Defining Content Marketing

According to Dayna Rothman and “Content Marketing Foundations”, content marketing
stands for the process of creating valuable, relevant content to attract, acquire,
and engage your audience (Rothman, 2015).

In other words, content marketing is a crucial aspect of every business,
which helps your company create content designed for profit.
Here is a little graph that demonstrates the success cycle of
effective content marketing:

Defining Thought Leadership

Content marketing takes away the most valuable component of your customer’s life,
their time; therefore, the content presented to them should be of great value.
One way you can achieve this is through thought leadership.

What does that mean, you wonder? Here is an example. At one point of personal
exploring of ecommerce, I was selling wooden polaroid sunglasses. The product
description was educational, explaining to the customers which UV rays do the
lenses protect their eyes from, and why such protection is crucial, along the
benefits of the polaroid lenses.

Furthermore, the content, in this example a product description, should not be pushy,
trying to sell a product. The content should be educational, pulling the customer in,
encouraging them to change their lifestyle, and desire to purchase your product
in order to achieve a better lifestyle.

Deepening the Knowledge Through Students’ Perspectives

One of the greatest opportunities a man can have is the ability to have access to
other people’s experiences, and knowledge. In the era of technology, information,
and education is at the tip of our hands. It is important to use that opportunity wisely.

During one of my college courses, I have gotten an opportunity to read, and evaluate
other students’ research and life experiences. This allowed me to discover information
I have yet had to discover, and learn about.

The research of other students provided me with a few great tips when it comes to
content marketing, and I will gladly share it with you.

• Create a solid foundation for the content marketing
• Follow the 411 rule

The Content Marketing Foundation

In order to create a solid foundation you should focus on the following points:

1. Hire the right content marketing team
2. Focus on both buyer personas and the buyer journey
3. Establish a brand voice
4. Setup goals and strategy for marketing content creation

The 411 Rule

The “411” rule structures your content into percentages. This means that perhaps 50%
of your content would be educational, 25% would be “soft promotion”, maybe a webinar
or an educational course and another 25% would be “hard promotion”, such as Black Friday sale.
Dividing the content will provide your business with a healthy balance, allowing you to hard sell,
and promote, all while educating your customers.

Learning from Feedback

As I was evaluating other students’ research, other students would evaluate mine.
The greatest aspect of that is the opportunity to grow through feedback received.
We were required to apply an example of our own, based on the knowledge
gathered from the “Content Marketing Foundations”.

A few of the tips I can share from the feedback are:

1. Do not make product descriptions lengthy
2. Product descriptions should be educational but remain direct, understandable, and short
3. The customer prefers bullet points of information about the product over descriptive paragraphs

Now that we’ve covered the basics, learned from experience, and shared
beneficial tips, I’d love to hear more about your experiences, and greatest
learning points of your content marketing journey. I encourage you
to share your story in the commenting section below, as knowledge
can help us all learn, grow, and succeed.