Online content marketing is imperative to establishing a brand or company as a leader in their industry. But how exactly does one go about doing it in the most effective way? The answer lies in a two-pronged approach: developing content that caters to your customers’ needs coupled with leveraging search engines and interrelated marketing strategies to drive traffic to your site or blog. The OpenSesame marketplace offers an array of elearning courses to get your organization thinking mindfully about your online content marketing, and teach you to carve a unique place for your organization online. Here are 3 key factors you need to understand before building your content marketing initiative.
- Content: Content is your information, knowledge, expertise, and value packaged into an appropriate online format. For many businesses, content takes the shape of blog posts, white paper resources, e-books and slideshares. What format you choose comes down to whatever attracts the type of viewers you are looking for. Try these courses for tips on how to develop unique, rich written content:
- Strategy: How are you going to generate attention for your content? How are you going to get your content out there? These seemingly simple tasks take a great deal of strategizing. The key is a combination of making your content attractive, and initiating effective outreach to promote your content in the appropriate niche. Effective blog outreach, search engine marketing (SEM), and leveraging social media sites are all key factors. Here are some courses and resources to get you thinking about strategy for your content:
- Audience: In order to market your content successfully, you have to understand your audience: what they want, why they want it, and how to speak to them in a way that conveys the value of your content. It is important to identify what needs for content exist and how your expertise can meet those needs. For example, if consumers and individuals are increasingly demanding resources about IT certification, a strong content piece might be structured to outline and simplify the topic. You can strategically provide relevant links to your product and then submit the piece to a top tech blog. Here are some courses on how to identify a target audience and generate quality content that satisfies a need:
In short, content marketing all comes back to the information and ideas your business has to offer. Your content should be valuable to your potential customers, while inspiring them to purchase your product or services. Your content marketing strategy should support your content by generating buzz and exposure for what you’ve produced. Content marketing centers around delivering value to a target audience, so both the content itself and the marketing strategy should focus on their needs and desires. By successfully understanding these three elements of content marketing, you can create successful online marketing campaigns that increase brand awareness and sales.