Continuing with what content marketing means…
Continued visibility can be both positive and negative but of course here we are talking about positive visibility. A great benefit of content marketing is being there when your customers and clients need you. They shouldn’t feel at sea when they need to know something about your product or service before making a purchase, or if they are facing some problem after making a purchase.
Trust cannot be built overnight no matter how hard you try. It’s not something like you hire 10 content writers who write and publish 5 blog posts everyday (giving you 50 blog posts everyday) and suddenly people begin to trust you mainly on the strength of the content you have produced on your blog. Of course if you have the money to hire 10 content writers to create lots of content and if you strategically publish that content not just on your website or blog, but also on other websites, it definitely helps set up a presence for you, but if you’re thinking of building trust among people in a short span, it is not going to happen.
Trust is built over a long period of time when you publish helpful, interactive and engaging content consistently. This is why you cannot have a 2-week content marketing plan no matter how much money you have got. Even the biggest brands talk about strategy spanning multiple years rather than multiple months (although there are seasonal and occasion-based marketing plans, but that’s different).
Would you rather do business with a friend or a total stranger? With a friend of course.
When you strategically create, publish and disseminate content, it helps you strike up conversations with people. They talk about what they like about your content, what they don’t like, what they appreciate and what they object to and what they would like to be covered. You respond accordingly by modifying existing content and creating new content. Your gesture is then appreciated. The mere fact that you have responded to them makes them happy and they talk about your response on their own blogs and social networking timelines. Then more people get to know you.
Content marketing allows you to initiate such a cycle. Once you have established such a cycle people know that whenever they need you, you’re going to be there, and this is one of the greatest assurances on the Internet where physical presence is not possible. People might be doing business with you across oceans. They cannot suddenly reach you in case they are happy or unsatisfied. Your continued visibility is reassuring. Through your content you’re continuously talking to people and telling them that look, you know what you’re doing and if they have a problem, you are always there to provide an answer. People can live with substandard products and services, what bothers them is your absence when they need you.