If you find it difficult to explain the concept of content marketing to a business executive, perhaps you should try explaining what is content marketing to a child.
Einstein said: “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
When I came across this quote, in another tab I was reading a blog post quoting various content marketing and digital marketing experts explaining what content marketing is.
As a concept content marketing is very old. All those corporate journals and newsletters were nothing but content marketing. The soap operas were content marketing.
But this concept is very difficult to explain to a business executive to whom everything is blurry either because the idea is too good to be true or he isn’t ready to accept that conventional advertising isn’t as good as it used to be (it was never good, it’s just that, now it has an alternative).
So how do you explain content marketing to a child?
Content marketing means…
- Help people with your content
- Make them feel good
- Become a source of useful information
- They begin to like you
- They begin to appreciate your knowledge
- They begin to trust you
- They do business with you
It’s as simple as that.
Of course, it is not as simple as that, but this is the beginning. These are the fundamentals of content marketing. You don’t use content marketing to directly promote your business. You create a platform where your prospective customers and clients find something highly useful or entertaining, on an ongoing basis. Publish your content in such a manner that you don’t hard sell, you are always useful, and people know what business you offer.
Since they know you and trust you, they would rather do business with you than someone they are unfamiliar with.
Take my business for example. I provide content writing and content marketing services. I continuously share useful information about content writing and content marketing on my blog as well as on social networking platforms.
My blog is my base. All my quality content exists here. Since I’m continuously writing on various topics related to content writing and content marketing, people easily find the information they’re looking for on my blog. They also come across my links and search engines for relevant keywords.
Then I’m constantly sharing my links on LinkedIn and Twitter. I’m constantly appearing on people’s timelines. I make sure I share the information they can use to grow their businesses.
This, is content marketing. I publish and disseminate helpful content. People find that content useful. They appreciate it. They may not hire my content writing and content marketing services immediately, but whenever they do, they remember that I provide the services.
This is how you can explain content marketing to a child.