Why Content Marketing is more than Content Creation and Distribution

As expert marketers like to say, content marketing is much more than creating and distributing online content. It involves many techniques and strategies needed to get good content out there on the internet with the primary aim of attracting traffic to your website. The higher the traffic coming to your website, the better your chances of getting leads and sales! This is one of the inbound marketing tactics marketers really depend on to acquire leads. To generate revenue therefore, you need to do more content marketing campaigns than just mere content distribution which does not have that capability. Much more than mere content distribution, for a content marketing campaign to be successful, it must serve as a veritable and effective hub for attracting web visitors. That is the much needed web traffic by all marketers.

With search engine optimization, SEO, content marketing tends to be better placed on the web to attract the attention of search engines. Content distribution without SEO, does not have this advantage. The reason it is not searched and as such does not attract the much needed traffic by marketers. Therefore, optimizing online content with a clear goal in mind is always in the top priority list of any good marketer. Not doing so simply makes your content a merely distributed content without online promotional boost by search engines.

Content marketing directly targets traffic using inbound marketing strategies to attract, engage and delight your audience. Content distribution lacks this capacity because it is deficient of optimization techniques which will get search engines to rank and send traffic its way. This is clearly why content marketing is much more than just creating and distributing online content. To successfully market any content online, every marketer must strongly rely on his strategic and creative thinking skills. With that, you can always look at your content as is being viewed and used, then do things to enhance those goals no matter which marketing channel your audience is using. Content distribution does not require such technicalities, one more reason it is different from content marketing.

In content marketing, marketers know that their web visitors must reach them via their websites by using special keywords and searches to find answers to their web search inquiries. This is why marketers need to use the right keywords/phrases in the product descriptions on their websites. By using such keywords/phrases, you can start by optimizing your campaigns around solutions to search inquiries. Using inbound marketing strategies/tools, it is fairly easy to convert these web visitors to leads and even loyal customers by way of deliberate processes. Content marketing uses these processes to take web visitors through a buyer’s journey to become customers. This is something content distribution doesn’t have to bother about at all. A very clear difference, no doubt.

Blogging as a Creative Online Marketing Strategy

Blogging is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business online. Your blog is a great place for you to share your expertise with your target audience and to market your business. The only notable cost element of blogging is your time and if you blog creatively, the time expense is always well worth it.

If you use the creative strategies below, you can maximize the effectiveness of your blogging efforts.

Write Quality Content: With blogging, content is king. The more impactful the content, the better for your blogging efforts! You must be careful to create only content that is worth reading and sharing. Major search engines particularly Google don’t like poor quality content. So, if you as the writer wouldn’t read it, better don’t create it at all.

Make Sharing Easy: A written piece can easily go viral if it is shared easily. Make use of the sharing button on each post generously to ensure your post reaches a very wide audience online. That is the surest way to quickly get real exposure for your blog pieces.



Write only for Your Audience: Write only what you’ll love to read yourself if you were a shopper. By visualizing what your audience will like to read, it is possible to write what they’ll actually read. One essential element to successful online marketing is by understanding who you are writing for very well. You get some traction and impact better when you write solely for your audience.

Create Statistic Lists: Statistics can be very impactful and tell good stories. You can create a list of eye-popping statistics to wow your audience. You get their attention better by creating posts to explain the statistics and how they impact the audience.

Create High Visual Blog Posts: Visuals are very impactful on readers because human brains generally process images much faster than texts. For high visual blog posts, you can use Memes, Videos, SlideShares or Infographics to share a message.

Use Graphs/Charts: Graphs/charts also have high visual impact on your audience. Thus, when you use Graphs/Charts on your blog posts, they make it easier for your audience to digest and understand the message at a quick glance.

Create “Ask the Expert” Pieces: Experts do command a lot of respect in online marketing business. Expert opinion usually plays a great role in buyer decisions. By reaching out to leaders in your industry and interviewing them on burning topics and industry issues, you can get a treasure trove of information to write about. Publishing your findings on your blog makes a great deal of impact on your audience.

Ask Experts to Share: Many industry experts always have a huge following on social media. By following them and helping to share their pieces, you can in turn request them to help share yours. That’s one social media etiquette that is highly impactful on blogging. If industry experts help you to share, you get extra visibility from their huge audience.

Top 10 Lists: This is one blogging strategy made popular by expert blogger David Letterman. He insists that readers always love top 10 posts. Getting quality posts in that range from your blog is good for traffic.

Optimize Your Titles: Doing so helps to attract a crawl from search engines. It also impacts the rating of your content in their SERPs. Because Your Blog Title is the first thing your audience interacts with, it must be impactful at a quick glance. If it is not impactful enough, it risks a frequent pass by from your reading audience since they have many other competing titles on their feed. For more and better impact, it is advisable you spend just as much time crafting your title as you do creating your content, if not more.

Pace Your Posts: Blogging for quality is much better than blogging for numbers. Before you write each post, take some time to think through it before you start writing. Rushing your blog posts just to meet self-imposed deadlines leads to poor quality posts. If you are quite realistic about the amount of time you need for any piece you are writing, you can take the time to do it right. If you can’t do it right, please don’t do it at all.

Be Flexible: It is good to have a content schedule for your blog to avoid overwhelming yourself. However, just take content schedules as mere guidelines that do not require stressing up about. Leave enough room for flexibility to take on more timely events even if not in the earlier schedule. Always remember you are writing for an audience. It is what your audience likes and wants to read that dictates what you should write about most of the time. That demands a bit of flexibility despite content schedules.



Guest Posting: Be sure to do it the right way. You can reach out to blogs in your niche industry and offer guest post content. Some may not accept but some may say yes but with some conditions. If the conditions are acceptable to you, just go ahead with your guest posts. Guest posting on a popular industry blog is good for traffic.

Buy Content if necessary: At times you may not really have sufficient time or hands to meet your content schedule. If that is the case, you can then consider buying quality content. Since content development takes time which you don’t really have, it is OK to hire good content writers for some reasonable fees. Content writing professionals may just require you to provide them a few details about your business. Once you pay their fees, they get the job done.

Write “How to” Blogs: People read blogs to get information or find solutions to pressing problems. Writing “how to” blogs helps to meet that need. You can develop a simple step-by-step post that helps your audience find solution to a problem they are experiencing. By making it concise, simple and enjoyable to read, it easily attracts readers. If for example you run a confectionery business, a good “how-to post” like “How to bake tasteful cupcakes” is a good idea.

Create List Posts: Blog readers tend to like list posts because they are always helpful and straight to the point. You get your info point by point instead of reading a whole lot of stuff before you can decipher a few points from the whole lot you’ve read. If you run out of ideas to write about, you can use Google to help find great blog topics relevant to your niche.