CONTENT: The Lifeblood Of A 360° Digital Marketing Strategy

Content is the air the internet breaths.

Content is the currency the internet spends.

To create, publish, share, and archive high value contents for a specific target audience to engage with is the whole essence of the internet.

Without content, the internet as we know it is dead!

How CONTENT Drives the Internet

The internet is the information highway of the whole world. This is why it is called the world wide web, it is a web of global information.

People go online to search for information on anything that is of interest to them. The whole concept of the internet revolves around the dissemination of information. It is a technology that was invented to help people share information by connecting with one another.

Think about it, when you send or receive emails, what is the content of those emails? Information right?

Ok. Let’s go deeper.

What about when you update your facebook and twitter status, what are you sharing? Information right?

Now the very obvious one, when you visit Google, what are you looking for? Information right?

There you are, at the core of all you do online whether it is sending and receiving email, chatting through any messenger, Skype or on facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and even watching videos on YouTube, everything involves information.

All your activities on the internet involves two major things; you are either giving (sharing, sending or creating) or getting (receiving, downloading or consuming) information.

And on the internet, all these information is referred to as content.

In other words, content is the foundation on which a 360° digital marketing strategy will be built!

When people go online, they are not going to get to you by tuning to a TV channel or radio station or seeing your ad in a paper. No. They are going to find you by searching for information online.

So what happens when they come searching for information about the products/services your company offers but you are nowhere to be found online?

What happens when they come searching for information about your industry, and you are nowhere to be found online?

What happens when a foreign company comes searching for a local business to partner with, and you are nowhere to be found online?

So if you are an entrepreneur just venturing into the digital marketing space to help grow your business, a good place to start is content.

Before rushing off to create all the whole social media profiles there is; a good question to ask yourself would be this; what content I’m I going to be sharing?

If you can’t answer this question, don’t bother venturing into digital marketing, because you won’t succeed.

What Exactly is CONTENT and Why is it the LIFEBLOOD of a 360° Digital Marketing Strategy?

Content basically is the information available online. Every form of information you consume online is content. Whether it’s a text, picture, video or audio, they are all referred to as content and they are what the internet is made up of.

To successfully thrive online, you need to be doing a great job with content. Content is what draws people’s attention to you; it’s what influences the way they engage with you or your brand; it’s what sells your products and services online.

As a matter of fact, as we like to refer to them here at Differentiate Online™, content are your sales people online. Without them, you can be rest assured no one will give a damn about your presence online.

For us, content is an essential pillar and the engine that drives your entire 360° Digital Marketing Strategy.

So if you’re interested in marketing your business online (and who isn’t at this point?), you can’t escape content marketing. Content marketing is how to use content as part of your 360° digital marketing strategy.

Below is my favourite definition from one of the pioneers of content marketing, copyblogger.

“Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.”

According to them, content marketing is critical to businesses in this digital age for the following reasons;

• Customer Buying Decisions:

People don’t want advertising when making purchasing decisions; they want valuable information — content.

• Word-of-Mouth Marketing:

It’s content that get spread via social networks, generating powerful word-of-mouth exposure for smart businesses.

• Search Engine Visibility:

It’s content that people desire and seek out online, and it’s great content that Google wants to rank well in the search results so those people can find your business via search engines.

• Brand Awareness:

Content is the best way to achieve what advertising is supposed to achieve, but doesn’t do so well online — to get people to know, like, and trust your brand.

Putting CONTENT to WORK for Your Business

Here are 13 questions you need to answer to enable you create a content marketing strategy for your business:

1. Who are your users?
2. Who are your competitors?
3. What do you bring to the table?
4. What do you hear?
5. What content do you already have?
6. What is the purpose of your content?
7. How often should you publish content?
8. How will you distribute your content?
9. Who is in charge of your content?
10. Who will produce your content?
11. Who is going to maintain the content?
12. Who is responsible for the results?
13. What’s your destination (core strategy)?

And if you need our help to put content marketing to work for your business, click here to get started now!