Category Archives: Content Marketing

What are the benefits of content marketing?

Benefits of content marketing

In this blog post you are going to learn about some indisputable benefits of content marketing.

I have never advertised my content writing and content marketing business.

I have “boosted” a few posts on Facebook and recently I also “promoted” an update on Instagram just to see how it affected my followers rate (I got just one follower), but other than these, I have never used the conventional tools, even AdWords, to promote my business.

It is just content marketing.

When and why did I start using content marketing to promote my services?

In the very beginning itself. Back then, there was no concept of content marketing, but I knew that if I published my tutorials and articles on other article-publishing and tutorial-publishing websites, it would bring traffic to my own website.

Blogging wasn’t invented yet and I used to manually create HTML, PHP and ASP pages on my website, linking to them from a single web page (just like we have the blog home page these days linking to the latest blog posts).

I didn’t have money to spend on banner ads or link ads and to be frank, I never even found them attractive. Promoting my services through content always fascinated me. I got a high.

I promoted my web design services through content marketing in the very early 2000s and then post 2005, I have really started using content to promote my content writing services.

I was so enamored with text that once I had my website just made of text, not a single image.

Text-only content writing website

Of course, in between I have lost track, gotten distracted or gotten busy in other pursuits, but whenever I have come back to promoting my website, I have solely relied on this form of marketing and promotion.

What are the benefits of content marketing?

Listed below are some indisputable benefits of content marketing:

Brings down marketing costs

Conventional advertising and marketing can be costly. You pay for every view. You pay for every click. You pay for every exposure. You pay for every engagement.

With content marketing, yes, you pay for good quality content, but it is a one-time cost. Some pieces of content work, and some don’t, but the collective benefit that you get from it is far more potent than the benefits that you get from conventional advertising and marketing.

You need to spend more on conventional advertising and marketing because people notice you as long as you are paying. Otherwise, it is “out of sight out of mind”.

Improves your conversion rate

Since, through content marketing you are building relationships and not simply promoting your products and services, your conversion rate is better.

By the time people decide to become your paying customers and clients, they thoroughly know about you and whatever you are offering. Through relevant content, you have educated them, you have informed them, you have also helped them.

Makes it easier to find you

One of the most important parts of content marketing is spreading your content on different platforms.

When you publish your content and then post the links on social networking and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, people like it or share it on their own timelines. Hence, people on their timelines can find your content.

Other bloggers and publishers who appreciate your insight link to your content through their own blog posts, articles and web pages, giving you more exposure.

You also publish your content on other platforms exclusively, making it easier for people over there to find you.

Improves your SEO naturally, organically

Although this is one of the most common reasons why my clients come to me for my content writing and content marketing services, I always advise them to let their search engine rankings improve naturally, organically, based on the strength of the goodness of their content.

But this is a reality: if you persist with relevant, meaningful content marketing, it naturally improves your SEO. You don’t have to separately focus on improving your search engine rankings.

In fact, over the past decade, Google has been incorporating changes into its ranking algorithms to make sure that only those websites and links rank higher that have relevant, high-quality content on them.

Brings more inbound traffic

Since content marketing makes it easier for people to find you all over the web and since it also improves your search engine rankings organically, naturally, you get more inbound traffic.

The best quality of inbound traffic is you are not telling people to visit your website or check out your link. People come on their own.

When people come to your website or blog on their own, they are more receptive to your message. They’re already tuned into what you’re trying to tell them. Hence, they convert easily compared to those who are drawn to your website through some advertisement.

Encourages engagement

The more people engage with you, the more they become familiar to your presence, and the easier it gets for them to do business with you.

Even when people come across your website (through an advertisement), they don’t do business with you because they don’t know you. At the moment they don’t trust you because you haven’t engaged them in meaningful interactions.

Without content, they haven’t gotten a chance to be helped by you, to appreciate your presence on the Internet.

Builds brand awareness without intrusion

Through content marketing, people come across your brand when they are accessing quality content rather than ads they will gladly ignore or block.

With every business available with just a few clicks or a few taps, brand visibility is very important. Whether you want to buy a highly expensive iPhone or one of the cheapest Android phones, they both are immediately available to you.

When you publish and broadcast/disseminate useful content people begin to relate your brand with quality content and hence, establish a positive association. This further boosts your conversion rate because people who already have a positive perception about your brand readily become your customers and clients.

Educates your customers

There are many products and services that need education before they can be used, for example CRM.

For a very long time I have been planning to start using a CRM to keep track of customer queries, lead nurturing and following up. Unfortunately, no online CRM service has beginners tutorials on how to start using CRM for a very small business.

I’m pretty sure whichever website is able to explain to me, I’m going to use its service.

Another example is content marketing. Still, there are many people who don’t understand this concept. So, they need to be educated. They need to be told the benefits of publishing high-quality content on an ongoing basis.

Builds and fosters stronger customer relationships

Many companies claim that more than 40% of their business comes from existing customers and clients. This is true even for my own business. In fact, more than 50% of my work comes from my existing clients.

Through well-crafted content marketing (especially email marketing), you can constantly keep in touch with your existing customers and clients by providing them valuable information.

You can also keep your existing customers and clients engaged through social networking platforms.

Remember that it just takes a few seconds for a customer to switch to another product or service. This switch is so important that many businesses offer a year of service free of cost just so that people move to their service from the other service.

But if you have built a strong relationship through quality content, your existing customers and clients won’t make that switch, even when prompted.

Builds your communication platform

It isn’t true that only big businesses and media houses can have their own communication platforms. Even smaller businesses can develop an audience that pays attention to their messages.

The communication platform can be your blog or your mailing list or even your social media or social networking profile – wherever your audience comes to access your content.

The benefit of having a communication platform is that you have an audience whenever there is something critical you want to say and it is very important that a certain number of people get the message.

Suppose, you’re introducing a new feature in your product and you would like to tell people the benefits of upgrading.

You want to make new offers.

You need to do damage control if someone has been leaving bad reviews just to tarnish your image.

Search engines need a place to regularly crawl and index new content and if you have a vibrant platform, the frequency of crawling and indexing increases.

Establishes you as an industry expert

Naturally, when you regularly share your knowledge, wisdom and insight, people begin to believe that you are an industry expert.

If you are an app developer and you regularly share your programming techniques and other app development experiences through your blog, whom do you think prospective clients choose when they need an app developer? Someone who is totally mum about his or her app development profession or someone who constantly communicates and engages with prospective clients?

Generates long-term, lasting traffic

As described above, your content is a constant source of traffic. As long as your links exist in the Google index, as long as people are able to find your content, you are going to get traffic on your website or blog.

Once you have increased your content wealth, once many people have linked to your content, once many people have shared your content, your links are all over the place.

Depending on where you are, if you search for “email writing services” you will find my link somewhere on the first page on Google. Now, the position has been there for more than 1 ½ years now, even longer. This link has been constantly generating quality leads for me and I don’t have to pay for it.

If I needed to advertise on AdWords, I would have to pay for every click Google sent my way. Through the above-mentioned link, whether I get 100 clicks every month or 10,000, I don’t have to spend money. It is an ongoing source of traffic for me.

Brings down your bounce rate

Your bounce rate is how many people leave your website without checking out other links your website or blog, after directly coming to a particular link.

A higher bounce rate is bad for your SEO. It is also bad for your conversion rate.

Quality content makes people stick around. If they like what you have published on the current link, they would also like to check out other web pages and blog posts on your website and this tells Google and other search engines that you have relevant content, and hence, your links should be ranked higher.

Helps you grow your mailing list

The benefits of having a mailing list that you have built on your own can only be realized when you have built a mailing list for yourself.

Since building your own mailing list requires effort, persistence and perseverance, most of the people fail to realize its importance.

Having your own mailing list is very important for engaging your prospective and existing customers and clients.

A persistent content marketing strategy and email marketing strategy are interlinked. Without high-quality content it is not possible to build your own mailing list unless you engage in other tactics like offering a case study in lieu of subscribing to your email updates, or offering a very useful e-book, or something like that.

When you publish quality content people expect the same content in your email updates and hence readily subscribe. Also, since your content is so useful, they don’t want to miss it. If you promise them that as soon as you publish something on your website or blog you’re going to send them an email update, they readily subscribe.

Gives you an edge over your competitors

A good thing about content marketing is it democratizes marketing. There was a time when only big businesses with lots of money could use marketing, but with content marketing, business of any size can use it.

Yes, you do need some money to generate quality content, but more than that, you need ingenuity and persistence.

Your competitors won’t be able to gain even a fraction of visibility with conventional advertising and marketing that you can gain with strategic content marketing.

With helpful and relevant content, you make it easier for people to do business with you rather than with your competitors.

I gave you an example of CRM above. Whichever website explains better how to leverage its CRM, is going to get more customers.

Reduces your support cost

Content marketing also involves publishing lots of helpful content on your website and blog, for example the detailed FAQs section.

People may have many questions. They may have many issues. They might be confused about using your product or service.

Normally they contact your support. But these days, contacting support is a hassle in itself and most of the people want to avoid it.

Helpful content on your website can provide all the information people need to be able to use your product or service properly.

When people contact you for support, you can prepare a list of questions and queries that they have and then publish their answers on your website.

The next time if another person has the same question, rather than calling you or writing you an email, he or she can simply check the section that contains answers to the most commonly asked questions.

Builds a community around your business

Apple built a community around its business and look how great the company does.

Amazon has encouraged a community of “skill” developers for its range of Amazon Echo gadgets and now they are selling millions of these gadgets.

The same goes for Android-based mobile phones. The examples are innumerable.

Building a community builds a support system. The community helps you refine and evolve your product or service. You instantly get feedback and since your community is devoted to your brand, you mostly get positive/encouraging feedback.

You want to introduce something but before making it available in the market, you would like a few people to test it. You can use your community for that.

Concluding remarks on the benefits of content marketing

Over the years I have learned that content marketing benefits only those who understand its benefits. Yes, it is like “Laws of Attraction”.

If you want to use it just because you have read a few blog posts and articles on content marketing and you think a nice strategy can be implemented without spending some money and effort, you are going to waste your effort and lose your money.

You benefit from content based marketing only in the long run, when you have nurtured it and allowed it to blossom into in its own entity.

You cannot “trick” it into bringing you business success. This is the reason why it works for everyone who seriously pursues it.

What makes content marketing successful?

Your understanding of it. Otherwise, you’re going to implement it halfway through and then lose interest or courage, or both.

It is an ongoing activity. Just like your other business activities, it has to go on.

For example, if currently you feel that you need to publish 2 blog posts every week, you may have to publish these 2 blog posts every week for an indefinite number of years if you really want to benefit from content marketing.

What’s the purpose then, you may ask?

Because it increases your business and even if you go on publishing just 2 blog posts every week, compared to the growth of your business, the cost of publishing these 2 blog posts will move towards negligible.

What impact does visual content have on content marketing (infographic)

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Although on a day-to-day basis when I’m providing my content writing and content marketing services I don’t deal with much with visual content (images and videos), these days, I do provide images and basic video to a few clients because I am handling their social media marketing.

Visual content – images, photographs, animation, infographics and video – is a big part of content marketing these days.

This is because multimedia content is easier to access these days due to abundant connectivity and speedier connections. People are no longer worried when they have to download media files. Anyway, that’s different issue.

Here is an infographic on how businesses are using visual content for content marketing and what impact it has on their overall marketing strategy. The infographic is from this blog post on Social Media Today. (I was having some trouble uploading the entire infotographic file so I have divided it into different files).

As you can see in the infographic, according to the first stat, 91-100% content contained visual content.

7% marketers use videos and presentations and 37% use original graphics such as infographics. Original graphics drove the most engagement, which is understandable because with videos, often it becomes difficult to engage.

Why content marketing is an integral part of marketing and advertising

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Content marketing is an integral part of marketing and advertising

Traditional marketing and advertising is one way – you send out marketing messages to put your brand in front of prospective customers and clients and then leave it up to them whether they want to buy from you or not.

These days content marketing is an integral part of marketing and advertising – instead of simply broadcasting marketing messages, you engage with your audience.

This can be done either through entertainment or education. Or both.

In one of my previous posts I talk about a Netflix series called “Yeh Meri Family. It’s a story of a teenage boy whose father is a mutual fund investment consultant.

It is an engaging storyline and throughout the season (only the first season is out yet) you watch the series as if you watch any other series. Unless you are told, it never even registers that subtly, you are being sold the idea of investing in mutual funds.

Content marketing and traditional marketing and advertising are intertwined because, as this Business Standard article states, traditional modes of communicating with consumers have collapsed.

The article has some interesting stats vis-à-vis India. There are more than 1 trillion media touch points. This is not interesting. What’s interesting is, More than 90% of these touch points have come into being only over the past 5 years, due to an average household having multiple mobile screens and hence, multiple modes of media consumption. Traditionally, there used to be just one TV.

The article further states that there are 3 media consumption attributes that dominate watching pattern:

More personalization
No prime-time (people can watch anytime anywhere)
High propensity to skip (because the choice is unlimited)

There are 3 reasons why there can be no marketing and advertising without content and content marketing:

People find information using search engines and for that, you have to take SEO seriously and for SEO, you need high quality content.
People come across information (even search for it) on social media websites and it’s only high quality content that gets the attention on social media.
People receive information through email marketing which, again, depends on high-quality content that is valuable and informative.

This Lyfe Marketing blog post cites statistics that reveal that 78% consumers prefer getting to know a company or a brand via helpful articles and blog posts rather than simple ads. 70% also believe that organizations that invest in good content are more interested in building meaningful relationships with consumers, customers and clients.

Search engines are a big source of traffic for most of the businesses these days because most of the businesses have gone online.

Due to the abundance of content, consumers first prefer to read a lot about a product or service before purchasing it. People do this instinctively.

For example, if you buy a phone, you will read about it, you will also watch YouTube videos of the model you want to buy.

When you come across a new product and you feel it may be useful, you read about it, you watch videos of people using it and giving their opinion on it. This is content.

Content marketing also democratizes the realm of marketing. When it comes to advertising, there is no limit. There is always a competitor that can out-advertise you.

Content marketing on the other hand is solely based on relevance, quality and usefulness. Your competitor cannot beat you with publishing lots of content unless that content is of high quality.

If your competitor publishes 50 blog posts of no particular value (only covering keywords) and you publish high-quality 5 blog posts that your customers appreciate, that is more beneficial.

“Yeh Meri Family” was a content marketing campaign to promote mutual fund

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Yeh Meri Family content marketing example

Content marketing through storytelling is a powerful medium and many brands have been using this technique for decades now.

One of the recent examples was this nostalgia-inducing Netflix series “Yeh Meri Family”.

Set in the mid-90s, the story is mostly about a teenager called Harshu, who has a kid sister and an elder brother who is preparing for his engineering entrance exam.

The series has 7 episodes and in all the 7 episodes, Harshu goes through different travails of early teenage life. Sometimes he is a cute kid, sometimes a bit nasty, and sometimes nice. It has all the ingredients of an engaging story and once you start watching the first episode, you want to watch all, and you feel bad when the series suddenly ends. You wish that the next season becomes available soon.

In the backdrop, his father (wonder why he’s obese, even if he represents the average Joe) is a mutual fund investment consultant.

He is shown giving advice to people on why it is better to invest in mutual funds. He also has some clients who are really happy with him and through him, have been able to make some good mutual fund investments.

They seem to be a slightly rich middle-class family.

It is a complete family show and when we were watching it, it didn’t strike that it was in fact a content marketing campaign to promote a mutual fund company.

But after reading this post it becomes clear why the father was such a champion of investing in mutual funds. This series is a part of the Association of Mutual Funds of India (AMFI) larger campaign “Mutual Fund Sahi Hai” that people in India must have seen on TV.

This is what differentiates content marketing from conventional marketing and advertising. Whereas, in the conventional marketing and advertising, the product or the service takes the center stage, in content marketing, it is the storytelling that takes the center stage and the product or the service creates a positive association rather than dominating the discourse.

People used to conventional marketing and advertising may think that the actual product gets lost in the narrative full of characters and incidents, and to some extent, they might be right, especially in the case of “Yeh Meri Family”, but how much the product is highlighted depends on the messaging.

The purpose of the Netflix series (or the YouTube series) was not to promote the product as such, but the concept. They show a reasonably affluent and comfortable family with all the family members having somewhat an equal say in the affairs of the family – even the youngest daughter.

The father provides mutual fund consulting services and makes a decent living. Even in the 90s, they have a car and a reasonably big house. They also have a scooter.

While the ups and downs of the teenage life go on, the father has conversations about the benefits of investing in mutual funds. People come to him with doubts and he alleys those doubts whether he’s having conversations in the playground while the boys play cricket, or in his office.

I cannot say whether watching the series had a lasting impact on my psych, especially about investing in mutual. I think the messaging was too subtle. But maybe that’s what the promoters wanted.

Avoid these 10 content writing and content marketing mistakes

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Content marketing mistakes to avoid

Content writing and content marketing seem very easy, don’t they?

It seems as if it is just about writing and publishing blog posts and web pages on different topics (of course, on your business or topics that are relevant to your business), and you’re good to go.

Guess what. Thousands of entrepreneurs think on the same lines.

Some publish good content, and some publish mediocre content, and some even publish horrible content, but the more content there is on the web, harder it is to find your content.

In the contemporary times, content marketing is the strongest marketing tool. Never before has a marketing and promotional tool been available on such a democratic scale.

89 percent B2B small businesses use content marketing

Source

Why content marketing is so powerful no matter what size your business is?

It is due to its scalability.

If IBM can use content marketing so can a local computer repair shop.

All one needs to know is, choose an audience and then publish and disseminate appropriate content.

People love to do business with you if you

Offer them something valuable on an ongoing basis.
Provide useful information that they can use immediately for their benefit.
Solve problems for them.
Regularly engage them in meaningful conversations.
Become a pleasant part of their lives.

Benefits of Content Marketing

This is easily achievable, isn’t it?

Provided that you know who your audience is, you can write and publish highly targeted content, and you will get a better response.

Why content marketing fails despite being almost failsafe?

Why does content marketing fail?

No clarity. Impatience. Erroneous targeting. Haphazard content publishing.

Just like everything else in the world, content marketing can either be strategic and consequently, result-oriented, or it can be random, giving you random results, and you all know what happens when you depend on random results.

For your content marketing to succeed, two attributes are very important, most critical:

Clearly knowing what you want to achieve.
Publishing/writing content that helps you achieve that.

Take for example my content writing and content marketing business.

It’s a given that I want more leads, more queries, and eventually, more clients who pay me.

But, in a world replete with “content writers” who are ready to write $ 5-articles and blog posts, and in a world replete with clients who actually believe that they can ride the wave of content marketing with such articles, how do I convince them into investing in quality content?

Therefore, through my regular content writing, content publishing and content marketing, I need to not only reach out to clients who understand how important content writing is for the growth of their business, I also need to convince them that I’m the content writer they need.

Read 5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

What do I do?

Well, this blog post is not about this topic, it is about the content writing and content marketing mistakes that we commit that make even a failsafe marketing opportunity, fail. Are you committing these mistakes?

1. Not having a long-term plan for your content marketing strategy

Have a long-term content marketing plan

Content marketing is never a rush job. Although you can say that in 2 weeks you want to launch your website and before that you want to implement a content marketing strategy, it is not going to help you much. Better rely on conventional advertising for that.

For your content marketing to succeed, you need to have a long-term vision.

Content marketing is like a fruit tree. If you want to have your own fruit tree, you need to grow it. You need to get a sapling or you need to sow a seed. You water it. You take care of it. Eventually when it grows into a tree, it begins to bear fruits.

In the same manner, your content marketing bears results when it has blossomed into a considerable presence. When people begin to recognize you for the quality of your content. When you have enough good quality content.

Takes time. Takes patience. Takes perseverance.

2. Not having a content writing and a content marketing strategy

Build a content marketing strategy

I mention content writing because I provide content writing services. Writing content is a big part of providing content marketing services for my business.

Anyway, most of the content marketing strategies fail because there is no strategy.

Every successful content marketing campaign is backed by solid strategy

Strategy vis-à-vis content marketing means

Knowing what your core audience is looking for.
Knowing exactly what you want to achieve through your content writing and content marketing.
Strictly defining your KPIs.
Writing content strictly within the framework of 1., 2. and 3. above.
Distributing your content through the most appropriate channels.
Analyzing data and drawing intelligence.
Making changes in your content marketing according to data.
Creating a sustainable cycle of 1.-7. steps.

Why is it important to have a content writing and content marketing strategy?

Strategy gives you a direction. It tells you what you need to do and what you need to avoid.

Read How your typical content marketing evolves

You may have the following goals and KPIs for your content marketing:

Brand awareness
Lead generation
SEO
Customer acquisition
Customer retention and customer loyalty
Thought leadership
More website traffic
Better engagement

For example, if this year you want to increase your newsletter subscribers from 1000 to 10,000, you will need to observe what sort of content gets you more subscribers, and then publish that content more often.

If there is some type of content that does not get you lots of newsletter subscribers, then maybe you shouldn’t spend too much time on that content.

This is, assuming that your sole purpose is to increase your number of subscribers from 1000 to 10,000. Of course, you may have different key performance indicators.

In the absence of a content writing and content marketing strategy, you go on publishing content, without ever finding out whether the content is helping you OR not and then, mistakenly, you are disenchanted with your content marketing.

3. Not promoting your content aggressively

Promote your content

Even when you are publishing high-quality content unless you promote your content it is going to be difficult for your core audience to find it simply because there is too much content on the Internet.

People may never come to your website directly unless they need to purchase something from you or do business with you or get something that is only available on your website and nowhere else.

With so many channels available these days (sometimes I get clients directly from LinkedIn and they never even visit my website), even when doing business with you they may never visit your website.

This is why, it is important that you make your content available through the channels they use.

If most of your audience is on Instagram, then you need to promote your content on Instagram.

If your audience is on Facebook, then you need to promote your content on Facebook.

Build your audience, and promote your content.

4. Not focusing on SEO

Content marketing to boost your SEO

Searching on search engines is a big part of trying to find something. If you want to find some information before you make a purchase, you go to Google and not to Facebook.

If my clients want to find a competent and professional content writer, they are going to use Google and not Facebook although, they may find my content on Facebook.

This is why it is very important that they are able to find my content on Google and other search engines.

Now, ideally, we all want better search engine rankings for our target keywords and search terms.

Some people overdo it and hence, get penalized.

Some people completely ignore it, living in denial that they don’t need it.

Some get it and reap the benefits.

It is very important for you to get found on search engines because one, it is a never-ending free supply of leads and sales, and two, it brings you exposure that further improves your SEO.

If your product or service is of such type that people need to do some research, they need to acquaint themselves with the nitty-gritty of your product or service, when they need to read reviews and opinions, they’re going to use Google or Bing.

Optimizing your content writing for search engines isn’t as difficult as it seems. It becomes difficult when people are in a rush and want to push their way into the top 10 results. This doesn’t work if you face competition.

Provide value. Write in a language people use.

Check out Professional SEO content writing services.

5. Ignoring mobile audience for your content writing and content marketing strategy

Write and publish content for mobile audience

Mobile-friendly content writing means writing very short sentences and organizing the sentences in short paragraphs.

Usually, you must have noticed these days, people write a single sentence in one paragraph.

It may seem odd, but it looks good on mobile phones.

Using simple words.

If you go on and on and on, writing a very big sentence and then you have multiple sentences in a single paragraph, your readers are going to end up distracted.

On mobile phones, they want to be able to read quickly. Write accordingly.

Read How to do content writing for the mobile-first experience

6. Not working with an experienced content writer

Work with an experienced content writer

Now, you may think that I’m writing this because I provide content writing services, and in a way, I won’t blame you if you think that way.

Content marketing, and consequently, writing content, is an ongoing job.

You need someone who can write good content regularly, without compromising on quality.

Quality is of paramount importance.

Without quality there is no engagement. There is no value addition. Very bad search engine rankings.

Can write well yourself? Good.

Can write well, regularly? Marvelous.

No? Then you need a content writer. Don’t waste time.

7. Not building a dedicated content writing and content marketing team

Build a dedicated content marketing team

The need to build a content writing and content marketing team may differ from business to business. Some businesses need lots of content and lots of marketing, some don’t.

But if you think that lack of manpower is stopping you from moving on to the next level, then you need to build a dedicated content writing and content marketing team. Without it, your entire strategy crumbles.

As your content marketing scales and matures, you will need people with diverse talents including

Content writing & copywriting
Graphic design
Video and animation skills
Social media marketing
Data analytics
Strategy
SEO
Web design

Putting off the decision to build a dedicated content writing and content marketing team, especially when your business is on the path of growing, is going to cost you dearly.

8. Ignoring email marketing

Email marketing is an integral part of content marketing

86% business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes, according to Hubspopt.

According to a Radicati report, by 2020, 3 billion people will be using emails (just in case, this is December-end, 2018, when I’m writing this). The report also says that 205 billion emails are sent every day these days, and by the end of 2019, the count will be 246 billion.

Anyway, these are big numbers, but the point is, people still use emails.

It is the best way of making it possible for them to discover your new content and re-appreciate your existing content.

How does your email marketing help boost your content marketing effort? It’s a self-serving relationship.

Email marketing is only effective if you build your own mailing list.
You build your own mailing list only when people subscribe to your updates on their own.
They will subscribe to your updates only when they think that they are going to receive something valuable.
They think that they will receive something valuable only when they find valuable content on your website and hence, are driven to subscribe to your email updates.
You will need to publish valuable content on your website.
You will need to make it possible for them to discover your valuable content.
You will need to publish content they don’t want to miss.
Hence, you will be continuously publishing high-quality content.
This will boost your content marketing.

Frankly, there is no meaning to content marketing without email marketing.

Read Importance of segmentation in email marketing

9. Thinking that publishing blog posts is content marketing

Simply blogging doesn’t mean content marketing

Although blogging is my favorite form of content marketing, it isn’t the only way you disseminate your content.

Content marketing also means publishing

White papers
FAQs
Press releases
Case studies
Infographics
Social media posts
Long and short videos
Memes
GIFs
Podcasts
Graphics and images
Animations
PDFs
Slides

and a horde of other things.

I’m not suggesting that you put your energies and budget into all forms of content listed above. You will have to find what interests your audience the most.

White papers are preferred by those who want to access substantive content that educates and informs. This is a good way of showing how deep you have gone in your profession.

Case studies tell how your product or service solves problems and benefits businesses and individuals.

Memes allow you to participate in ongoing trends.

You will have to know how your audience reacts to different formats and then once you have found that out, you need to focus there.

10. Thinking that content marketing is a one-time affair or it is a single campaign

Content marketing is an ongoing commitment

Content writing and content marketing is an ongoing affair.

The simple reason is, if you are publishing blog posts and articles and then disseminating them using various channels, so is your competition. So are numerous other businesses that may not be directly your competitors, but have content that can compete with your content.

Take the example of traditional advertising. Do you see Johnson & Johnson’s ads on TV? Do you see Intel ads? McDonald’s? Pepsi? The iPhone?

If these are renowned brands, why do they still need to advertise constantly?

Because there are scores of, if not hundreds of, alternatives on the market. It just takes a couple of seconds for the customer to get distracted and end up purchasing another product and then switching to that product for ever.

Similarly, in content marketing, thousands of blog posts, web pages, articles, press releases and social media updates are being crawled and indexed by the search engines on a daily basis.

You need to maintain a presence. You have to convey to the search engines and your prospective customers and clients that you are still in the game.

Of course, you’re not a publishing company and like my business, you are also not into content writing and content marketing. So, you don’t have to publish every day.

Still, you need to have a schedule. And this schedule should continue and then scale according to the growth of your business.

Conclusion – what makes content writing and content marketing work for your business?

Persistence. Clarity. Persistence.

Over the years I have seen many content marketing efforts fail because they’re not persistent.

They had the clarity. They had the vision. They also had the needed enthusiasm in the beginning.

Then they lost steam.

As I have written above, the benefits of content marketing manifest like the benefits of growing a fruit tree.

In the beginning you need to invest before you can see results.

It’s like, to be able to use your office to do business, you first need to build the office, or purchase the office and then set up the paraphernalia. Until these basic steps are done, you cannot start doing your business.

Similarly, content marketing means creating a presence through high-quality content. You cannot build a presence with 5-10 blog posts and web pages and then spreading them across your social media profiles.

Strategy doesn’t happen in a week or a couple of months. And there’s a reason why it is called content marketing strategy.