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Why Content Marketing Should be a Cornerstone of Your Online Strategy

Anica Oaks

March 21, 2017

When you’re planning your yearly marketing plan, do you take the time to plan out your content marketing strategy? If you don’t, you should. For many reasons, content marketing should be the cornerstone of your marketing efforts, and doing so may just make the difference between your business thriving or you getting left behind by your competitors. Here are four reasons why augmenting your CM can make all the difference in the world to your business.

1. Your Website Needs It

This might be obvious, but it’s true. All websites do need content. It’s the content in large part that helps a brand to forge its identity on the web, and that begins with a company’s own website.

Additionally, the search engines favor new content. If you want people to find you, then you need fresh content to keep the traffic flowing. Adding content to your website on a regular basis—say by posting a new blog twice a week—can help with this.

2. Complements Other Strategies

If you have social media accounts, you need something to share. Entrepreneur.com suggests that you can use content marketing to enhance these media strategies. Not only that, but different social media sites have different needs. However, this is a good thing. It allows you to expand the reach of your original content piece (like a blog post.) Here’s how:

• Make a video based on this content to share on YouTube
• Create infographics for Pinterest
• Hold Q and A sessions on a private Facebook page
• Post your content on LinkedIn as these posts from ACN do

Doing this makes your content more sharable. This, in turn, makes it easier to get your name out.

3. Educates Your Customer Base

Keeping a blog or making video blogs allow you to keep your customer base informed about your business and your industry.

You can tell them about sales you’re having, announce promotions, or clarify questions and address complaints. You can also establish yourself as an authority in your field by offering informational content that engages your audience. Typically the more information sources you offer, the more reasons customers and visitors will have to go to your website.

4. Gives Small Businesses an Edge

Good content marketing can even level the playing field for the small business. Big companies can afford to have a big advertising budget. Small businesses can’t, but they can write good content that people will share. It also has an additional advantage: Because it’s informational as opposed to advertising based, people are more apt to share your content than they would your ad.

Last Thoughts on Content Marketing

Content marketing should form the cornerstone for your business’s marketing campaigns. For one thing, your website needs content. By adding content to your blog or to other pages on your site, you build your brand. You also give the search engines something to index, making it easier for customers to find you on the web. Adding a new blog post or two a week is usually enough to do this.

A good content marketing plan can also make your small business seem bigger. You may not be able to compete with the big business next door in terms of advertising dollars, but you do have other options. It is content marketing that gives you those options.

Finally, CM augments your other marketing efforts. You can post links to your blogs on social media, educate your customer base, and even create new information products based on a particularly popular blog post. People are more likely to share these types of posts. This helps you extend your brand far beyond where your own efforts can reach.

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