Everything you need to know about content marketing.

Content marketing is a crucial aspect of any successful business, which by now is common knowledge among more or less every business owner. If you're behind the curve then let me catch you up quickly - because this is not a trend that you want to pass you by, in fact this isn't a trend at all. Content is one of the most important things for you to focus on if you want your brand to succeed online and will continue to grow in importance over time because guess what; Google NEEDS content. High quality relevant content is what Google wants and loves, and therefore if you give it that, it will reward you - handsomely.

Simply put, content marketing is the creation and distribution of content. Whether that be to your own site, your social media like Facebook or Instagram, or to other third party sites. This can include blog posts (like this), news articles, videos, podcasts, images, and more.

The aim of content is always the same - to get yourself in front of a potential (or existing) customer in order to:

- Increase brand awareness, visibility, credibility, and potentially even thought leadership

- Build your relationship with the customer

- Generate leads and drive sales

- Retain existing customers and encourage advocacy

- Differentiate from competitors and establish a unique brand identity

- Educate and inform audience about products or services

- Can build backlinks, referring domains, domain authority, and traffic

When you're in an industry where brand image and trust are large factors at play, third party content on news sites that people know or trust can have a huge impact on customer acquisition. When you're in a highly saturated field, a blog post where you show your knowledge and expertise can be just as effective. Or if you're in a less competetive field, unique content about a lesser known topic can establish you as the expert and the one to go to. These are just a few examples of where content can be used to thrive online, not even including the content marketing you're probably most familiar with - keeping up to date with Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn posts.

So here's what you need to know about content marketing:

You need to be doing it more.

Now that the big 'what' is out of the way, the timeless question arises, how.

Here it is broken down into three stages, with expansions into each stage below.

1. Content creation

2. Content optimisation

3. Content distribution

A quick note before we break these down - Irrefutable Marketing takes care of all three of these steps in a completely done for you content marketing service. We create, optimise and distribute six different types of content to over 450 authority sites, so you don't have to worry about any of this. You can learn a bit more about that here, or you can read on and do it the manual way!

Content creation

1. Define Your Target Audience Before creating any content. it's essential to define your target audience. You need to understand who your ideal viewers are, what their needs are, and how you can address those needs through your content. You can segment your audience based on factors like industry, location, company size, and pain points. Understanding your target audience will help you create relevant and valuable content that resonates with them.

2. Develop a Content Strategy Once you have defined your target audience, you need to develop a content strategy. Your content strategy should align with your business goals and target audience. You should determine what type of content to create, how often to create it, and how to promote it. It's crucial to have a content calendar that outlines your content creation and publishing schedule.

3. Create Valuable Content. The most critical aspect of content marketing is creating valuable content that addresses your target audience's pain points. Your content should be informative, engaging, and actionable. You can create various types of content, including blog posts, infographics, videos, and webinars. You can also collaborate with industry influencers to create guest posts and interviews.

4. Then, create it! Use Microsoft Word, Chat GPT (with some heavy edits afterwards, PLEASE. AI content is not good enough on its own, yet), OBS studios for recording, copy.ai, pictory.ai, quillbot.com, or any other software you can find.

Content optimisation

1. Optimize Your Content for SEO. To outrank other websites on Google, you need to optimize your content for search engines. This means using your own expertise in your industry to think about what people are searching for based on their needs, common queries, and the solutions that you specifically supply.

2. For example, marketing agencies know that a pain point for businesses is having low traffic. Therefore, if a marketing agency was to do a piece of content targetted at their audience, they may do a blog post titled "How to get more traffic for a local butchers in [location]". Then, when a local butcher is searching for this, it is very likely that this content will be ranking at the number one spot, because it is high quality and super relevant, which is exactly what Google wants to see.

3. Then, you incorporate these keywords into your content, mainly into the title of your content. If on your own site, you should also optimize your meta descriptions, title tags, and header tags. Additionally, you can use internal and external links to improve your content's credibility and authority.

Content Distribution

1. Creating valuable content is not enough; you need to promote it to reach your target audience. You can promote your content through social media, email marketing, paid advertising, a distribution network like Irrefutable Marketing, or putting it on your own site. You can also repurpose your content into different formats and distribute it across various channels.

2. Measure Your Results To determine the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. You can use tools like Google Analytics to track your website traffic, engagement, and conversions. You should also monitor your social media metrics to see how your content is performing. You can use these insights to optimize your content marketing strategy and improve your results.

In conclusion, content marketing is a critical aspect of any successful company's digital marketing strategy. By defining your target audience, developing a content strategy, creating valuable content, optimizing it for SEO, distributing it, and measuring your results, you can outrank other websites on Google and establish your business as a thought leader in the industry.