Content is what makes a website stand out. It is what your audience interacts with, reads, comments on, shares, and buys into. It is the lifeblood of your business. Content comes in many forms, even though many people still make the mistake of thinking it is related to blog posts and written work alone. Content is found in your emails, your social media posts, your interactions with customers online, your advertisements, your web copy, your Youtube videos, your podcasts, and of course, your on-site content.

Content solidifies your product and service as legit and reliable. The more information there is about you and your company, your products and services, the more likely it is that your website can be found online and the more likely is it that those interested searchers convert into customers.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is just what it sounds like. It’s the creation of interest in your product or service, by utilizing content, both on your website, as well as others sites’ and across social media. On the surface, it seems like something that might be easy to accomplish, especially since you know your business better than anyone. But, content marketing is a specialty like any other type of marketing and requires specific knowledge and skill sets.

The advantages of content marketing are plenty, but the most appealing thing about it is that if you are willing to trade your time for content, you can get away without having to spend too much money on a marketing campaign. But experts would warn you against trying to take it all on by yourself. It’s a lot of work. Period. If you are not a good writer, or if you don’t like writing, dedicating yourself to writing thousands of words of content a day could become overwhelming in no time.

Content marketing is a great way to spread the word about your business through the written word. It enables you to craft a story about your company, product, and brand, and it puts your business on the map in a way that traditional advertising never could. There are no commercials, website banners, or Adwords spots big enough to capture everything you want to say about your company. That’s where content marketing comes in: you can write blogs, record videos, share social media posts, and get your audience really involved in what you are doing with your company -- but it takes a lot of effort.

How Can You Create Effective Content?

In order to create effective content, you have to ask yourself if you really have the time to commit to it. It is necessary to put a lot of time and effort into creating an effective content strategy, but if you don’t have the time you can hire a professional writing service, or freelancer to do it for you.

If you decide to go it alone, you need a content schedule. Set aside some time each day to get your writing, recording, and posting done. Using software packages to schedule your posts and videos to social media is an excellent idea; otherwise, you will need to be tethered to your phone and computer all day, never getting anything else done. People do that, but it’s not a good way to go about sharing your content.

If you schedule the time to write a blog post or record a Youtube video, make sure you stick to your commitment. Treat it like a doctor’s appointment: you wouldn’t miss a doctor’s appointment, and the health of your business depends on your ability to make that appointment day after day, week after week. Set reminders for yourself, keep notebooks near your bedside so you can jot down ideas as they come to you, and use tricks like idea generation exercises to help you push through writer’s block. No one said it was going to be easy, but it is possible.

If you decide that you just don’t have the time to create and manage a schedule based on creating content for your business, then you will need to hire someone or task this very important job to someone already in your organization. The person who is in charge of sending the messages out into the world should have a solid grasp -- actually, a full and intimate understanding -- of the business operations, goals, vision, mission and more. You basically want to clone yourself when it comes to putting your business communication in the hands of another. This is where it can be a good idea to hire a marketing firm or professional; someone who understands what needs to be created, how to create it, works well with others and knows what audiences want to see. It will be just as important for this person or organization to stick to your content creation schedule - content must regularly be created in order for it to be effective.

How Content and SEO Work Together

SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, continues to be one of the most important aspects of a business’ online presence. How a search engine views and interacts with your website can make or break it. Truly, it can. And if you think that slapping up a blog page and some social media posts is going to drive traffic to your website, you’ll be sorely mistaken. The inner workings of the internet and how search engines interact with websites changes all the time. It is vital to the success of a website’s searchability to have its SEO in order.

There are a number of ways to increase the authority of your website in the eyes of the search engines, and one of them happens to be content creation. A while back, Google decided that websites that weren’t providing valuable, user-centered content was going to be stricken from the search results; or at least, rank poorly amongst the results. This meant that if your website was poorly put together or didn’t provide perceived value for your audience, you lost rankings almost instantly. What it was meant to do was target the web spam operations, but it actually also impacted a lot of small local business websites that were trying to build audiences without the proper knowledge of how to do so.

When you increase the amount of value-based content on your website, Google, and other search engines will be able to recognize that and rankings can improve. Using keywords that identify your business, service, product, brand, and relationships in your content can also help improve those rankings over time. Content also allows you to earn quality links to your site because when it comes to content, quality links to quality. With earning links being as important as ever, it’s critical to fill your site with linkable assets.

Content isn’t just a way to drive traffic to your website to make sales; it’s a way for businesses to connect with their customers like never before. So many businesses thrive because they take a transparent approach to the scaling of their operations - they share their ups and downs through their blogs, social media posts, Youtube videos and more.

All of that creation and sharing, when done right, builds the authority of your site and your web presence. That authority is the backbone of which organic rankings are built upon. When you create content, you build a strong foundation of trust and give search engines a reason to rank you highly. Content is definitely still king when it comes to SEO and online marketing; he’s just wearing more hats now than he ever has before.

About the author

Sam Borcia is the CEO of CoFlex Marketing, an Internet marketing agency for law firms, providing SEO, web design, and public relations services to lawyers. Sam has been featured on websites like Entrepreneur.com, Next Level Web, Logojoy, and Marketer’s Center.

https://coflexmarketing.com