What is content marketing in 2020?

Content marketing has been a bit of a buzzword over the last couple of years. You've probably heard of it, you might even have been doing it. Maybe you've already got a content marketing strategy and you're all over it. Or, maybe you have no clue what content marketing is. So… What is content marketing?

 

 

 

What is content marketing in 2020?

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as: “the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content, to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Well, that's a bit of a mouthful.

So, if you're creating and posting content to Instagram every day, does this mean that you're doing content marketing? Not necessarily.

What is content marketing (in layman's terms)?

Let's break the definition of content marketing down a little bit.

Content marketing is a “strategic marketing approach” and it's done “with the objective of driving profitable customer action”. Basically, this means content marketing fits into your marketing strategy and it should tie into your bigger business goals.

So, just by sharing content willy-nilly, you're not necessarily doing true content marketing.

The other criterion in the definition of content marketing is that the content is done “to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience”.

It's super important to define your ideal customer or your ideal client. If you don't know who you're marketing to, down to a tee, you need to take the time to do that right now.

And, lastly, the content marketing definition specifies that content needs to be “valuable, relevant and consistent”. Honestly, I believe this is the most important part of what content marketing is.

What is valuable, relevant and consistent content?

What does “valuable” mean? It means your content needs to make your audiences lives just a little bit better or a little bit easier – even just by the tiniest amount. You could be teaching them something new or helping them to solve a problem they struggle with. Here are some more ideas on how to add value to your audience's lives.

What does “relevant” mean? It means that your content needs to be something that your audience wants and is interested in, not just what you're interested in or what you think they'll be interested in. Sure, you might have opened a new store location last week, but is this something your audience is going to find truly interesting? Probably not.

And, the last part of the content marketing definition – your content needs to be consistent. What does “consistent” mean? Just like you don't get abs after one gym session or one day of eating clean (wouldn't that be nice!), you won't see results by publishing just one piece of content.

Good things take time.

Consistent content shows your audience that they can trust you. If you're consistently showing up for your audience and they know exactly where they can find you, day in and day out, they'll start to trust you. And, once they trust you, it's a heck of a lot easier to sell to them.

Is content marketing worth it?

Definitely. But, there is a lot of content out there these days, so you need to make sure your content is relevant, valuable and consistent, in line with the definition of content marketing. It also helps if you can stand out from the clutter. Rather than looking at what everyone else is doing in your space, I want you to think about what they're not doing. What are the opportunities for you to do things differently?

Take the Socialette podcast for example. Every man and his dog in the business podcasting world has an interview-style podcast, with 30 to 45-minute long episodes. So, I went and I created a bite-sized format podcast.

What are some common types of content marketing?

There are SO many different types of content marketing, so please don't feel like you have to do them all. If you try to do them all, you will become overwhelmed and not do any at all.

Here are some different types of content marketing:

• Social media posts – these are one pretty common one, whether it's a photo, a video, a quote – whatever it is! Yes, it's content.
• YouTube, IGTV videos, and other forms of video content
• Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Periscope, Webinars and any other form of live-streaming
• Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, Snapchat Stories… All of the stories!
• Blog posts (probably the first one that comes to mind when people think of content marketing)
• Podcast episodes (my favourite type of content marketing)
• Email newsletters (here's how to start building your email list from scratch)

Now, tell me below – what's your definition of content marketing? And what are your favourite types of content marketing?

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