Category Archives: Content Marketing

Difference between content marketing and inbound marketing

Difference between inbound marketing and content marketing

I have observed people often get confused between content marketing and inbound marketing. To the extent that they use the expressions interchangeably.

This is because in essence, they both mean the same thing, but their application and implications are different. Both are meant to generate incoming traffic to your website without using traditional advertising which is intrusive and unreliable.

You may think that explaining the difference between content marketing and inbound marketing is more scholarly and less practical, and in a sense you’re right if you think that way.

Content marketing is a subset of inbound marketing.

What is inbound marketing?

What is marketing?

Marketing means promoting products and services so that prospective customers and clients become aware of these products and services, and not just become aware, but also become inclined towards paying for them.

Traditional marketing involves advertising and promotion. You see ads on TV, or hear them on radio, or see them in newspapers and magazines.

You see ads when you watch YouTube videos and videos on social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Traditional advertising and marketing are normally one-sided. You encourage people to visit your store or your website. It’s up to them whether they want to respond to your ads.

Inbound marketing, as the name suggests, creates channels and opportunities for people to come to your store or website on their own. You don’t exhort them into becoming your customers and clients.

You create your presence on various channels where people come across your brand or your proposition and then decide to pay you a visit.

You engage them on an ongoing basis. You make it easier for them to find you, whether on social media and social networking websites, on discussion forums, video hosting websites, events like polls, contests and webinars, SEO for the targeted search terms, and also email marketing.

The basic idea is to let people bump into things that can lead them to visit your website. Every channel is created to generate inbound traffic that is voluntary.

Check out Content writing services for inbound marketing.

What is content marketing?

As I mentioned above, content marketing is a subset of inbound marketing.

Content marketing is done by creating, publishing and distributing content to make it accessible through different channels. This content is helpful, engaging and entertaining. Ideally people should want to have access to this content regularly.

Read: What is Content Marketing? Explained in detail.

Content can come into existence via blog posts, videos, infographics, social media updates, ebooks, case studies, white papers and email updates.

Difference: inbound marketing and content marketing

Inbound marketing is the result of content marketing.

You can use different routes to inbound marketing, and one of the most important routes is content marketing.

In fact, you can easily say that there is no inbound marketing without content marketing.

Should you worry about distinguishing the both?

For the sake of understanding, trying to understand both doesn’t harm, but you shouldn’t worry much about the nomenclature.

With good content marketing, inbound marketing happens naturally.

When you publish relevant content, when you use different (strategic) channels to distribute your content, you automatically start attracting targeted traffic to your website.

Content marketing also has a direct bearing on your search engine rankings. Strategic content marketing in itself is good for your SEO.

Is it essential that your content goes viral for content marketing success?

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Does the success of your content marketing depend on your content going viral?

How does your content go viral?

Look for this question on Google and you will find many blog posts and articles.

But is it essential for the success of your content marketing?

Depends.

It is understandable that if traffic matters to your website/blog and you earn ad revenue then definitely your content going viral matters to you because when your content goes viral, it means more traffic.

A few years ago, I wrote a political blog post on Medium and it went viral (it was read by more than 300,000 people) and I gained more than 1000 Twitter followers as a result, though, in terms of getting more business, it didn’t help me because it wasn’t related to content writing or content marketing.

Content going viral also helps you if you want to spread a message or an idea within a span of a couple of days. You want one of your articles or blog posts to reach thousands of people. When I wrote the above-mentioned political blog post, I actually wanted it to be read by as many people as possible.

It also gets you brand recognition when your content goes viral. The more people read your blog post, the more people know about you.

Many clients come to me and say that they need an article or a blog post that will go viral.

I tell them that I cannot promise anything. I can put in all the ingredients that are needed for a particular piece of content to go viral, but ultimately, whether that particular piece of content goes viral or not depends on many unpredictable patterns.

Does the success or failure of your content marketing depend on viral content?

I don’t think so.

The purpose of content marketing is, aside from building an audience (a viral blog post does not guarantee that) over a long period of time, is to help people so that they begin to remember you with a positive impression.

Content marketing makes it easier for people to find you.

Suppose you have covered all your topics in your field. For example, I provide content writing and content marketing services so I’m constantly explaining different aspects of these two realms.

Although it is not up to me whether I get good search engine rankings or not for the blog posts and web pages that I continuously publish on my website, the possibility of increasing my rankings definitely improves.

It is like, if you do something and there is 1% chance of success, if you don’t do something, the chance is 0%. So, publishing high-quality content, no matter how meagre or how limited, is better than publishing no content.

So, instead of worrying about making your content go viral, focus on publishing quality-content on an ongoing basis. Aim to help your audience.

If you help your audience and if due to that, you get more leads and generate more sales, your content marketing is successful, whether one of your blog posts goes viral or not.

How to prevent your emails from looking like spam

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Prevent your emails from looking like spam

One of the biggest reasons why your email marketing isn’t working is because both your recipients and their email clients conclude that your email is spam.

There is still some scope if your recipient decides whether your email message is spam or not, but if the email client (Gmail, for example) itself takes charge, sometimes your recipient doesn’t even realize that he or she is missing your messages.

There are many ways you can prevent your email messages from looking like spam and consequently, being marked as spam both by human and machine.

Here are a few things you can do

Build your own mailing list – patience pays

For successful email marketing, nothing is better than building your own mailing list.

It takes time.

It is like building a house or a building, brick by brick.

One of the biggest benefits of building your own mailing list is that you can request your subscribers to “white list” the email ID from which they are going to receive your email updates.

When someone submits his or her email ID to your subscription form, he or she is taken to a thank you page. On this page, you can instruct the person on how to white list your email ID so that your messages are not redirected to the spam folder.

Another benefit is that when people subscribe to your updates, they are fully aware of what they are going to receive.

When you subscribe to my Credible Content updates, you are fully aware that you are going to receive updates on content marketing and content writing. So, when you get these updates, you are not caught off guard and in frustration, you don’t mark my messages as spam.

At the most, when you don’t want to hear from me, you will simply unsubscribe. Which is much better.

Don’t offer something lucrative to make people sign up for your updates

I have seen that even reputed and well-known businesses, individuals and publications use this tactic – they offer a useful e-book or a white paper in lieu of getting a new subscriber for their newsletter.

If you have an e-book or a white paper or a case study that you think might help your current and prospective customers and clients, just give it to them.

Offer them something for which they would like to subscribe to your updates, as a long-term value, not as an instant bait.

Preferably, encourage them to join your mailing list or newsletter for the quality of your content.

When you offer something lucrative, people simply sign up for your newsletter, download the e-book (or whatever you are offering for subscribing) and then unsubscribe, or simply mark your messages as spam later on when they cannot make out why you are sending them messages.

Make it very clear why they are subscribing – this is one of the best ways of preventing your email from looking like spam.

Avoid using words and expressions that are frowned upon by spam filters

Over the years, spam filters have developed a huge collection of words and triggers that they use to consign messages to the spam folder.

Expressions like “earn extra cash”, “double your income”, “make money”, “online degree”, and so on, automatically get your message marked as spam.

You can search on the Internet to find lists of words that you should avoid using, especially in the subject line.

Provide quality content through your email

Remember that people subscribe to your updates because they expect to receive some valuable information that they can use to improve their lives.

Stick to the theme you promised at the time of the signup. Continue to send quality content that is highly valuable to them.

Be regular and stick to a routine when sending out your email campaigns

Another reason why your recipients may think that you are sending them spam emails is that they lose track of who you are and what business you represent.

For successful email marketing and to make sure that your messages are not marked as spam, you need to be regular and you need to stick to the schedule.

For example, if you send out an email every Wednesday, then make sure that you send that email every Wednesday.

I have often observed with different clients that they send out emails whenever they feel like. Sometimes, they simply send one or two haphazard emails in a month. This doesn’t work.

Making sure that your email messages are not marked as spam involves lots of precautions but your content, and the way you generate your mailing list, are the most important ones.

Digital trends to bolster your content marketing in 2019

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Digital trends in 2019 that you can use for content marketing

Content marketing depends a lot on contemporary trends and technologies.

From the mid-2000s to 2010 content marketing was mostly about writing blog posts, email marketing and articles on article directories.

Then came social media. Then came social mobile apps.

These days content marketing involves, aside from still writing blog posts, email marketing and articles, publishing images on Instagram, publishing small posts on Facebook, publishing updates on Twitter and publishing through a slew of other content formats.

I normally don’t advocate spending your energies on multiple platforms because the more you focus on a single platform, the better ROI you get.

For example, if your audience prefers blogs, then focus on blogs.

You can use other channels to distribute and highlight your content on your blog, but otherwise, put all your energies into creating stellar blog content.

This Entrepreneur article talks about five digital marketing trends you can use to keep your audience engaged.

Digital marketing is a broader concept, but I look at these tools from the perspective of content marketing.

How do you use these developments manifesting in 2019 for the advantage of your content marketing?

First, these are the digital trends that you will encounter in 2019:

Artificial intelligence
Chatbots
Voice search
Influencer marketing
Live video

Artificial intelligence and content marketing

Artificial intelligence is everywhere whether we realize it or not. Here are a few blog posts in which I have covered AI and content writing and content marketing:

What effect is AI going to have on your content marketing?

Is artificial intelligence going to replace content writers?

How does AI help in content writing and content marketing?

When it comes to leveraging artificial intelligence for content marketing, don’t think of AI as some artificial thinking bot that is going to react whimsically about your content.

For example, search engines like Google are using artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency of search results.

Of course, it is not in Google’s interest to build an AI system that doesn’t bring up the results needed by its users.

Google has built/trained its AI so that it picks up and ranks only the best possible content it finds.

Chatbots and content marketing

Chatbots allow your customers and clients access helpful, useful information without your direct interference.

You must have experienced Chatbots on many websites.

You must have also noticed that sometimes instead of providing small answers to questions, Chatbots bring up links to their FAQs sections or even detailed articles.

The power of Chatbots lies in their ability to engage users.

True engagement can only happen if you carefully listen to your users: what sort of problems they may have, what sort of language they use, and so on.

Just like it is important to use the right language to improve your search engine rankings, it is very important to use the right language when writing content for your Chatbots.

The content for your Chatbot must be conversational, relevant, succinct, helpful, and to the point.

Voice search and content marketing

A good part of your content marketing goes into improving your search engine rankings for relevant keywords and search terms.

2019 onward, you need to make sure that your content comes up when people use voice search.

You may like to read How to optimize content writing for voice search

According to a Forbes article mentioned in the above link, by 2020, 50% of online searches will be voice searches.

According to Sundar Pichai, by 2016, 20% of mobile queries were already done by voice search.

Voice search is conversational. People search the way they speak.

While creating, writing and publishing content for your content marketing, make sure that your content is conversational, engaging and to the point. Use the language people normally use in voice searches.

Partnering with influencers for content marketing

There are contradictory opinions on exactly how influential influencers are but collaborating with influences can be really beneficial for your business if they have a strong fan following for your niche.

If there is an influencer on Instagram who posts lots of fashion-related photographs and has millions of followers, you may like to collaborate with him or her to promote your products or endorse one of your links.

Before deciding to collaborate with an influencer you may have to spend some time exploring the level of interaction that the influencer has with his or her friends and followers.

Content marketing with live video

Every social media service these days provides you the facility of broadcasting live video.

You can stream live video using Google Hangouts, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Periscope.

The best form of content marketing with live video that I have seen is organizing webinars.

Since everything happens in real time, so does interaction with the viewers. They can immediately ask questions and get answers from an expert.

These are just a few digital trends that may shape up your content marketing in 2019 and beyond. There can be many more.

Frankly, when I’m talking to my clients, I suggest them not to get too bogged down by all the platforms available these days. Just focus on the platforms where their prospective customers and clients spend maximum time.

Have a single place where you publish original content and then re-purpose the content to make a presence on other platforms.