Content marketing is the process of sharing ‘remarkable’ content on the Internet and having ‘warm’ customers find you, as opposed to conventional marketing which hopes to interrupt ‘cold’ customers by pushing your product or service directly to them.
People are so barraged and overloaded by information today that they filter out traditional marketing efforts, making them considerably less effective. Content marketing is marketing that works well in today’s business environment. It’s effective, low-cost, and actually fun to do.
In the simplest of terms, it involves three methods: improving search, blogging, and social networking.
Let’s say you sell office furniture. Using conventional marketing, you would send direct mail, advertise, cold call, get referrals, etc. Using content marketing you create valuable content about furniture uses, types, trends – and make that content available and searchable – bringing customers to you.
Online video should be an important part of any content marketing strategy, because video can communicate so much, so well, so quickly. And by using sites such as YouTube, video is searchable and can take on a ‘viral’ life of its own.
Here are several great resources that explain the process and will help you get started.
Inbound Marketing book by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah (easy to read and highly recommended).
What is Inbound Marketing? by Clay Schossow.
What is Inbound Marketing? by Nick Stamoulis.
What is Content Marketing? by Joe Pulizzi
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing by Brian Halligan.
If you have additional resources, please submit them as comments.
