For people more involved in Digital Marketing, Content Marketing is pretty core to a lot of their online marketing strategies. However it can be easily overlooked or not noticed by people less involved in the day to day of running an online presence. In a lot of ways Content Marketing is just “marketing” or “online marketing.” It’s such a basic aspect of creating a website and promoting a site online it’s not always singled out as its own service.
That being said, we’ve singled out Content Marketing service as it’s an important cornerstone to most digital strategies. We also feel it’s important to help educate our clients about this important piece of their strategy.
What is Content Marketing?
Before going into how Content Marketing can help with a site’s credibility, we suppose we should explain what it is. If you’re already familiar with Content Marketing feel free to skip this section. Otherwise read on!
A basic part of Content Marketing is blogging. Basically what you’re reading now. This is Content Marketing. We’re creating content (in this case blog articles) to share on social media, improve our site’s SEO, and generally show current and potential clients we know what we’re talking about.
Beyond just blogging, content such as these blogs (or anything else really) can be shared on social media as an important part of a social media strategy. Without content there’s no social media.
Of course Content Marketing goes deeper than that. Depending on your industry you may want to create bigger pieces of content like an eBook to better explain your service to a prospective customer.
Going further there’s video, online quizzes, interactive content, and more.
For example, say you’re an accountant based in Mornington. A good Content Marketing strategy may involve a weekly blog article with general tips on better managing the money for a business. If written properly these articles should improve search rankings for this Mornington based accountant while also giving them something to post on their social media pages. This keeps their brand front of mind. Around tax time they may want to release an eBook about how to better prepare business taxes, and offer this as a download. All this needs to be promoted, of course, but it’s about offering something to customers and becoming trustworthy.
And That’s Where Credibility Comes In…
Hopefully you’re starting to see how Content Marketing can help with credibility.
On the basis of it, if your business is providing some good advice for free in the form of blog articles, social posts, and more, customers will see you as a credible and reputable business. Good content showcases a brand, and people love brands. A brand is something reliable that people can trust.
We recall a story by Rand Fishkin of both Moz and Sparktoro fame. The story is quite old (in digital marketing terms: probably about 10 years old) so we’re having trouble finding the original source, but from memory Rand started growing a mustache and Googled for articles on different mustache styles. The article he found was written by an online store that sells mustache wax. While he didn’t buy any mustache wax on that visit he knew that the company knew what they were talking about in terms of mustaches and came back later to buy some. The brand established that they were credible and knew about their niche. And they got a sale out of it.
Content Marketing Isn’t a Replacement For Other Things
If there rest of your site isn’t strong no amount of well crafted blog posts, social content, and interesting video will suddenly improve your brand. Content is just one of the many drops that fill up the bucket of credibility.
Content is also one of those things you need to keep working at. It’s always disappointing to see an otherwise “good enough” business online that was interacting a lot on social media and had a vibrant website suddenly stop all this six months ago. What happened? Do they no longer want to interact with and help their customers?
And that’s what we’re all in business for: to help customers.