Content Marketing 101

The great thing about content marketing (aside from it being an inexpensive form of “grass roots” marketing that works) is the dedicated investment in your business that pays off over and over again, year after year.

When you create content today, it will be working for you years from now. Creating content isn't only about marketing; it's about educating, engaging, and possibly entertaining your audience simultaneously.

Steps for Captivating Marketing

Content marketing is a simple concept to both understand and implement for marketing success. Use these four steps to succeed with your content marketing efforts:

1. Create a Website for Your Content
   It doesn't matter if you have a bricks and mortar business or a strictly online business. It's important that your content has a home base. You want to drive all traffic there. Many Solopreneurs starting out will swear that they don't need a website. They will stick with Facebook Fan Pages or Google+ Pages.These are all great but not to be used as your brand's content origination. These other sites can, and do, change the Rules of Engagement all the time. You don't want to lose content or your audience should one of these proprietary websites change their minds and deem your content unworthy of the front page or even existing on their servers.Create your own website where you create your rules and post your content until you change things up.You never want to drive traffic outside of your website if it can't be valuable to lead to solutions for your audience. Any content you put online should drive traffic to your website in some manner. Driving traffic to your website will ultimately drive people into your store to purchase off- or online.
2. Create Optimized Content in Multiple Formats
   As mentioned previously, the content that you create should be engaging, entertaining, and educational for your audience. When possible, feel free to repurpose your content into various formats and stretch the life of all of your content.There are multiple forms in which your content can take shape. Magazine articles (both on and off your website), blog posts, short reports, slideshows, eBooks, audiobooks, videos, podcasts are just a few examples of content that you should produce and promote for effective content marketing.
3. Build Your Email List
   The key to any successful content marketing campaign is building an active email list. Use content to build your email list by writing value-driven, keyword-rich content that attracts your target audience to your website.Direct them to sign up for your email list using pop-ups, sign-up posts, and ads offering rewarding gifts. Once they sign up for your email list, you can market your other content to them, educating, entertaining, and engaging them.You also want to encourage them to purchase your products and/or services when possible.This will be easier because they've given you permission to market to them. They came to you for a reason so use this channel to notify them!
4. Market Content on Social Media
   Social media is awesome for marketing your content in a way that your audience can join in and share with their friends and family. Share all your content on social media, including your blog articles, images, podcasts and more.Place buttons in your content so when visitors are on your site, they can easily share your content through their preferred social media networks. This gives you the opportunity to attract their friends and build an even larger following.

The Rundown

As you can see content marketing doesn't need to be difficult but it will require discipline. Through repetition, you can cycle through the above without much of an effort. Automation with the help of tools like HootSuite and Buffer can help you manage this task without hassle.

Use a publication calendar (otherwise known as an editorial calendar) to plan out in advance the content that you want to create for every product or service that you're marketing. This will make it easier to create effective content on a regular basis. content that is educational, engaging and gets the results that you desire.

Remember to make your content educational, engaging, and entertaining. This will get you the results that you desire.