What Is Content Marketing?

What is Content Marketing? Defining a framework for understanding the concept. A brief overview of the history and current state of content marketing strategies. Why content marketing?

Content Marketing

As with any marketing strategy, content marketing is primarily designed to reach targeted audiences in order to attract sales. A marketer can build content marketing strategies around specific industries, products, or even services. For instance, a physician may create a social networking content marketing plan around the medical industry. The physician may post information about the latest studies about a new prescription medication he has developed. He may provide insights and recommendations on how readers can best take care of themselves and avoid common problems.

Why content marketing? Humans are social animals. We all like to read things that entertain us. Many readers enjoy blogs, articles, and other written content that tell their story and tell them what’s happening in the world around them. There’s no doubt that we’ve all become very dependent on entertainment media, and just as we have become glued to TV shows, movies, music videos, etc., we’re also attracted to online content that tells us what’s happening in our world. We’re able to form all kinds of connections and associations when we read creative content, and we’re constantly looking for ways to connect with others.

The purpose of content marketing is to provide information about a business, product, service, or product line to interested parties in an engaging way. The content is created in a manner that engages the reader or viewer. Content marketers often use SEO to enhance content marketing strategies by creating “back links” to web pages and using social media to engage readers and prospects. SEO and social media work hand-in-hand to increase traffic to web pages, which in turn, drive sales.

Content marketing can take many forms, but it usually involves one main goal – to attract readers to a web page. Content marketers typically create posts or articles that answer common questions or give advice on a particular topic. They also write reviews of products or services that they believe would benefit the reader. In many cases, these articles are published on popular blogs or review sites such as Amazon or Yahoo! The advantage of the content published on these sites, or in blog comment boxes, is that readers can engage the writer and offer input into their decision.

Once the content is written and published, marketers work hard to drive content traffic to their websites. SEO and social media tactics help marketers optimize their web pages so that they appear higher in search engine results. These tactics increase the rankings, which means more traffic and more potential customers. It’s important to remember, though, that content marketing isn’t solely about SEO and social media, it’s also about writing well and being interesting! Good content often draws in readers, which leads to repeat visitors who may buy or at least visit a site in the future.