Think about It: Advertising is a Line, Content Marketing is a Circle

Think about It: Advertising is a Line, Content Marketing is a Circle

The way you think about advertising and content marketing can affect your bottom line.

Although traditional advertising still has a place in today’s digital world, content marketing is quickly proving its value. For many years, content simply had to be present. But competition means it’s becoming harder and harder to create and distribute engaging content. Because not everyone has the talent for it, great content marketing can offer huge advantages over traditional advertising.

Change Your Thinking about Content Marketing

Here’s how it goes with most businesses:  There is a website with a blog that show cases short pieces highlighting a company’s products or services. The company posts links to the content on Twitter, Facebook and Linked in. Rinse and repeat, once or twice a month.

With the growing competition among content marketers, this just doesn’t cut it anymore. To be effective, content marketing cannot be a direct line of communication from you going out to the masses. It needs to become a circle, one that circulates traffic through your website to form leads, stronger emotional connections with your brand and ultimately greater sales.

Bringing Content Marketing to Its Full Potential

Advertising just can’t do all the things a good content marketing program can do for the same dollars. Advertising may target sales or public relations. It’s very effective at building brand recognition. But content marketing can do all three of these things at once, and usually for a much lower cost.

That’s because of the creative nature of the process. One piece of content can accomplish many tasks. For B2C businesses, the best approach is to entertain, engage and inform. This can materialize as anecdotal pieces that resonate with the target audience, online games or helpful software tools and “how-to” guides. In-depth guides can accomplish all of these things when well crafted.

For the B2B sector, thought-leadership articles and white papers are the most important tactics, bringing in decision makers from the companies that you cater to. Infographics also appeal greatly to this audience, offering succinct summaries of market information that impacts their day-to-day operations.

In all of these content types, certain aspects of the content can make a big difference in the number of inbound links – and by extension – visitors:

• Written content with videos and strong imagery bring in 3 times as many in bound links.
• Longer posts, those between 1,800 and 3,000 words, bring in the most traffic.
• List posts and videos, even list posts with videos, are equally effective.
• Posts that include written content, lists, images and videos are the most effective attractors.
• The topics that attract the most visitors help the audience solve problems.

You may notice this post does only one of the above – help you solve problems. Not every post you create will have the above characteristics. Mixing it up allows for various personalities and preferences.

Let efelle help you create a more effective content marketing strategy.

Efelle media handles all aspects of web marketing, from concept to creation. Call us at 206.384.4909 or use our online contact form to book a free consultation today.