What is the importance of content marketing?
By: John Dersani
Tags: Blogging Tips, Content Marketing, Search Engine Optimizati, Traffic Optimization, Long Tail Keywords

If you’ve been moving in digital marketing circles for a while, you’ve probably heard it said that ‘content is king’.

And it’s not without reason, because when done right content marketing is a mind-blowing powerful strategy. It can cost up to 62% less than traditional marketing and generate about three times as many leads.

If you want to start driving more traffic to your website, then there is one single thing that you need to be doing. This indisputable, critical aspect of your marketing is non-negotiable and has the biggest potential for increasing your viewers, your authority, and your engagement.

That is to apply content marketing.

Content Marketing, what is?

Content marketing is about using media such as blogs, newsletters, social posts, videos and infographics to draw customers towards you. How? By providing value upfront.

The reason this is so crucial is simple: the internet is built on content. Most of the time you spend online will likely be either reading or watching videos, both of which are examples of content consumption.

To find that content, you probably searched for a phrase or term in Google, and Google will then have matched your query to content that it had indexed.

Why You Need to Implement Content Marketing

When you add high-quality content to your website on a regular basis, you achieve a number of things:

Provide free value

Demonstrate your knowledge and expertise in your niche and become an expert

Increase brand awareness and trust exponentially

Provide Google with a means of understanding what your site is about

Create more pages for your site, each of which can then act as a potential entry point to your site and your brand

Gain a commodity that you can share on social media

Increase the likelihood of people who enjoy your content sharing it with other people: thereby giving you free links and free exposure

How To Write an Engaging Blog Post

One of the key ingredients to your success then is to write a high quantity of articles. The more you write, the more opportunity you create to be discovered. The more questions you can answer, and the more people you can engage with.

As a starting point, try to write at least one blog post a week. This is far from ideal, though. Far preferable would be 3–4 posts per week, and potentially even a post a day.

What’s arguably more important, though, is that you learn to write high quality blog posts. If you get this wrong, then it doesn’t matter how many you write!

Only a high quality blog post will increase the likelihood of someone returning to your website, and only a high quality blog post will increase the likelihood that your site will get shared.

So, what does the perfect blog post look like?

First and most important is that your post should not be derivative. This means you should not be sharing content for the sake of it. Every single post needs to have something unique to say.

Let’s consider two approaches to fitness.

One blog post on fitness is an exclusive interview with the elusive and extremely in-demand Ido Portal. His is a completely unique approach to training and one that has set the social media world on fire for several years now.

The other is an article called “5 Exercises for Six Pack Abs.”

Which will perform better?

The second title looks like a goldmine. Everyone wants six-pack abs. This is an extremely high-volume keyword/keyphrase (meaning people search for it a lot), and it has a great list format.

But here’s the problem: most of us have read thousands of articles just like it! This is an issue because it means that no one is going to be that excited by it.

Which article would you be more likely to want to click?

Even if it comes up at the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), an article still needs to entice the visitor to click on it because they want to read it!

Then there’s the issue of this content being so competitive. With thousands of similar articles, how will you make sure yours gets to the top of Google?

On the other hand, the interview is unique content that has a built-in following. People who love Ido Portal are almost guaranteed to like and share this post, especially if you can get it to the right places by sharing it on social media.

Anyone who hasn’t heard of him might have their interest piqued. A new approach to fitness? Really? What is a “movement first” attitude anyway?

Then there are the long-tail keywords. You might not easily be able to rank for a top keyword with this post, but people will find you when they search for related terms. These include such things as:

Movement culture

Just move

Ido Portal

Ido Portal interview

These can get you a decent number of targeted visitors (meaning they are visitors that will find your content interesting and be likely to buy from you). They can also bring you an increasing number of visitors as these terms grow.

Post lots of content like this — long-form and at least 800 words — and then make an effort to really share it. Promote each blog post like you would promote an entirely new product!

Do all this, and you’ll find that your content helps to gradually increase in-roads to your site, while at the same time building up your reputation, exposure, and influence.