Why Content Marketing Is So Important?

Why Content Marketing Is So Important?

The phrase content marketing is not new at all, as we have been hearing it for around 10 years. Many trends in marketing may have come and gone, but the importance of content marketing will never go lack luster. Content market has bagged a prominent position in marketing strategies this year as well. Here, we will examine how important content marketing will be in the coming years.
A quick glance at what content marketing can do for your business

• Content marketing acts as the cornerstone for attracting new people into your business
• It helps in maintaining a steady customer base
• Responsible for bringing traffic to website
• Content marketing plays a crucial role in on-line businesses
• Start conversations with target segment and engage them in meaningful dialogues
• Plays a crucial role in building the brand
• Your brand would be portrayed as an expert resource

Though content marketing is not a new concept at all, it is still the most important digital marketing trend on a commercial level these days. The following observations state why:

Selling knowledge to the reader

Though the pretext of writing content is to impart knowledge to the reader, your inherent desire would be to motivate the readers to become a loyal customer. Though you cannot say that in as many words, you have to motivate them by highlighting the features of your product and why it is good for them. You cannot sell directly though content marketing, but you can give them subtle hints on why they should try your product.

Content marketing can drive sales

Once you start posting content on blogs on a regular basis, you become some sort of an authority on the topics you are publishing. This authority will eventually generate trust among the people and they would begin to accept you as an authority on the subject you write about. You are creating a sense of thought leadership among the readers, and this goes on until your articles begin to influence their purchase. Hence, content can be a tool for knowledge and drive sales as well.

Becoming a trusted authority

Once you start publishing blogs on a regular basis, you are seen as an authority on the topic. This prompts people to come back and read more about what you have to write. If your articles are credible, they will be relying on your judgement and you will be considered an ‘expert’. You will have a regular fan following, and that would lead to more pay-per-click ads, organic search and good response in social media.

Content marketing starts conversations

If you want to initiate dialog with your target segment, you can create content and invite people to post their views and comments. This would generate activity in your blog and more people will start coming in and joining the conversation as you keep posting good content. You can seek the help of social media to promote content marketing.

Fighting the battle with Google

Google says that quality content marketing is going to be the major trend in 2016, so you have to make the content highly qualitative and infused with ideas that people like to read. If Google remains happy, your content would be seen on the first couple of pages. But for that you have to appease Panda and Penguin and posting good content is the only way to stand with your head held high in front of these algorithms.

Google is known for delivering the best content on-line, so you’ve got to really watch your Google Panda update because you would get penalized for sitting idle too. If you think that not creating any content would put you on the safe side, then that’s not going to get you anywhere. And if you try to spam your website with poor quality content, Penguin enters the screen and tags you as ‘spammy website’. If you want to remain in the good books with Panda and Penguin, then update your website with quality content on a regular basis. You can already start planning for a unique content strategy for 2016.

Content marketing in 2016 will remain at the centre stage

The year 2016 will also see a huge investment by brands and entrepreneurs in the field of content marketing. You will see more of aggregate content marketing in 2016. There are complex surveys that are capable of collecting information from large scale surveys and then converting the same into a coherent story. This information will be collected from social media profiles as well. There will also be a shift towards long-form content. You must have heard of Knowledge Graph by Google, and this has been in use since 2012. The main purpose of this would be to provide instant answers to the (common) queries provided to Google (for example, through digital assistants like Siri). Thanks to this instant form of ‘answering’, most people do not click on the traditional websites to look for answers. This is going to be a real blow for website owners and they have to make up to it with excellent content.

While content marketing is important it is also crucial that you have some yardstick to measure the success of content marketing. Incorporate methods that would test your ROI in content marketing. It would help you analyze if you are on the right track and are following the latest content marketing trends.

Interesting links about the topic:

What is Content Marketing and Why is it So Important?
What is content marketing?

Pictures: Flickr.com/ The Wild Blogger/ Ralph / Panorama

The author: Reema Oamkumar is engaged as a thought leader at Software-Developer-India.com which is a part of the YUHIRO Group. YUHIRO is a German-Indian enterprise which provides programmers to IT companies, agencies and IT departments.