All the big blog sites are doing it. From Techcrunch to Copyblogger and Mashable (almost too much) to any business with an active blog, content marketing is becoming a trusted strategy for long-term online success. While it doesn’t fall directly under a typical SEO plan, it very much should.
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What it is
But content marketing is as much writing stuff as SEO is inserting meta tags and optimizing keywords (there’s more to SEO than that, right?). While it certainly can be considered a science, the very best content marketers see it as an art, and the great ones can make you forget they’re trying to hook you.
How it’s used
The best content marketing is simply stuff the writer liked that managed to interest the reader. That’s it. It doesn’t always have to be on topic, it doesn’t always have to be laden with industry examples and it doesn’t always have to be a numbered list with bolded headers. The content marketer’s job is to link ideas that hopefully lead the reader somewhere, but in doing so, not being all pushy and obvious about it.
What it was
Who should be marketing their content? Well, digital magazines, gossip sites, newspapers and similar domains already do. Their business is content. But for guys like Jay Baer, his content marketing is more an appetizer or preview of what he earns a living doing, but can stand alone in a pinch.
What it shall be
(Pretend there’s a segue to ebooks here)
What’s that? It’s easier than ever to publish your ideas online and have people share them? Anyone with quality content has something that someone, somewhere will find interesting? You’d be a fool to miss this opportunity?
As our friends at ePublishUnum promise us, it’s easier than ever to publish a book. Because the very idea of a book is in flux, why not explore this route and gather up stories (have someone good write them), put them together, and publish something for the Kindle?
Or you can release them, chapter by chapter, on your blog as part of an ongoing customer outreach program. Will you look at that, you’re already content marketing!