I Love Content! With the Right Strategy and Tools, You can Too!

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I want to talk about something that I love, content marketing. It’s really not a new concept, in fact, if you look back over the years, content marketing has been around for generations. “A History of Content Marketing and Its Use Today,” is a great article published in the Guardian Liberty Voice back in September 2013, in which the author highlighted a classic example of content marketing dating back to the 1800s. He pointed out that some of the first farmers almanac contained useful information in articles that are not so different than the blogs we read today. Although fascinating, the history of content marketing is not why I love it so much; the truly great thing about content marketing is that it allows any business to connect and engage with a target audience on a multitude of platforms, enabling that business to organically drive sales through transparent, valuable, informative and educational content.

Now, if you’re a printer offering marketing services, you should learn, live and love the concept of content marketing—because 2014 will be its year to shine. I know it might seem overwhelming, I can’t tell you how many times I hear from printers and MSPs who don’t know where to begin. I constantly hear excuses like, “it can’t be measured,” or, “we don’t have enough staff,” but the truth is, when set to a strategy and divided amongst employees, content marketing is really not that scary.

Set Your Strategy
If you’ve ever heard me talk about content marketing, then you’ve probably heard me talk about the importance of a strategy. As with anything pertaining to business growth, strategy is key to your content marketing success. Like any great roadmap, it is important to establish the lay of the land before delving into a new strategy. First, ask yourself who your target audience is, then write them down. Next, define a broad list of topics your business should cover, then write those down too! Once you have successfully done these two things, you are ready to develop your content strategy; here are a few tips to get you started: