Category Archives: Content Marketing

Is content marketing a misleading term?

I was just reading this interesting take on content marketing and content marketers. The author says that when the “content marketers” are charging $50 per blog post (what he means is they are just providing cheap writing labor) they are simply misleading the clients because the truth is that they have no idea what they are doing.

What should they be doing?

The author says that they should be helping their clients build their mailing lists because the money is in the mailing lists.

I agree with him that in most of the cases the “marketing” in “content marketing” is missing. Marketing, whether it is content marketing or traditional advertising, needs to make money, it needs to attract money, it needs to generate money.

I’m not sure if the author has some interest in mailing lists but I cannot disagree with him that one of the biggest purposes of content marketing should be building a robust mailing list. Other than that, it seems like a rant against the concept of using content for generating traffic. He is missing the point. Not about the so-called content marketers merely writing content, but about the entire concept of using content marketing for generating traffic.

You see, I agree that there is already lots of content on the Internet and many websites provide a ton of information to help you decide what you want to purchase and what you don’t want to purchase. But this information is on other websites not on your website so all the traffic is going to go to other websites and not your website.

There is lots of confusion when it comes to employing content marketing, but people don’t realize that confusion is also there when people use conventional advertising. In fact, conventional advertising is just like throwing darts in the darkness, hoping that some of the darts may hit the target. Yes, analytics have advanced a lot and every click and every entry into the website can be traced, but for a small business, it can turn out to be very expensive.

Why businesses that understand content marketing, use it?

To increase search engine rankings
To avoid PPC expense
To increase the authority of their brand
To inform and educate their customers and clients
To create presence on social media and social networking websites and apps
To build their own broadcasting platforms

I know some of these words may sound very big, but on the Internet, they are not. Remember there was a time when email used to be very geeky. Only engineers and scientists used to have email ids. These days even your dog may have an email id. What I’m saying is, even as a small business you can establish your authority or your brand’s authority and build your own broadcasting platform to increase your visibility.

Content marketing, of course, doesn’t just mean relentlessly publishing content. The “marketing” part is a big part. Marketing here doesn’t just mean you are marketing your content. It means you are using content for marketing. You are using content to increase your visibility. You are using content to improve your search engine rankings. You are using content to create a buzz around your brand, product or service. At the center of your marketing activities, lies your content. This is why it is called content marketing.

It is not, contrary to what the author of the above post has tried to establish, a snake oil remedy for the starry-eyed business owners. Billion-dollar businesses have been created around the business of content marketing.

Having said that, just like any other business branch, there are big players, there are smaller players and then there are players who are just goofing around hoping that they will make some money with little effort. This is not something specific to content marketing; these sorts of entrepreneurs are in every business.

So, if you are simply writing content for your clients, do you call yourself a content marketer? It depends. If you are

writing content
disseminating that content
coming up with new topic ideas
trying to make sure that the content that you create increases traffic for your client

then yes, you can call yourself a content marketer, because basically even when you are writing content, knowingly or unknowingly, you are helping your client market his business.

Can you use content curation as a viable content marketing tool?

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In my previous blog post, 10 ways to write highly engaging content, I briefly touched upon the topic of content curation – collecting useful information from all over the Internet and compiling it into a single link.

Can content curation become a viable content marketing tool for your business? Or will you be sending traffic to your competitors?

Many content marketers believe that if you curate lots of content you are mostly sending traffic away from your website rather than drawing traffic to your own website by creating high-quality genuine content.

Although the importance of high-quality genuine content can never be understated, there are some instances when you can use content curation to boost your content marketing. For example, you can use content curation when

You don’t have enough time to create your own, high-quality, genuine content
Someone else has explained better what you have always wanted to explain to your visitors
You want to present as many viewpoints as possible pertaining to a topic or subject
You want to create a repository of opinions for solutions pertaining to a particular topic
You want to introduce authority into a topic

See for example this Content Marketing Institute blog post – What does engaging content mean?. As you can see, instead of presenting her own views on what is engaging content through the entire blog post, the author has collected opinions of various content marketing and content writing experts on what engaging content means.

This blog post titled How to add value with content curation rightly says that there is a huge quantity of content on the Internet with limited shelf life. By the time people find useful information it is outdated or they no longer need it.

Since you must be in the thick of your subject matter, you may have access to many resources that your visitors may not have. So, there is a greater chance of you coming across great, useful information. Instead of simply consuming that bit of information, you can mention it on your website along with the original link, the way I’m doing with this blog post on content curation.

This further explains that content curation doesn’t just mean collecting lots of links and creating a big list of useful links. You can also use just one link and then quickly create a small blog post with your own input, again, the way I’m doing with this particular blog post on content curation. In fact, I often do that. When I cannot come up with a good idea for a blog post, I simply search on the web for some ideas, and when I find an interesting link, I write a few words about that link and sometimes, it turns into a complete blog post.

Another benefit of linking to outside links is it is appreciated by the original publishers. If they like your response, they promote your link among their own followers. This helps your content marketing.

Should you use the Medium blog publishing platform for content marketing?

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I have been using the Medium blog publishing platform for quite some time now. I have never published content marketing and content writing blog posts on Medium (maybe 1-2 experimental posts) but this is because when I started publishing on Medium, that was never my intention. I use Medium to publish my political, cultural and social commentaries.

My success rate at Medium has been much better than on my own websites, although, the topics that I take up when I write on Medium are usually politically and ideologically provocative and hence, more people respond or share them, compared to my content marketing and content writing blog posts on my own blog.

But of late, I have noticed more and more people recommending the Medium blog publishing platform for content marketing. See, for example, this post on Problogger. The writer recommends routinely publishing your content on Medium to increase traffic on your own website or blog.

So, should you use the Medium blog publishing platform for content marketing?

Being a vibrant platform already leaving behind many much-established blogging platforms like WordPress.com, you definitely get better exposure on Medium for your content. If one of your posts is featured on the main page or even under the main page of a major category, the implications can be great.

Just like any other platform, you can’t simply just start publishing your content on Medium and expect to get traffic from there. It’s not like OK, let me publish a few blog posts on Medium and I will get thousands of visitors to my blog or website. No, it does not happen that way.

Just like any other platform, you need to build a community around your presence. This is true for every platform, whether it is Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or Medium. This is why these social networking and social publishing websites have millions of users but still, just a few hundred or just a few thousand have a decent following. It takes time. It takes energy and persistence. It takes good content.

Why would people respond to your blog posts on Medium if they don’t find your content exciting enough? Why would they recommend it? Why would they share it?

Although Medium has a ready-made audience (so do Twitter, Facebook and Instagram), you need to draw attention of this audience to your presence by consistent writing and publishing and by continuously engaging people.

Remember that it is in Medium’s self-interest to promote well-written content. The makers of Medium want to build it into a serious publishing platform, not a spam farm. So badly-written, uninspiring and spammy content is automatically ignored.

It is very important for the Medium blog publishing platform to know how many people actually read the complete blog post. This is what one of the founders of Medium has to say about the importance of the quality of the blog posts that are published over there:

How we calculate the ranking is an algorithm that will change over time (kinda like Google’s PageRank but obviously much more simplistic at this point in time). It’s not a direct popularity ranking. It takes in a variety of factors, including whether or not a post seems to actually have been read (not just clicked on) and whether people click the “Recommend” button at the bottom of posts. The ratio of people who view it who read it and who read it and recommend it are important factors, not just the number. (This is an attempt to level of the playing field for those who don’t already have large followings and/or a penchant for writing click-bait headlines.)

Why use the Medium blog publishing platform for content marketing?

I totally agree with the writer on Problogger that the Medium blog publishing platform should be/can be used as a great content marketing tool because one, the audience is already there (all you have to do is publish good content), and two, everything you need to make your content publishing social is already built into the Medium blog publishing platform. The content can be easily socially shared.

One great thing that I like on Medium is that if you want to share a big paragraph on Twitter, just highlight the portion that you would like to share and then click on the Twitter icon in the context menu that appears over the selected portion. The entire selected text is turned into an image and then along with the link and the title of the blog post, it can be posted on Twitter. This is just one example of convenient social sharing that is available on the Medium blog rubbishing platform.

Building a community on Medium is quite easy: you can follow people and brands on Medium. You can leave comments. You can recommend posts to people who follow you. This reminds me, your content is automatically broadcast to your followers so building a following on Medium is as good as building a mailing list.

Here is why you should use the Medium blog publishing platform for content marketing:

Medium has a ready-made audience.
Medium-users like to read long, text-based posts unlike Facebook and Twitter users.
The blog publishing platform has social sharing features inbuilt.
The content is categorized under various categories and featured under the correct categories.
Larger publications like Huffington Post and New York Times routinely publish dedicated content on Medium and they often approach independent content writers through Medium. Even the former President Barack Obama regularly uses Medium.
You can tag your blog posts to make it easier for people to find them.
Influencers can easily find your content. If they find and share your content you can generate massive amount of traffic.
You don’t need to depend on other social networking platforms because the Medium blog publishing platform is itself a social networking platform.
One of your posts can go viral even if you have published just a few posts. You don’t need to start everything from scratch.
Since most of your traffic comes from mobile devices these days, the Medium blog publishing platform is mobile-optimized.

Here are a few things you can do to use the Medium blog publishing platform for content marketing:

It goes without saying, publish quality content that people would like to read.
Republish your existing content with links back to your original content.
Publish original content on Medium and in the footer of the post you can encourage people to subscribe to your updates or mailing list. This is how I do it:
Hyperlink to your existing content from the new posts that you publish on Medium.
Respond to others’ content by writing rebuttals, add-ons, comments and references and then let those people know that you have posted.
Recommend content by other writers to your followers whenever you feel that your followers will benefit from the post.
Regularly leave comments on other posts on Medium.
Quality, relevance, quality, relevance, quality, relevance…

If presidents and famous publications are using Medium to reach out to its audience it means it has a great audience. Every platform can be used for marketing and so Medium can also be used for content marketing provided you stick to the fundamentals of content marketing:

Publish quality, relevant posts.
Use great headlines.
Encourage people to share your content.
Share other people’s content.
Post content regularly.

The never changing fundamentals of content marketing

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The content marketing fundamentals never change, whether you started using content marketing for your business back in 2004 or you are playing with it in 2017. These fundamentals are

Publish relevant content
Publish content that provides solutions and solves people’s problems
Publish content that is engaging
Publish content that is shareable – people not just feel like sharing your content, but it is also easier for them to share it
Publish your content regularly
Analyze your content and do the needed modifications
Keep your existing content relevant and updated
Use the right channels to promote your content in front of the right audience

As you can see, these are the fundamentals, no matter what technology you use, no matter what sort of content you publish, and no matter what audience you are trying to reach. Even when people were painting on the walls of their caves, they were using these content marketing fundamentals to convey their message and leave the glimpses of what was happening to them, for the future generations.

Let’s read a bit more about these fundamentals of content marketing

Publish relevant content

Every business niche has its own relevant content. When you come to my content marketing blog, you expect to read about content marketing, content writing and general related topics of how to promote your business through content marketing and content writing. This content is relevant to you if you want to use content writing as a marketing tool or if you want to hire someone who can help you use this tool. Sometimes I also write on search engine optimization but ultimately it is connected to content marketing.

The importance of relevance is always going to be there no matter what format of content you publish.

Publish content that provides solutions and solves people’s problems

We are all looking for solutions. People come to your blog because they seek some advice or some bit of information that they can use to solve some problem that they have. If they repeatedly find solutions on your blog or website, if you are constantly solving people’s problems, your content marketing is going to succeed. You need to give them a reason to access your content repeatedly. You need them to crave for your content and share your content. This only happens when they find your content useful.

Publish content that is engaging

This is a redundant point but I’m going to cover it anyway because it is one of the most important aspects of content publishing and content marketing and almost every, in fact, every content marketing expert talks about “engaging content”.

By engaging content, we mean content that stimulates people and encourages them to actively consume your content, participate in the ongoing conversations around your content, and even contact you to share their own opinions about your content. This way, you have engaged them. You have created interesting content to get them interested.

It is just like speaking in front of a live audience. You provoke them. You ask questions. You ask counter questions. You debate them. You create controversies. You create adulation. The moot point is, engaging content gets your readers or your audience involved, whether in a positive sense or in a negative sense depends on the relevance of the topic. When you engage them, they remember you and whether they like you or not, they come back to your website or blog.

Publish content that is shareable – people not just feel like sharing your content, but it is also easier for them to share it

Sharing means endorsement. When people share your content with each other it means they like it and find it useful. This helps search engines. Although algorithms are very advanced these days, it matters how people think of your content. So when your content is shared it means it is appreciated. It solves the proverbial problems.

Sharing should be easier. These days it means all the sharing buttons should be incorporated into the webpages and blog posts that you publish. Also, your content must be formatted in such a manner that it makes sense with least interference. This means, when people share your content, they shouldn’t need to modify the title and the description because in themselves they should be able to tell a lot about your webpage or blog post.

Publish your content regularly

The never changing fundamentals of content marketing mean when you are publishing content, you are building a broadcasting channel, and when you have a broadcasting channel, you need to broadcast on an ongoing basis. This is one side of the story. The other side is that in order to enjoy good search engine rankings due to content marketing and content writing, you need to feed the search engines with an unending supply of content – yes, as long as you operate your business on the Internet, you need to provide content to the search engines to be crawled, indexed and ranked.

This means you need to publish your content regularly. Now, regularity doesn’t mean you publish every day. Although publishing everyday might be very good for traffic and social engagement, for some businesses it doesn’t suit. So, define your own regularity. Maybe it’s okay to publish 3-4 blog posts or webpages every week. Or maybe one blog post or webpage every week. Or maybe randomly. The important thing is you need to update your blog or website regularly, on an ongoing basis. It shouldn’t feel like an abandoned blog or a website.

Analyze your content and do the needed modifications

Beyond doubt, when you are publishing content on your blog or on your website, your ultimate aim is to draw traffic. This means you need to analyze your traffic and see what sort of traffic is being drawn by the content that you publish. Sometimes you end up drawing wrong traffic. Even tiny things can mean a sea change.

You can analyze your content by a web analytics tool like Google Analytics that tells you what sort of traffic your content is drawing. If most of the visitors landing on your website or blog are using wrong keywords, you are not publishing the right content. If your website or blog is attracting at least some amount of traffic that uses the right keywords, study those pages and blog posts and then generate similar content.

Or maybe your existing content is relevant but you are not using the right language? Analyze constantly so that you don’t end up with a ton of useless content.

Keep your existing content relevant and updated

Millions of webpages and blog posts are being published every hour and then these webpages and blog posts are being crawled, indexed and ranked by the search engines constantly. So, even if initially it was possible to find your content, with so much of newly generated, fresh content available, your content is pushed back and it becomes difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to find it.

Search engines want fresh content. Even your visitors need to have a compelling reason to visit the same URL gain.

You can keep your existing content relevant by updating the webpages and blog posts with newer information, better-researched data, and even with changed perspective. Even if one sentence is changed, mark that link changed and resubmit it to the search engines.

Use the right channels to promote your content in front of the right audience

Every channel, every broadcasting medium, has its own audience. Facebook users like particular content, Twitter users like different content, and LinkedIn users want to find content that can help them in their businesses, professions and careers. If you want to give beauty tips, better focus on Facebook and refrain from posting that sort of content on your LinkedIn timeline. If you want to rake up political or cultural controversy, fire off a few tweets.

It’s very important to choose the right platforms. Even the Google search engine is a channel.

These are the never changing fundamentals of content marketing. Just as the applicability of wisdom transcends time and cultures, so do the fundamentals of content marketing. Your content may change, how you distribute that content may change, the tastes and preferences of your audience may change, the format of your content may change, but these fundamentals never change.

So which is better for your business, a business blog or a personal blog?

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A long, long, long time ago when people started blogging, it was completely personal. Many blogging services called themselves “journals”, for example, Livejournal. People wrote about personal stuff. Yours truly had a blog on web design, and I used to manually upload the HTML pages in an “articles” folder and then manually update the index file.

Search engines like Google gladly lapped up blog posts because people created them in droves and soon blog posts began to rank higher than the website. This is because the search engines have this insatiable hunger to crawl and index and then rank as many links as they can find. The more links there are in the world, the happier the search engines are. To their great delight people observed that blogs enjoyed better search engine rankings than conventional business websites. It was not that the search engines preferred “blogs” over websites, it was just that for their algorithms, the content arranged by blogging platforms was more amenable. Because basically, what do search engines like?

Lots of content.
Constantly updated content.
Topical content.
Relevant content.
Socially promoted content.

All these traits were found in blogs.

This, was the inflection point where people started publishing blogs for their businesses to get better search engine rankings. They actually did. Business websites with business blogs got better rankings than business websites with no business blogs.

Now, almost every business has a blog. The question these days is not whether your business should have a blog or not, the question is, how to fare better than other blogs.

So life has come full circle. Blogging started with personal blogging, and it’s again being asked if you should have a business blog or a personal blog.

Both have their place in the world, and whether you should have a personal blog or a business blog depends on what you are trying to achieve. Are you developing a personal brand or a business brand? Does your audience want to connect with you or they don’t mind interacting with a nameless entity as long as they’re getting the information they seek?

Although it has been more than 15 years since people started blogging (in contemporary sense) – this is 2017 – it is still considered as one of the best inbound marketing tools. Have a look at the graphic below from SmartInsights:

In more than 95% of the cases, if there is content marketing, if there is digital marketing, then a thriving blog is always there in one way or another. As you can see in the above graphic, 81% B2B marketers prefer to rely on blogs for content marketing and inbound marketing.

What are the similarities between a personal blog and a business blog?

Both personal and business blog are used to regularly communicate to your customers and clients.
Updates are arranged in a chronological manner with the latest update appearing at the top.
Content is arranged sorted by date in descending order.
Personal business blogs are theme-oriented.
Both personal blogs and business blogs are good for SEO.
A personal blog as well as a business blog can be developed into a platform with a huge audience that can be used to convey important messages or introduce new products and services.
Personal blogs and business blogs can be used to publish important content that does not fit into the main template of your website.
Communities can be created around personal blogs as well as business blogs.

What are the differences between a personal blog and a business blog?

As the name suggests, a personal blog may be used to promote a personal brand and business blog can be used to promote a business.
A personal blog can be more informal. You can write about your personal experiences, your personal opinions, your personal tastes and whatever catches your fancy (while sticking to the main theme of your blog). On a business blog there is less scope to be informal because your business blog does not represent an individual: it represents an entire organization. You have to be careful when you publish content or your business blog because it reflects on the entire company.
There is more engagement through a personal blog because your visitors personally know who is publishing the blog posts and what’s the basic philosophy of the person behind the blog.
Personal blog can be totally personal where you try to explain why your cat leaves and comes randomly and sometimes makes weird faces. A personal blog can also be a business blog, for example this blog where, although I write in a personal style (mostly in the first person) all the time I write about my business. I don’t talk of my political beliefs here; I talk about content writing and content marketing.
People normally stay away from controversial topics on their businesses blog because they don’t want to offend the customers and clients. On your personal blog, if you want, you can piss people off. But then again, if you use your personal blog to promote your business, you have to exercise discretion (if you want to, that is).

If you want to decide immediately without much data, research and experimentation, then a personal blog works better than a business blog merely because blogging is meant to be personal. It’s, mostly, a linear collection of thoughts, opinions, rants, or nuggets of wisdom around a particular topic, in a conversational, personal tone. This is the key…conversational, personal tone. This tone is more human, more personal, and ultimately, more approachable. There are many big companies that, although, have business blogs, for example Google and Facebook, they also encourage their employees to maintain their personal blogs.

But then again, in the end, what matters is, what sort of audience you are catering to.