In a world where we are inundated with advertisements, content marketing offers a refreshing approach to connecting with audiences. It’s not about pushing products or services directly, but about providing valuable and engaging content. Content marketing allows businesses to showcase their expertise while delivering meaningful insights to their audience.
In this blog, we’ll explore the importance of content marketing, why it matters, and how it can be a game-changer for businesses looking to stand out in a competitive digital landscape.
What is content marketing
Content marketing is the creation and distribution of useful content to current and potential clients. This content showcases a brand’s expertise and experience in their field, whilst also providing useful knowledge for the reader.
This is a marketing tactic that isn’t directly selling a product or service but provides relevant and useful information to prospects and existing customers.
Types of Content Marketing
There are many different types of content marketing, the most popular being blogs. Some other examples include:
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- Social media posts
- eBooks
- Influencer marketing
- Case studies
- Whitepapers
- How-to guides
- Courses
You may choose to utilise all of these things in your content strategy, or you may only wish to use a few. A yoga studio may benefit more from influencer marketing, podcasts and video tutorials, meanwhile a law firm might be better suited to an infographic explaining law proceedings and case studies from high profile cases.
Effective content marketing is as simple as providing your target audience with the stuff they want to see.
Why content marketing is important
Content marketing is a marketing tactic that is proven to work. Companies who utilise blog content tend to generate 67% more leads, and 47% of marketers believe that webinars help to engage with their top of the funnel leads best. It’s not just brands that want to create content, 89% of customers said they want to see more video content created by brands!
Content marketing in SEO
Your SEO efforts can also be helped by content marketing. A ranking guideline known as EEAT or Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, is a Google guide to assess whether content is accurate, reliable and helpful to those searching for it. High quality, well written and thoughtful content can improve your ranking and therefore lead to more users on your website, and more conversions.
You can also utilise your content to target different parts of the search engine results page or the SERP. Google recently introduced the AI overview which provides a summary of a query using up to three sources – this sits at the top of the search, similar to classic features like featured snippet, people also ask and reviews. These features give your company a chance to rank for questions and search queries that your potential clients are searching for.
Content marketing and social media
Content marketing can level up your social media presence and increase your engagement on different platforms.
As demonstrated above, if you create a blog about agricultural occupancy conditions, an accompanying infographic or small social video explaining the conditions is a fun and easy to view way for your followers to develop their understanding. From one blog alone, we now have multiple social media posts where followers can engage or click through to read more about that topic, driving website traffic.
Social Proof
Social proof is a term that was coined in 1984 by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: Science & Practice that summarises why we reflect the actions of others. Social proof suggests that when someone is looking for a product or service, they will hunt for recommendations, reviews and reputations of brands before deciding to buy from a company.
Social proof in relation to marketing could mean reviews, case studies, knowledge of a topic and success stories. This type of content is vital for improving the perception of your brand and providing social proof that you are the company to buy from.
Content marketing is more than just a trend; it’s a proven strategy that helps businesses connect with their audience in meaningful ways. By providing valuable, relevant and engaging content, brands can build trust, establish authority and foster long-term relationships with their customers.
Whether it’s through blogs, videos, infographics or other mediums, content marketing offers endless opportunities to showcase expertise and drive engagement. It plays a pivotal role in boosting SEO, enhancing social media presence and providing social proof—all of which contribute to a strong and credible brand identity.
If you want to start creating content that matters, why not get in touch with WorkPR and see how we can help today. Or check out our case study about how we created useful content for Circyl.
