Content marketing is the “heavy lifting” of self-promotion. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. Content marketing is generating unique content that’s interesting, educational, informative, or advantageous to your audience. It could be text, photos, audio recordings, videos, or (more likely) a combination of media. It can be unique content, republished content, research, opinion, or candid/personal thoughts and moments. Even if you hire someone to help, you’ll need to be directly involved.
I call it heavy lifting because, on top of everything else you already do to run your business every day, you need to take time out to regularly generate quality content. Writing isn’t easy, nor is remembering to take a lot of photos. On top of all that, you’ll have to get comfortable sharing. What you create needs to be genuinely funny, actually interesting, or somehow valuable. Why go through all the bother?
Because content is king, it’s always been King and it’s always going to be King.
Good content is easy to share: email newsletters, social media posts, articles on your website, lectures, and videos. All of these channels are fast, easy, and often free. Good content has viral potential. Some articles will get quoted, cited, and “linked to” by other websites. You will have more keyword-rich content and inbound links so your ranking on Google and other search engines will improve.
Potential customers will have a higher opinion of you, and anyone you impress is going to call you before turning to your competition.
Beware of companies that say they can handle this burden for you. They fill your marketing channels with boilerplate, reposted, semi-appropriate, non-impactful, and mediocre content. A good agency will pull good content out of you, edit and prepare it for public consumption, send it back for final signoff, and then distribute it appropriately.