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Introduction to Content Marketing

Content marketing is one the best way for having passive income. If you want to be a content marketer, there are some prerequisites that you have to focus on before starting your business.  So, in this article, I am going to have an introduction to content marketing and what the point of it is and then what makes content marketing special.

Introduction to Content Marketing

What is Content Marketing

Indeed, this is a complex question, but we will look at a singular definition.

“Content Marketing is the process of creating and making readily available valuable information that attracts your target audience to you and helps them solve a problem.”

So, there are a few key aspects in that statement that we need to identify clearly:

  • Creating valuable content

The content you are creating has to be valuable to somebody, and that should attract the audience.

  • Making it readily available

Put your content in readily available places; you should put it online, so anyone who wants to read it, can easily find it.

  • Attracting your target audience

The key point is to target your audience; you are not supposed to target everybody because everybody can’t get benefit from what you are offering. Hence, you have to target a group of specific people.

  • Solving their problems

You need to understand your audience’s problems, and find a solution for them and recognize what they need.

Let’s Simplify This

  • Identify your audience and find out who you are going to serve.
  • Understand their problems. Remember you are here to help them to solve the problems.
  • Create content that moves them forward in their journey.
  • Publish and promote your content. Share your content and make people aware of it.

Turning Strangers into Customers

Now I am going to talk about the tricks, how to turn strangers into a customer. Before I start, you need to focus on some hard truths.

  • People rarely buy from people they don’t know or trust. Perhaps, some preexisting relationship with.
  • Remember authority and trust are earned over time. You have to consistently produce things that the people want to consume and help them learn and teach them and help them move along the path.
  • Higher prices require higher levels of trust to be established, and if you sell something at a higher price that requires a higher level of trust to be established before you sell something to anyone.

Great Contents:

This is where great content helps! Great contents are the key which to flourish and make the whole system work.

Role of Good Content

  • Educates and entertains

You have to share content that educate and entertains the audience, so you want to teach them something, and you want them coming back.

  • Build awareness of yourself.

It helps people understand who you are and what you care about.

  • Establishes credibility and trust

By good content, people will know who you are, and also they will trust you.

  • It makes people aware of what you know and what you do or offer.

Process of Content Marketing

Keep in mind that building an audience takes time, so you need to be patient, and don’t worry if your content doesn’t get view initially. So, you have to be focused and deliver value with your content, and it’s important to understand that there is a journey when it comes to people coming to your site and developing trust in you and in what you are doing. Let’s look at that journey.

Process of Internet Marketing
Process of Internet Marketing

We talked about going from strangers to customers, and this is the process.

When your content does, it helps them to move along the path. It attracts strangers to make the visitors and then your content converts them into leads, and further produce contain helps to turn those into customers.

So, blogs, social media, post casts, and videos are usually the first type of content that people see and find out about you, and that’s where theses contents help attract them and turn them into visitors.

Once they are on your site and start to become a regular visitor and then things like eBooks, newsletters. Free reports that you can often offer that in exchange for an email address, you can change those visitors into customers.

Alternately, things like email marketing, blogs, podcasts, and videos are the way to help them and turn them into customers.

Giving to Get
Giving to Get

Giving to Get

Do you know about the key to content marketing? There are some prerequisites that you should know about before starting content marketing.

Giving something to get something in return!

People often make the mistake of thinking of themselves first, and that’s is a human characteristic. Particularly we have to work front with no real guaranty that we are going to get anything in return. People are inherently a little bit selfish, and that’s a real problem when you start doing content marketing.

The idea of content marketing is delivering value upfront to your audience is critical. That is something that you have to understand and is a critical component. You will not get a sell, or you are not going to get someone to subscribe to you instantly. You have to continually give them something valuable.

Remember content marketing is a long game. You have to think months not days or a year out that is when you are going to get the fruits of the work that you have done already.

Give Away Great Information

It’s all about giving away great information. What you are going to do effectively is with your content you’re buying their attention. There is a lot of information available on intent just it needs a click, so if you get somebody on your site, then you have to give them really good information. That’s the way you can buy their attention.

Good content has to solve problems. When somebody comes to your site, there they are looking to be entertained or educated, but generally speaking, you should give them something that they want, and if you do that, it will establish you as a trusted advisor.

People love Shortcuts
People love Shortcuts

People love Shortcuts

If you think that when you give stuff away, why would anyone but from you, that’s a real fear.

If you think in general, we love shortcuts, and your content is there to offer solutions. It’s a big picture play but solutions are hard, and they require work, and they require that the people learn more.

The people want something fast, and you have to give them the simplicity, you need to take the work out of it for them. Here’s a good example.

Suppose you sell a course and the course is about podcasting, so you have a blog and the blog is about podcasting, and in that blog you write a post about what you do, what you use and how you edit, etc. You write about what microphone you write, about what software you use, you talk about how to edit your course, all you need is to make a podcast.

Well, effectively on your blog your visitors can learn everything for free, they can learn how to put their show together just like you, just by reading your blog post.

But You Sell the Shortcut

You need to short circuit their journey; you want to sell them the shortcut. The product you are offering should be something that condenses everything they need to know in one location.

This will get them to the end faster and remember they are buying the shortcut.

The content marketing is all about the soft sell.

What is a soft sell?

  • Making an offer, without overt persuasion
  • You give them what you promised, but let them know there’s more.

Soft Selling is Critical

In content marketing, soft selling is critical because nobody wants to read an advertorial and all are very savvy consumers. People know when they are being pitched or setup to be sold to, and the moment when they realize that their guard goes up and their wallet goes away.

Push vs. Pull Marketing
Push vs. Pull Marketing

Push vs. Pull Marketing

Push Marketing

Push marketing is all about hard selling. You’re getting your product “out there” and offering it to people to buy directly. You are pushing your product in front of people to buy it, to do so advertising is the most recognizable format.

Problems with Push Marketing

  • Savvy consumers ignore marking
  • On-Demand Content is the future
  • Requires hard selling which is tough

Pull Marketing

Pull is a little bit different from push marketing and it’s all about attracting your audience to you, and you want to deliver the value to people and put valuable information out there for people to attract them.

Problems with Pull Marketing

  • It’s usually a longer process
  • You have to invest in content
  • Congruence is vital, and you have to be consistent with what you are doing.
  • Can be difficult to calculate ROI
  • It’s tough walking the “Free ”

How Do I Do This Well?

  • Patience, Commitment, Focus

You have to do your work with patients consistently, commitment, and focus.

  • Know your audience and their problems intimately
  • Be congruent in your content
  • Have something to sell

But most importantly, beyond having something to sell, you have to make offers.

 You Have to Make Offers!

  • Many Content Marketers are bad at making the offer
  • Soft selling works, but only if you do it!
  • Don’t be afraid; the can only say no

You just have to consistently focus and think about what you are trying and then do it.

Summary

  • Content Marketing is all about attracting people to you by using valuable content and information. It’s helping people identify and say that you are somebody to follow and listen to.
  • To do this, you need to understand the potential audience, and you need to know what their problems are and more importantly how you help them through your information.
  • You want to take strangers and turn them into customers/ an audience, and it’s all about your content that should attract them and turn them into visitors.
  • But to do that you need to have something to offer and you need to make the offer. So regarding customers, you have to have something to sell.
  • Soft Selling works well with content marketing and is simple to do. What you do here is just giving people the information that they want and helping them to go faster on their
  • People buy shortcuts. The people want simplicity; they want ease and the want to go and get their journey faster.

Things For You To Do

  • Identify your audience and understand their problems
  • Discover the top Content Marketers in your market
  • Consume their stuff!
  • Think about the content you could create to attract strangers
  • Work out if you have an existing audience already
  • Write down your offers on paper and understand what it is that you are going to produce or sell and offer to people.

Hopefully, everything is clear, but if not, write down your questions in the comment box below.

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2 comments

Irfan Ali May 20, 2017 at 1:35 pm

Hello Dear,

Nice topic enjoyed learning the points will well introduction the suggestion i have for you is that in place of I if you use we that will look batter your community it shows the work of a team

regards

Reply
Bismillah May 20, 2017 at 1:47 pm

Thank you so much for your suggestion dear!

Reply

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