the prospects, customers, and the brand. The creation of the content without knowing the target audience is like shooting without an aim.
Have you seen skeet shooting?
It requires a skillful hand and a good aim to hit the target.
In content marketing, a business might have launched its blog to publish content, but the story doesn’t end here – even if the content is being published on the regular basis. Business content creators must know the following things:
- Who are they writing for?
- Who is going to get the benefit?
- What does company want to achieve?
- What is the purpose of content creation?
When the content creator team focuses on these points, they are in a better position to reach the audience through their content.
Kevin Cain wrote an article in which he emphasized the buyer’s identification. He believes that you should thoroughly understand who your buyer is. He described the way a brand needs to create the content to drive success.
Step #3: Understanding Conversion Factors
Conversion factors educate the content crafters and marketing experts on the identification of the signals that describe the conversion. Normally, brands measure conversion rates as either leads generated or sales increases after implementing any outreach or marketing strategy.
Conversion recording methodology strives to measure the effect of a content marketing campaign. Click To TweetEvery business might have its own agenda to achieve when it comes to a content marketing plan. This case study tells us how SAP’s landing page optimization strategy lifted their lead-generation by 32.5%.
The clarification of the purpose drives the strategy to achieve the conversion rate that a brand likes to see. It specifically depends on each brand’s goal that what it wants to achieve. A brand which starts email marketing might want to build an email list of prospects while another brand might want to increase the leads their sales department uses to deliver B2B customers.
The point is, it should be crystal clear on the brand’s end precisely what the brand wants to achieve as an organization. The coherence of the marketing strategy and company’s goal help the brand grow at a faster pace.
Step #4: Set up Engagement Channels
The whole content marketing process is a way of engaging the audience through information, data, articles, videos, audios, and graphics. At some point, we would have to go one step ahead of everything that we already know. It’s not about discovering the new methods in content marketing, but certainly we have to put things together and do something practical in content marketing.
The engagement requires three important factors to be taken care of in order achieve positive results:
1. Identifying the target audience to help them. Make sure you know who you want to help and who should be looking at your tips, suggestions, and solutions.
2. Creating something beneficial for your selected audience so that they get attracted towards you. Finally, you have something to offer to someone.
3. Reaching to them (audience) ultimately becomes possible when you have something in hand to share, deliver, and give it away.
The setup of an engagement channel is something really important. You deserve to know that it’s extremely important to learn the strategies over the course of time. One of the things I’ve learned over the past few years is to never go for multiple audiences at the same time.
Use these engagement channels:
1. Facebook Group: A dedicated facebook group for a community – whether a closed group or an open group – could be a place where you invite or welcome like-minded people to join to discuss, share, and provide valuable information about something specific. It should not be a group where every type of discussion is going on. Instead, clarify via the group’s terms of use what is allowed and what is not.
For instance, Leah Kalamakis runs a Facebook group called Freelance to Freedom Project. It’s a community of freelancers where freelancers get together to discuss, share, and learn from each other. It’s a quite engaging and helpful freelancers community. Members of this group share freelancing jobs, and interested freelancers try to get their hands on those opportunities.
2. YouTube Channel: A YouTube channel is a fantastic way of building an engaged community. Create videos in your niche (for your specific audience). Make sure that your videos are helpful for the audience.
It all begins with the topic/title and it goes all the way to the value of that video. The point is, you have to have some useful message in the video.
For example, Derral Eves is a popular YouTuber. He creates videos on YouTube tips and tricks. He helps YouTubers who want to create YouTube channels or to expand channels they already have to greater success. You might find him on other platforms, but he focuses on YouTube because that is his main concern and engagement channel.
3. Twitter Chat: Many of you might not be well-aware of the Twitter chat concept, but trust me, it is gaining so much popularity. Different brands set up Twitter chats using their own hashtags, and then publicize:
- Their Twitter chat hashtag
- Specific day and time of the twitter chat
- Some have special guests each week
- Others select a sub-topic for each Twitter chat
For example, SEMrush schedules #SEMrushchat on Twitter every Wednesday. The Online Marketers, Bloggers, SEOs, and SEM experts wait the whole week for this chat. They regularly remind their Twitter followers about the Wednesday chat and the guest in-line for the chat.
Above mentioned channels show us different types of engagement strategies. You can create your own ideas to start engaging the people; it will work unless you forget who to target and why.
Step #5: Build a Community of Common Interest
Your brand’s voice should be loud and clear. One of the important steps to be taken care of is developing a community with common interests. The people who like to listen to you and want solutions that you have in mind should have a platform to interact with you.
The community doesn’t necessarily need a social platform to engage people. BuddyPress is a tool from WordPress parent company Automattic that does help in this regard.
Aha-Now is a popular community of bloggers where bloggers interact, share content and make friends. Again, the point isn’t about making a platform, in fact, it’s about making the mindset of the community.
Disqus could be another solution for bloggers and online marketers who want to engage people because Disqus has a profiling system which allows you to follow people and be followed by others.
Meetup is another community building tool which works on the grouping system. You can create your own group or join others’ groups.
It should be your content that engages people to stay connected with your platform. It is one of the perks of writing great content. When people like your content, they know that such a high-quality content will keep coming on your blog, so they stick around to read it.
Step #6: Make Your Brand a Giver
The success of content marketing depends on the utility or benefit which is being delivered to the audience. The value could be delivered by linking the most relevant article or by mentioning helpful tools in the content.
In order to build your community based on your good-quality content, Triberr could be another platform you should check it out. It works on the sharing of others’ content, and in return, your content gets shared.
But, somehow you need to be a giver in order to achieve success. When you openly share people’s content through Triberr, you’ll surely get more followers, which will result in more sharing of your content.
Adam Grant’s bestselling book ‘Give and Take’ emphasized the same thing which is GIVING more than you expect in return.
CitrusBits is a San Francisco-based App development company. I liked their strategy of publishing industry relevant news and gossip on their official blog, just to help raise their audience’s awareness.
When a brand comes forward to help and educate the audience, not only does it get more traction in the industry, but it also increases the brand’s recognition.
Business Content Marketing Wrap-Up
When a business talks about helping the right audience. It finds prospects.
And, when prospects find the brand’s content valuable, they get closer to the brand, hence, the relationship builds up between the brand and the audience.
What does a brand want? A brand wants more customers, customers' happiness, and retention. Click To TweetUse your content to turn your brand into a pool of solutions.
It’s your turn to share your views.
Do you think your business needs a well-organized Content Marketing Plan?
If yes, then what are you doing to create that plan?
I’d love to read and reply to your comments.
Latest posts by Hassaan Khan (see all)
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Great share!
Creating a good content is not as tough as distributing that content on various platforms that decides whether you will fly or fall down.
I really liked the way you presented how a social post should be for different social platforms like facebook, twitter or google+.
Keep sharing!
The infographic included here really gives an easy guide for anyone looking to create any type of content for their business. Thanks for sharing!
Nice post. Thank you for taking the time to publish this information about SEO content writing. The post is not only informative for the fresher minds in the field, it is a lesson well revised for the experienced readers too.
Marliya,
Thanks for taking some out to leave the comment on my article.
SEO is essential, but if we focus more on the benefit using the right MESSAGE, things will definitely unfold in our
favour. This is what I wanted to do in this article.
Our company has found time and time again that if you optimize anything, not to mention content, too heavily for machines you’re just going to fall behind.
Exactly.
Time has changed. And the strategies must be ever-evolving. The intention was to put forth something helpful that practically articulates the message.
Thanks for reading and leaving your comment.
Great post Hassan! I agree that your business marketing efforts should focus on your target audience—the people and not the search engine.
George would love you to read ..OneHalf Helps Cut Costs Up To 70%
Hello George,
I’m glad you liked my article. I’ve learned the hard way. It’s always good to share something you learned over the course of time.
I’m happy I delivered something helpful.
Thanks for commenting.
Hello! My name is Marcelo, i live in Brazil, i like your site the best!!Very Content..
Thanks for giving your time to this one.
I hope you will continue to visit this blog.
Thanks.
These are great tips. Thank you for sharing. Reading this information and the real world examples of success has encouraged me to not give up on content marketing. My goal is to succeed as a Infopreneur, which I have decided I enjoy more than anything else. And this information has encouraged me to keep on going. Thanks again and I look forward to reading many more.
You shouldn’t ever give up on content marketing. The strategies of content marketing may change in the future, but the concept would last for a long time. Things evolve over the course of time, and content marketing is something like that.
Stay tuned!
Great Tips. I am very happy to read your article. You are a very good content writer.I’ll bookmark this website!
Carrolls would love you to read ..Weathertex External Weatherboards
Carrolls,
Thanks for the compliment. I’m glad you read this article and appreciated me.
Thank you!
A really big article, How many words does it have? You have pinpointed each and every small points in business content marketing. In digital marketing social media plays a big role especially Facebook and Youtube, both website having a huge number of followers/visitors so broadcasting new contents will reach more users.
Thank you for sharing this Informative article Hasaan!!!
Hello Abhilash,
WordPress indicates that this post is 2,238 words long. Did you look at all the pages on the 3 SlideShares and read the infographic?
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Richard Branson’s Method To Make More Money By Doing Less Work
Outstanding job! Thanks Hassaan for your diligence.
I’ve visited first such as zoo. How nicely you’ve provided us a basic concept of business content marketing. Online marketers will be amazed and interesting to watch it without doubt.
Jamshedul Alam would love you to read ..SEO Tutorial, Part-28 | The Best SEO Tips for 2016
Jamshedul,
Thank you so much for leaving the compliment. I tried my best to produce something that could help others.
And, content marketing is something I’m passionate about. I do research on content marketing and kept on writing
on different topics pertaining to content marketing.
Content marketing is the best way to promote business. It is an effective tact for marketing. Search Engine also give preference to content.
Hi Bharat,
Thanks for reading the article. No doubt, content marketing is a must-adopt strategy in today’s competitive business world.
Hello Hassaan Khan,
Thanks for providing us with such a beautiful topic. Marketing creates a lot of doubts in the mind, you have best note down in your article the profits of content marketing.
Some important things which I collected through your this post.
Thanks once again.
Shantanu sinha
Shantanu Sinha would love you to read ..Myself Shantanu Sinha, and here’s 20 Things you don’t know about me
Shantanu,
I’m glad you liked this post. I’m looking forward to producing such an in-depth content again so that it contributes to others’ lives.
I’m happy that you left the comment.
Hello, Admin, that’s superb knowledge about content marketing, basically, I have good knowledge about content marketing, but after reading your complete article, I have got more ideas on this article. Thanks for sharing.
Asif would love you to read ..Social Media Marketing (SMM) Tutorial in Urdu
Hello Asif,
I’m glad you liked this post. There is no doubt that my attention was to help out readers. In fact, Gail contributed quite impressively, it wasn’t me alone doing the stuff.
Thanks.
This is a very very detailed guide, something which is much appreciable. Nothing is left uncovered under any topic. Loved the post, thank you so much.
Manav Sharma would love you to read ..Comment on How to start building SEO Backlinks – Beginner Guide by Manav Sharma
Manav,
I’m glad you found it helpful. That was my attention.
Looking forward to writing such posts again.
Hi,
When it comes to marketing, I think I’m really poor and I have been try to outsource myself with quality guide on how to become a better marketer. Going through this post, I centered my mind on following the instruction here on strategy like leveraging my experience on expert shoulder like this, meanwhile how do I measure my marketing performance?
Adesanmi,
Thanks for reading this article. There are certainly some significant signals that tell us about our marketing performance, if you’re measuring content marketing outcome, make sure you analyze the outcome/performance in quarters. It will help you understand that how much or what you invested in the content marketing process, for example, in writing, promotion, distribution, and what has been the outcome?
Tools like SimplyMeasured and BuzzSumo might help you.
Hi, Hassan, great guide for content marketing , social media sites are the best places to promote the contents.
Sadia Komal would love you to read ..How to Get Good Contents to Increase Readership
Sadia,
Thanks for liking this article. I’m hoping that it helped you somehow. Yes, social media sites are incredibly important to promote the content, once you know what and how to do it with social media, it can turn things around.
Thanks again!
Thanks very much for your update about content marketing. Content is the 1st priority of a website, who is targeting online business in the world.
Narendra,
Thanks for reading this article. The ‘content marketing process’ should be a priority when it comes to managing business development online.
I’m glad you liked this article.
Content is and always will be king…. !!! If a site has great content and have a good SEO optimized blog then one can have a better ranking in the search engines… Well your content marketing strategy is really good… It’s very unique and informative post… Thanks for sharing with us…It’s worth reading 🙂
Hello Devesh,
Indeed. Optimized content does work, but there should be no compromise on the quality of content. If there isn’t any message in the content, it’s not worth it.
Thanks for your comment.
Thank you for sharing this story. Good on you. In the hope of progress Great Post!!! I like It.
Thanks for leaving your comment. I hope this article helped you.
Keep visiting and reading this blog. I’m sure you’ll find better articles than this one along the way.
Hi hassan,
First of all the infographics are really good and I am loving them. And secondly the post is worth reading, today again I got some important tips through this site.
Thanks for sharing.
Robin Khokhar would love you to read ..How to Create a Social Bookmarking Site Using Pligg (CMS)?
Hello Robin,
I’m glad you liked this article. The idea was clearly to deliver something to the readers.
Don’t forget to visit this blog again. Hope to see you around.
Hi, Hassaan!
Thank’s for the informative and attractive post!
Content marketing becomes the most important part of overall business marketing strategy. That’s why it’s crucial to perform it in the best way. I suppose that the value of content marketing will increase during the next few years because of the importance to represent the business in WWW.
I agree. Content Marketing will keep on adding value to everything related to online businesses.
It’s quite necessary to adopt, learn, and hone the marketing plan according to the emerging trends.
Thanks for leaving your comment.
Fairly unique topic and perspective, I must say. The post was not only informative for the fresher minds in the field, it was a lesson well revised for the experienced readers too. Thanks for sharing your perspective….
Arul Kumar would love you to read ..Best Online Chatting websites in the World.*
Arul,
I’m glad you liked this post. You’ll always find useful content on GrowMap.
In fact, Gail provided this article some insights and helped me shaping it that way. So, I’m thankful to her.
Thank you for posting this great post about SEO content writing. I was away from blogging line because of my spine injury. This article is a great refresher to me.
Hi Nikz,
I’m sorry to hear about your injury and hope you’re recovering well. You can find additional information:
Also look at my Pinterest boards including:
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Yes, You Can Improve Your Copywriting
Hi Hassaan,I think the most important for success is defying what is your goal.What you want to achieve from your Content Marketing strategy in order to focus your efforts.The is a point to clear before one runs to write a content.you gave some tips for communities like Triberr and Disqus . For marketers I would also suggestinbound.org, growthhackers.com and linkedIn as good places to meet, ask and post.I enjoyed reading, thanks.
James Sun would love you to read ..Resources and Reading list
James,
Thank you so much for giving your input. It always matters when a reader adds value to the cause via comments. So glad to see your comment.
The platforms you mentioned are indeed worth looking.
Thanks again.