Content is King!
Back in 1996 Bill Gates even wrote a paper called Content is King, he writes “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”
So the question still remains, is Content King?
We have heard this time and time again, and if your delving into the wonderful world of blogging and online marketing then you have probably been told this needs to be a cornerstone of your philosophy.
Well, the answer is no. Content can only be the king when it’s propped up by other services and forms of promotion.
How we are told it works
Write super epic and brilliantly unique content and you will have extreme amounts of traffic, everyone will be rushing to read it.
So we write our long form blog post and articles and spend time curating them just right to express our brand or product or rant.
We post it and then what?
No traffic, no one’s reading, your words are getting no traction?
How the King gets the throne
Writing good content is a great thing, but it’s not the only thing we need to make Content the King.
Search Engine Optimisation
Content needs to be found. So how do we find your great content? We search for it.
So how does a search engine know about your content? By well-defined and relevant Keywords.
So the first thing we need to prop up our King is on page SEO and some well-defined keywords.
Without out these we are are not going to even be on the radar. For more in-depth information on how to use these effectively, you can read my last blog on using Keywords for inbound marketing.
Another way to get you blogging out there is via backlinks to your content, this can be from social media sites, blogging site and link directories. Backlinks are off page SEO, where your keywords are on-page.
Social Media Platforms
The next thing we need to look at is other ways of getting our content in front of the masses.
That’s right we need the help of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to name a few. This will get your content in front of a lot more people. This will allow you other channels to engage with your target audience and hopefully, generate some organic traffic.
The is another way to prop up our king is that’s paid promotion. Whether it’s on social media or Google AdWords’. This will get it to more people sooner, you can really refine your target ideal audience even further.
So if you wanted to target woman, between the age of 22 and 35 living in the north of an area, that are interested in health and fitness you can. This will make your advertising for a gym membership a lot more effective.
So as you can see content can only be King & take the throne if it is helped by good SEO, well planned Keywords, quality backlinks and well-targeted social media exposure, as well as possible promotion via pay advertising.
Long Live the King
So as you can see, writing brilliant content isn’t the only thing you should be concentrating on. You need to formulate a content strategy. We regularly use similar strategies for content with inbound marketing, which uses all of the above channels to bring new users to your offerings. It’s no different bringing them in for content it’s the same game.
You can steal a few tricks from the inbound marketing playbook as it will give you a good idea how we use these methods to help with making your content reach the right people.
One I would suggest would be to create a Buyer Persona’s to help focus in on the pain points of your target audience, this can not only help you focus your writing, but also which channels you should be focusing on in relation to promoting.
We have 2 great articles on “Buyer Persona’s: What They Are and Why You Need Them” as well as how to build them with “How to create a Buyer Persona”.