Content marketing can best be defined by breaking the term down into its two component parts: content and marketing.
Content is information presented online that provides value to the reader. If it’s an advertisement it’s not content, and if it’s content it’s not an advertisement. Content can be textual, visual, audio, video or any combination thereof; it includes articles, blog posts, YouTube videos and podcasts, among other forms.
Marketing is…well, you probably already know the meaning of this word. It’s spreading a message across as much of a niche audience’s field of attention as possible.
Going Viral
The goal of any and every piece of content you market online is to go viral. When a piece of content goes viral that means it takes on a life of its own, being viewed and shared across cyberspace by hordes of people who find it worthwhile to do so: way more people than you could ever reach through your own direct marketing efforts. When a piece of content goes viral, you reap the benefits of crowdsourcing, wherein the people online who find value in your content end up becoming like your own organic marketing team, pushing your content to ever-widening circles of leads without you needing to take any further action.
What to Sell
There are two basic ways to make money online: sell something and advertise.
Placing ads with your content is only profitable however if you publish your content on your own site and even then only if you already have sizable and steady traffic coming to your site. So that rules advertising out for the vast majority of content marketers.
Which leaves selling something. So what do you sell? The answer is one or both of two things: your own products and service and/or other people’s products and services.
Selling your own products and services, of course, involves having products and services to sell. But lacking any obvious such good or services, there are still ways you can come up with something of your own to sell. If you have a blog, for example, and especially if that blog already has a subscriber list, you can come up with a membership plan offering VIP bonuses and benefits to those who choose to pay a periodic subscription fee (usually monthly). In many cases, those bonuses and benefits are…
…wait for it…
…content itself! That’s right. You can create content (articles, videos, presentations, etc.) to then provide exclusively to paid subscribers. In this way, you’ll have the content you use to market your subscription service and the content you provide to those subscribers. Of course the paid content must be of a higher standard (or at least greater substance) than the content you use to market it. To save you some time, you can even consider providing free samples of your paid content as the content your market. For example, offer the first few paragraphs of an article or pages of an ebook for free, or the first few minutes of a longer video or podcast.
The second type of products and services to sell – other people’s – may seem a bit easier. This is what’s known as “affiliate marketing” in which you become an affiliate of another company (or companies) marketing their products and services and earning a percentage of the sale price for every sale you make or refer.
Success in affiliate marketing starts by finding the right products and services to market. There are lots out there and perhaps the best way to identify those with the most potential profits for you is to look at your own unique skills and expertise, as well as the circles in which you already have influence. A top selling piece of accounting software, for example, would only sell well for you if you have knowledge and experience in accounting, so you can create ample original content on the subject with which to market that software or if you have an “in” with lots of people in accounting or needing that software. But if pets is your area of expertise, then forget about the top selling accounting software, because it probably won’t sell well for you; choose a pet related product or service instead.
The point is, you have to create the content you’re going to use to market these affiliate products (or your own products, for that matter). So do your research not just to find the best-selling new things on the market, but the best quality things that you are in a unique position – either through skills, knowledge, contacts or pure interest – to create endless quality content about.
Popular places to start searching for affiliate products and services to market are sites like Commission Junction and ClickBank. But really, almost any purveyor of anything online would be more than happy to pay you a commission for helping to bring them more business, so be bold. Know thyself. And do your homework. Find – or create – the right products or services for you to sell and your marketing efforts will be that much easier.
Content Marketing Methods
A recent study jointly conducted by BuzzFeed and StumbleUpon found that the content they published that went the most viral did so by being shared frequently among small clusters of friends (known as “cluster sharing”) rather than being broadcast by a few people (aka “key influencers) to their large network of contacts. With that discovery in mind, those sites then wanted to determine the best (that is: most effective) way to induce cluster sharing, and as it turns out, believe it or not, the answer is: email.
Perhaps it’s because email communications are still perceived as more intimate than the alternatives. Whatever the case, even after the advent of Facebook and Twitter and Del.icio.us and Pinterest, the BuzzFeed/StumbleUpon study as well as another study conducted by B2B Online and entitled “Email Marketing: A Legacy Channel Continues To Deliver” both verified that email is still far and away the most effective method of spreading content among both consumers and businesses, whatever the focus of those messages may be: lead generation, customer communiques or transactions.
Creating Viral Email Content
In order for a person to want to share a piece of content with their peers it must move them to do so; it must resonate with them on some level that triggers an emotional response: namely, the compulsion to share it.
Having said that, a free email marketing course is one of the easiest and most effective ways to market content via email. All a person has to do is give you their email address (a very low commitment to ask of people) and you have a “in” to their inbox, allowing you to send out daily emails for a period of a week, 10 days, a month or more, each one packed with two key components: content and a call-to-action.
The content is the most important part for maintaining your leads’ interest and keeping them from unsubscribing to your list. Therefore keep the content valuable and interesting. And don’t overload people’s inboxes. One email per day is really the most frequently anyone wants to receive an email from anyone other than their friends and colleagues (which you are not). Do not spam people with endless promotional messages and make sure the focus of each email is not your call-to-action (generally a prompt to click a link to go to your website and examine what you have to offer); it is your content.
That is: it’s not about getting them to do something for you; it’s about what you have to offer them. And the more value your content is perceived as providing, the more willing people will be to continue reading it, sharing it, and acting upon your calls to action.
Photo Credit: Flickr
About The Author:
Tim Wilson is content manager for HostPapa, a website hosting company serving over 100,000 customers around the world. Since launching in 2006, HostPapa has offered reliable, budget-friendly, easy-to-use web hosting solutions for small to medium-sized businesses.
You can follow him and HostPapa on Twitter and Facebook or you can join his Google+ Circle
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- The Money is in the Content. The List is Useless!
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Going viral is actually the key words here. It’s contagious and before you know it, it’s branches have actually spread to really far places and people. It’s actually what can keep your topic interesting enough to attract many people.
“If its content its not ad… if its ad its not content” – Love this Alex. I’m sure if content writers (bloggers) understand this one point, a lot of garbage won’t be floating in the blogosphere! Great post as usual (you want to tell something different, na….)!
Earlier I was focusing on Google Adsense earnings
but now I have fluctuated towards affiliate marketing due to which I have to focus allot on content marketing too.
“The goal of any and every piece of content you market online is to go viral.”
I would argue this is not true. There is plenty of content that is not viral, but which is still incredibly valuable from a marketing point of view. Investopedia would be a perfect example – an article on bond arbitrage will never go viral, but it will get google hits and thus allow them to sell brokerage ads and thus profit.
I disagree. TO use your example, the article could still go viral within the industry/community – thus leading to even more sales. Viral is like Stupid, it is what it does (Thanks Forest for the quote)
That’s jut my opinion anyway – and its my blog so its right! LOL
It is absolutely true, when the content goes viral, it spreads very fast as fire. People view the content, share it further if they like it and the cycle goes on. This way, the content becomes famous in a short period of time and on a large scale making content marketing a success.
Hi Alex
Article Marketing use to be very effective for me from a viral point of view. Some of the articles that I had written were re-printed and shared all over the Internet. Then the big G came along with their Penguin and Panda updates, and killed everything.
I now concentrate more on video marketing. Which has been almost as good for me, as Article Marketing. But more importantly, from a marketing stand-point. Google seems to prefer it.
Paul,
Definitely appreciate the comment mate – I know that since Google acquired YouTube the power of Video marketing has increased (it was quite powerful before don’t get me wrong) but it’s good to hear straight from the source that it actually works in practice and not just theory. (Damn, now I wish I’d bought that WSO last week which autmated both the creation and submission of videos)
I wish there’s easier way to create viral content. I focus mainly on content marketing it proved to be useful in the past for me.
The way you have detailed about content marketing is pretty decent and informative. Going viral is the foremost thing in content marketing. If your content doesn’t reach the audience for whom it is meant to be then it is of no point. Quality of content should also be considered. Apart from this, the point you have highlighted of selling products and ads with your content is an added profit for your marketing business. Great Post and awesome tips, Tim!
Whether you are a for-profit or non-profit a content marketing strategy will help you build stronger relationships with your target community, which will strengthen your brand. A stronger brand can have a very positive impact in your market differentiation and sales results. You have provided some wonderful tactics for good profit, thanks for sharing.
Great tips. There are some very important points in this post as we need to follow that as well content marketing in my opinion is a best tool to deal with your business and get profit. but we need to follow the proper strategies for this so we can hit our proper target market for online business and get more and more useful and profitability.
Hey Tim, I loved your saying- “If it’s an advertisement it’s not content, and if it’s content it’s not an advertisement.” You have covered almost all points, which any marketer should do to maximize their profit. One more point I would like to add is making use of videos for blogging i.e. Vblogging. Vblogging helps to earn more money than usual content blogging and it is the best form of marketing stuff as many people are involved in watching videos over reading articles.
Your article is really helpful for naive bloggers like me. You are absolutely right, content should not only valuable and interesting but it should also be unique and original compared to others. It should not be too lengthy that it lands up eating reader’s head. I really loved your post Tim and I am sure to implement these strategies for my blog. Thanks a ton!
Its simple, If You’re Not Content Marketing, You’re Not Marketing. It is the best way of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. You have shown some wonderful content marketing methods, thanks a lot for sharing that.
It is absolutely true, when the content goes viral, it spreads very fast as fire. People view the content, share it further if they like it and the cycle goes on. This way, the content becomes famous in a short period of time and on a large scale making content marketing a success.
This article is very well-written and is one of the best I have read this week. I just want to reiterate that it is important to write valuable and informative content to establish a relationship with customers and hope they will continue to be loyal ones. Content Marketing is about establishing relationships with customers to earn their trust so they will continue to give you their business. Thus, in order to write valuable and informative content, you must know what your customers needs and wants are. Is the information you are providing going to be able to help solve their problems? The most important thing to remember, or maybe one of the most important things to remember is that, using Content Marketing is about making connections with others. The sale comes last.
Thanks for these tips. Though I am a lot worried about how I am going to proceed. I don’t have a list (despite the fact that my site has been public for a long time and have done some article marketing). It’s like I am starting from scratch. I really appreciate the info I get from your blog.
If you intend to make your content go viral you need to ensure that is engaging. Also, make sure that your content is something that is worth sharing. If you want people to read your article it is not enough that your content is well-written, it should also be engaging to catch the interest of a wide range of audience.
If you want your article to go viral make sure that it contains shareable content. Make sure that it offers value to the readers.