MORE ABOUT CONTENT MARKETING

When it comes to web marketing, as well as all other marketing material, you are what you publish. Remember the definition of Content Marketing: content that educates and empowers readers.

In his book, “Five Pillars of Content Marketing” Joe Pulizzi lists the five pillars as:

1. It must tell a relevant, valuable story. It must be informative, educational and or entertaining.
2. The content has underlying marketing and sales objectives that your target market is trying to accomplish.
3. Seeks out to maintain or alter the recipient’s behavior.
4. Should be incorporated on a multi-platform level (print, digital, audio, on-line communities, video, and events).
5. Should be targeted toward a specific audience.

Lately blogging has been in the forefront of on-line marketing. Blogging alone, even with good content, will not provide the maximum possible results. Remember, content has to live on your website, social media, on-line articles, e-mail marketing and all other aspects of internet marketing.

Always keep in your mind that the primary goal of online content marketing is creating as much inbound traffic as possible. Successful inbound marketing means that your target market will go to your website to obtain all the information (content) you need to share to convert an inquiry to a sale.

That means that your website has to also have specific content which will expand the initial interest into an action. There are well in excess of 500 million websites on the World Wide Web, thus a website marketing and management plan is essential. Like everything else in the world of small business, the only constant is change. The same has to apply to your website. Too many small businesses build a web site, and it remains a static, non-changing presence, which produces little or no results.  

Website work should never be considered finished; the fluid nature of websites is their greatest strength. Constant monitoring of your website, the traffic it receives and the results it produces is vital to growing a successful on-line marketing program. For the most part, changes are easy to make and content, ease of use, visual appeal etc., are all things that should be constantly improved.