six ways a spear can save you from a wild boar this is one of the oldest footprints of content
marketing on how to use a spear in the wild hey friends welcome back to my channel if this is
your first time here i'm Zuma and i've been in the marketing business for a number of years for
years brands have been telling stories to acquire and retain customers and in this video i'm going
to be sharing with you a bit about the history of content marketing what is content marketing
and how to build and execute a content marketing strategy so if you're a small business and want
actionable steps to follow or if you're new in marketing you're in the right place so let's
delve in 1895 John Deere launches the first known customer magazine called The Furrow which is an
agricultural magazine that still exists today a few years later in 1905 Michelin the french tire
company launches the Michelin guide this guide provided valuable information on places to find
car maintenance restaurants and hotels and some general travel tips while you're on the
road later Procter & Gamble sponsored a serialized radio drama that later known to be the first soap
opera today 70% of the UK magazines are customer magazines and some companies worldwide spend
around 25% of their marketing budget on content creation so what is content marketing and here is
an informal definition of it it is a marketing strategy used to attract engage and retain
an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles videos podcasts and other types of media
this strategy establishes expertise promotes brand awareness and keeps your business on top of your
customers mind when they decide to buy a product that you're selling and content marketing has many
names depending on the focus and the type of the business so some know it as copywriting content
writing video production and so on so why content marketing is so important socrates said speak so
i can see you speak so i can see you everyone is a black box and not known to the outside world until
they speak out about their values their interests their qualities and what they like and not like
likewise for business we also need information about the brands that we're interested in like
their qualities where they get the material from and the values they adopt to perform the service
and how they perceive the customer so you provide your customers with content about your product and
how to make the best use of it or write a blog post about how your product can improve their
life and it's so simple you put out some free content and you get paid for customers buying
your products so when they consume your content they will say this business looks like they know
what they're doing so let me hire them or buy from them and the good thing about content marketing
compared to other marketing strategies is that it's a pull strategy a pool marketing draws
consumer interest in your brand or products and the first step to build a solid contour
marketing is topics and keywords decide on the topics and the keyword that you want to rank for
so if you're in a food business for instance you can decide to focus on topics like healthy food
or a certain diet or dish recipes and how to make desserts and so on and to decide on what content
to create and what to write about here are some tools that will help you with generating ideas
Answerthepublic.com provides you with topic ideas
you only give it one or two words and it generates all sorts of questions being asked online
what how why and so on then you have Quora which is a platform where people ask questions
and get answers for it's a great place to get content ideas next you have google search console
and it is great at giving you ideas on which keywords lead to your website then you have
google ads keyword planner it is another place that gives you ideas on key phrases
and topics by volume of monthly search and the level of competition to targeting them
then you have your competitors website audit your competitors website because they can
grab your attention to questions that customers can be asking and this gives you a chance to be
comprehensive in the content you produce and outperform them with quality of your content
next you have reddit the famous forum which has questions and answers on various topics you can
see what people look up there and you can create your content to answer the questions that bring
visits to your content pieces then you have google suggest which is another source of ideas when you
start typing in the search bar google starts suggesting key phrases like an auto completion
from search history you also have youtube it can provide you with ideas for your content so
when you search on youtube for a certain topic you will get heaps of ideas to talk about and one of
my favorites is surveys you can also survey your customers about what they expect to hear from you
send a survey to your mailing list or ask them on social media about topics they want
more of next compile a list of keywords target now that you have decided on the ideas
and the content topics that you want to cover you need to create a list of keywords that you want
to target and those are the keywords that you want to mention frequently in your content and now it's
time to think of the content format usually when content marketing is mentioned people think of
blog posts in the format of articles but there's a long list of other formats for instance you have
videos blog posts infographics podcasts quizzes photos graphics and ebooks and in a previous video
i talked about how to download and rebrand an ebook for free you'll find the link here
and every content format fits a certain purpose so you choose the format that works best for your
business from experience the formats that you have a competitive advantage in or that you can
produce in-house are usually the best but even if you don't have a video production in-house or
a copywriter there's affordable ways to do this so keep watching as i'll be discussing this next
content resourcing the cost of production can be very high and like we mentioned earlier that
companies dedicate 25 of their marketing budget to content creation i personally prefer to have
content produced in-house so you can carry the soul of your brand in every word and have your
message delivered the best way possible however not every company has its own videographer or
content writer so you can always rely on marketing agencies but there's a more affordable way of
producing content depending on freelance websites like fiverr upwork and so many others both fiverr
and upwork are very reputable and you can get a very decent quality for a very good price
so this is one option for you to explore and now it's time for content production choose to stand
out against your competition by producing content that is informative engaging and visually pleasing
give examples in your content pieces pay a good attention to your content ux with a simple layout
comfortable neat and legible and content ux applies to any kind of content
not only blog posts and articles for instance if you're producing a video make sure it's not too
compact that the scenes are not too long and that the music is not too loud also make sure that your
content is actionable and sits somewhere in the sales funnel the whole objective of the exercise
is to lead to sales and now it's time to optimize your content for seo make sure your title tags are
super enticing to click on even if you created the best piece of content a boring not interesting
title can fail you and might not make it to the search engine rankings and use your keywords
multiple times in your content whether it's a blog post and a podcast or a video another good
tip here is to link to other websites especially on blog posts once your content is published
make sure to use it on social media and in your newsletter promote your content on other locations
on your website and on your digital assets you can also boost your content on facebook and instagram
using the retargeting strategy at a lower cost and after publishing your content it's now time to
track the performance of it and there are two main things to track here the traffic to the content
and this is an indicator of how informative and engaging this content is note that traffic picks
up over time and that growth is exponential and you need some patience before you start to see
results the second thing to measure which is the most important is conversion and here you want to
measure the impact of your content on your sales so analyzing your numbers here will give you an
indicator of how the pieces of content helps you achieve your marketing goals and here are a few
tips to make the best of your hard work on your content marketing strategy repurpose the content
to feed the nature of the channel you're posting on so if you've produced a video for youtube make
sure to repurpose it for instagram and tech talk same for blog posts produced for your website this
will need to be repurposed if you wanted to use it as an advertorial on a news and media website
and one last piece of advice here is to stay consistent with content production both customers
and search engines love fresh content so keep it a habit to post content regularly and it's now
time for you to go ahead and build your own content marketing strategy i hope you found
this video beneficial let me know in the comments the content format and strategy that you will be
adopting and please do me a favor if you like the content of this video don't leave before
you subscribe share and like to support this new channel ciao for now and see you for the next one