The short answer is that it gets your brand out there and gives information that will help people make informed decisions. So you maybe thinking. “So what exactly is content marketing anyway?”. Ok, I know there’s loads of information about it out there on the web, but how many people are using a content marketing strategy wisely. Really, social media is surely the ideal platform for what we would generally call “Content Marketing”, but in my opinion, too much content out there on the internet is overtly sales oriented, thinly disguised as content marketing.

Sure, we are all selling, but the idea of content marketing is that you provide information that could be valuable to the reader in order to get them to remember who you are, for when the time comes that they may require your product or service. That’s it. No more and no less.

Let me be honest, I’m writing this so that you will hopefully remember that I exist when the time comes that you may require one of the services that I offer.

By the way, do you know when content marketing started? Long before the internet I can assure you. Although to hear some people speak you’d think content marketing was a new thing! I’m not going to go in to when the idea actually started but it was certainly well over 100 years ago. I doubt they called it content marketing back then. I’ve no idea who first coined the phrase but the premise hasn’t changed. The internet has merely made it more accessible.

So what don’t you do in content marketing? Sell. That’s it. Don’t sell! Just provide information with the intent of helping the reader. Does this work as a marketing tool? Yes! I think they call this an Antonym or is it a synonym don’t they? I have to admit I’m not quite sure.

This that I’m doing now is writing a blog post. At least we call it that. It’s not really though. A”blog” is a diary. A “weblog”. Actually what I’m doing is content marketing. Hopefully informing you what content marketing is, so that you can use it to help to build your business. Is that confusing? Hopefully you understand what I mean though.

I’ve had great success with it. I put a lot of informative content on an eCommerce website that I used to own. This was in 2008 when “Blogging” wasn’t quite so well known as a marketing tool. Anyway, it allowed me to build up the business to a point where I sold the company. I now concentrate on helping other peoples businesses to grow.

I should inform you that I run a monthly course about SEO & Blogging. Now do you see where the line between informing and selling can become quite thin? I think the difference is that the point of content marketing is you at least are trying to inform and not just yelling, “Buy from me!”

You can read more about the course on the SEO Course Norwich page.

If you’d just like a chat about it and a coffee, please do not hesitate to contact me by phoning 01603 383477 or filling in my contact form.