Content marketing is the act of creating content, publishing that content, and promoting it with the goal of attracting, engaging, and keeping customers for your business. Content marketing depends on the concept of reciprocity or a mutual exchange of dependence, action, or influence.
When your company provides someone with useful, informative, or entertaining content, that someone may feel a sense of obligation to your business and may purchase from you when the opportunity arises.
1. Start a Video Series
Your customers and prospects almost certainly watch videos online.
In October 2016, trend tracking firm comScore reported in its Multi-Platform Media Metrix that YouTube reaches about 95 percent of regular Internet users in the United States age 35 or older in a given month.
From 2015 to 2016, the amount of time American adults spent on YouTube doubled, according to an April 2016 Google and Nielsen report.
Again, your customers and prospects are online watching videos.
Your aim is to create videos that helps your potential customers complete a task, provides those customers with good information, or entertains your customers.
2. Offer Classes
How-to content could be content marketing’s highest form. When you create something useful, something that genuinely helps, folks will appreciate it and will be more likely to purchase from your business. This is the principle of reciprocity.
For January 2017, consider offering classes that really help your potential customers learn a new skill. These classes can be in the form of online videos or, better still, real world events.
3. Create a Checklist
The checklist may be an under-appreciated literary form. Or, at the very least, it is a good way to present helpful and easy-to-share content.
From the content marketer’s perspective, a good checklist should include an actual list of items readers can check off and an accompanying article or description of the checklist.