Content Marketing

Content Marketing: A Blog About Misconception

Content marketing still seems to be right at the top of what is important for digital marketing strategies. After all, “Content is King”.

There’s a big misconception out there: content marketing is blogging, right? Content marketing and blogging each offer value but they are definitely not the same.

Blogging (informative articles) should be one part of a greater content marketing strategy. Regularly published articles are great for giving answers to what people need to know. Blogging, no matter what format, video, audio, written or other, is a great way for an ecommerce website to share experience, knowledge and skills, for example. Blogging works for an ecommerce site in a number of ways, allowing your online store to show off and gather (engaging – another buzz word) the interest of potential customers. It’s a great way to connect with potential customers and stay in touch with current customers. It’s been the backbone of inbound marketing for years, way before digital came about.

How Content Marketing Differs from Blogging

Content, any content, may just look like content if you are not looking at it from the marketer’s perspective. If content marketing appears to be content that is marketing something to you, then it is not being done very well. Now the same can be said for a good blog post, it should be genuinely informative and not come across as marketing either.

However, content marketing is much bigger. As I mentioned, blogging is a sensible piece to have in your content marketing mix. I don’t know how anyone could say that blogging and content marketing are unrelated.

Content Marketing Isn’t All That New

The best content marketing goes completely unnoticed as it communicates. Content marketing can and will have many elements providing information and creating associations with your business and the value in the content that you provide to potential consumers – it’s important to remember that content isn’t always just information too.

Some of the most obvious examples are (as a hypothetical) recipe websites by potato growers associations and the like. We know they want us to buy more potatoes but that doesn’t really have much to do with all those great recipes they provide on that website. The recipes are valid and appreciated on their own, while still influencing us as the potential consumer.

That recipe website is just one part of a larger content marketing campaign, which aims to provide independently useful resources right through to influencing influencers, there’s no limit. The next thing you are trying the healthy chip flavours at the supermarket with Curtis Stone. Content marketing isn’t new either, it’s just highly invigorated by the ability and tools we have to communicate today.

Content Marketing Campaigns Unique to Your Organisation

Other content strategies focus on the “pain” or the “problem”. It might sound a little strange but sometimes we don’t know we would really like a better option until a “problem” has been explained to us. You don’t have to be stuck with high-interest rates or you are not the only one with male pattern baldness that affects so many men. You didn’t know that there’s something to solve that for you until the problem is revealed, although you (we) have been living with it all along.

I guess that is what I love about content marketing, there is no limit and each campaign is filled with fun and informative ways to take a potential customer through the journey to your brand or businesses’ loyal ambassador. Great content marketing creates demand by providing an experience from awareness of back problems to sleeping on a comfortable mattress and getting up each morning feeling great – every one of them is unique.

For us at RD, there’s something deeply satisfying about providing that honest and genuine way. As this is an introduction because there is just so much to cover in the world of content marketing. We will talk more about content marketing in more detail from a number of angles in coming posts; step-by-step, as with all good digital marketing.

 

Want help with blogging or a larger content marketing strategy? Talk to us at RD now.

Posted in Content Marketing.