{"id":614,"date":"2016-02-11T04:47:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T04:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clearimaging.com\/blog\/?p=614"},"modified":"2016-02-11T04:47:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T04:47:21","slug":"content-marketing-for-dummies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/?p=614","title":{"rendered":"Content Marketing for Dummies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">With so many companies engaging in what they think is content marketing, it is best we take a complete look at the subject and find out what an actual content marketing strategy is and what isn&#8217;t. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em;\">What it is Not<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Making a nice infographic and posting it on your Facebook is not a content marketing strategy, although it is a piece of &#8216;content marketing&#8217;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">In order to have success with your content marketing you need a COMPLETE strategy, with everything named out ahead of time. Otherwise it is just random activity, going towards no clear goal. Random blog posts and infographics will give you no ROI. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em;\">Proven Content Marketing \t\t\tStrategy<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">From venerable mega corporations like John Deere and Kraft, to viral Youtube channels like Epic Meal Time, there IS an underlying sequence of actions in common with all successful content marketing strategies.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><strong>You must become a media\/publishing company<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">In addition to whatever product you sell, you must create within your company some form of valuable, interesting, needed content. Produce it regularly, and give it away for free. It helps if you think of it as creating either a:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">TV \t\t\tshow (in this case it would be on a Youtube channel)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Print \t\t\tMagazine (expensive!)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Radio \t\t\tshow\/Podcast <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Regular \t\t\tblog articles (most mundane)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Those are four mediums for your content. By giving it away for free you allow it to propagate itself and spread easily, and if it is really good, people will spread it for you. As they become more familiar with your brand and begin to trust you more they will be more likely to become a customer. The content must be produced regularly. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em;\">What kind of content?<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Find \tout WHO your exact audience is for your company\/product<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Find \tout what their pain-points are, what they need, their troubles, how \tyou can solve it. Your content will be based around solving this. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Differentiate \tyour content from your competitors. Find a niche, a point of \tdifference so you can stand out. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em;\">Then what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">You must then create your unique content on a regular basis (weekly, etc), for 1-2 years. At this point you have created an audience\/community, and you can then begin to harvest their contact information (now that they trust you) and promote to them via email sales letters your actual products, and finally get revenue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em;\">Acid Test<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">How do you know if the content you are making is good enough for such a strategy? Ask your self: If my server went down, would my content be missed? Would people be disappointed? If the answer is no, then you need to step up your game and create TRULY valuable content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.5em;\">Conclusion<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small;\">As you can see this strategy is indeed the slow boat, and does not pay any bills for 1-2 years, until you have made your audience and then begin to try to sell them things via an email marketing campaign (or others). Until then all you are doing is pumping out free and valuable content.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With so many companies engaging in what they think is content marketing, it is best we take a complete look&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,98],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content","category-marketing-2","tag-content-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clearimaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}