Creating Reach: How to Get Your Content Seen

We’ve all heard the term content marketing, but what is it exactly? According to the Content Marketing Institute, it is “a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

With a little bit of effort and some creativity, you can use this technique to attract more customers, keep your current customers engaged, and hopefully increase profits. But how do you get your content in front of the right audience?

Like any form of online marketing or advertising, you can’t just produce material and then hope for the best. Content marketing requires a multi-step strategy in order to reach as large an audience as possible. If you’re taking your first steps into the world of content marketing, we’ve collected a handful of tips to get you on the right track.

Provide Value

Content marketing will always begin and end with providing value to the marketplace. Unlike other strategies for improving web presence or brand recognition, there is very little middle ground when it comes to a content marketing campaign. Typically, a company is either going to do it wonderfully and see amazing gains or will find that it could have been a waste of time and money. Not only must the information be useful to the audience, it must be engaging and up-to-date in order to be seen, read, and shared.

Diversify Content

When many businesses take their first look at this form of marketing, they tend to only focus on one or two tools. This often begins with a blog, but blogs are only a small component of content marketing and are typically going to be used to provide up-to-date information, not groundbreaking material that will promote authority within the field. Effective campaigns can include any mix of:

• Blogs
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Magazines
• Photos
• Charts
• Graphs

Join the Conversation

It is important for every business owner to think of his or her industry as a conversation that is taking place between the major players. What is currently being said about those product or services? What are the hot topics? How is the industry changing? Who are the major catalysts for change? These are the types of questions that should be answered when it comes to creating an effective campaign and reaching a larger audience. While sparking a new conversation may work in limited cases, it is important to look at overreaching themes as well. To get in the conversation, follow your colleagues’ (and competitors’) blogs and get active on Twitter and Facebook.

Keep an Open Mind

There is no single golden rule to content marketing, and many businesses will find themselves engaging in a wide variety of tools to extend their readership. Whether it is localized guerilla marketing to promote a website or a one-time email campaign, no stone should be left unturned when it comes to finding what will work and what won’t. Take a chance, do something that may or may not be successful—you may be surprised by the result.