A few words about content marketing – introduction

More and more often, I encounter situations in which companies want to implement content marketing activities, but they do not fully understand what they involve. There is a common belief that these activities are based on publishing a large number of paid articles on external websites, which in turn is supposed to increase brand recognition and translate into an increase in income. Too little knowledge of the topic means that people interested in CM do not realize how extensive such activities are.

What really is content marketing?

To put it simply, content marketing is an advanced strategy that begins at the stage of planning and creating content that engages the recipient, e.g. in the form of articles, e-books, videos or infographics. I'm not talking about advertising here, but about valuable from the Internet user's point of view? information he is looking for on the Internet. By responding to the needs of potential customers, we are able to achieve much better results than in the case of aggressive advertising, bombarding users with pop-ups and sending dozens of emails every month.

Content marketing is nothing more than a strategy of building our presence on the Internet in such a way that users come across our content themselves, and then get acquainted with our offer and treat us as specialists. in your field.

Content marketing and SEO

Creating interesting and, above all, engaging content? regardless of whether it is in the form of an article or in a more extensive form? it also gives you the opportunity to obtain many valuable links. This in turn? as we know ? is an integral part of SEO activities and has a positive impact on our ranking in natural search results.

After the link to the bank, i.e. the report on SEO and SEM in Polish banking published by us in 2008, generated 51 links from 21 unique domains.

Mentions about the report appeared, among others, on websites such as: interaktywnie.com and di.com.pl. The recently published IAB report http://iab. org.pl/badania-i-publikacje/przewodnik-content-marketingu/ on content marketing, has already been mentioned many times on the Internet, on websites such as mensis.pl, o-m.pl or digitalmarketing.netsprint. eu and currently on the Bluerank.blogspot.com blog? In addition to the benefits in the form of links to your website, good content also gives you something much more important? you build Internet users' trust in your brand/company. You prove that you are specialists in a given field, which makes you even more credible in the eyes of potential clients.

Get ready to work hard

Exactly! Planning and then preparing valuable content is often quite a challenge. Sometimes this will require a large financial outlay or time commitment. Preparing materials and then developing them in the form of e.g. a report takes several dozen or even more hours of work. Creating an infographic or video also doesn't take two days. Unfortunately, no one said it would be easy. However, you can be sure that such actions will pay off for a long time. These materials will never disappear from the Internet, and may only become more popular over time.

Content is not everything? reach is also important!

Sometimes creating valuable content does not guarantee 100% success. The ability to quickly share and reach the appropriate group of recipients with your content is the most important element here. It is not enough to publish a report on your website about the industry you represent or to be the author of a webinar that only your friends will see. It is necessary that from the very beginning, before preparing the content, you search for and make a list of places where you can show yourself and people who can help you with this.

A very common activity is the co-creation of content between several people/companies, which in total can achieve a greater reach. An example is Bluepaper report on Polish price comparison machines, which ;ry we wrote under the patronage of IAB. Right from the start, we gained additional reach through an article on  iab.org.pl and news on social media.

In the content marketing guide mentioned earlier, you canYou can find a lot of interesting information, including a list of channels in CM's distribution, which are:

• CM and context networks,
• Internet forums,
• social media,
• thematic and expert portals,
• e-mailing,
• internet search engines,
• blogs.

A lot could be written about content marketing, action strategies and content promotion. Therefore, these issues will be discussed in more detail on our blog in subsequent articles.