Content is king, right? Probably all of us who are dedicated to marketing and content have had to hear this sentence repeated like a mantra until exhaustion. But, after so many years of repeating and repeating the same phrase, is it still true? Who was the one who said it? and when? And more importantly, if content is king…who is queen?
In these lines we give you answers to the questions that we at IOMarketing ask you and that you have surely asked yourself at some point. Whether you are a marketing expert, a blogger looking for a topic to talk about, or an entrepreneurs who want to boost their business. Here we have the answers.
A Little History
We have to go back to a time that, although in historical terms is not very distant, when it comes to the digital world we are practically talking about Prehistory. The man had just discovered fire for the second time: we are talking about the Internet. Allow ourselves the license to call it a discovery and not an invention because, in the end, those of us who did not invent it (the majority) did discover it. We have to go back to 1996 when a kind of modern Plato dragged us out of the cave where we so calmly observed the shadows of what the world was.
We are talking about billionaire Bill Gates, who published an article on the Microsoft website titled ‘Content is King’ and whose first sentence translates as ‘Content is where I hope real money is made on the Internet’. Things were looking pretty good, and we’re not talking about just anyone, we’re talking about a man who has 96 million dollars. If he believes that content is king, we can only say amen! At the moment Bill has not retracted his words, so if he still believes it, who are we poor mortals to contradict him? What we can do is see exactly what the content is and how to use it to our advantage.Â
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Is Everything Content?
This is a trick question, but we like to make you think, like your high school philosophy teacher. We are going to say that the answer is yes but with a small mouth. Now you will see why. The real question is not whether everything I post (text, photo, video) is content, but whether all content is useful. There are many factors to take into account within what has been called content marketing, but for us the key is balance. But the balance between what? Well, between objectives, that of the reader (the user) and that of the company. It seems simple, but it is not. Although we are going to analyze what we mean and clarify everything a little.
If you do a quick search on Google about content marketing, we bet you will get some of these “words”: SEO, link building, keywords, or SERPs. You will also find things like attractive content, inbound marketing, or branded content.
All these elements must be taken into account but you should not become obsessed with any of them, nor should you stop doing so with all of them. We told you it wasn’t that simple. Every element must be taken into account to generate useful content for both parties, but without forgetting that it has to be valuable content. For most layman, we leave you a brief definition of the mentioned terms and we continue for bingo:Â
- SEO: strategy and actions designed to improve the positioning of a website in search engines (Google, Bing, Ask, etc.).Â
- Link Building: generate links within the page to increase its authority and relevance.Â
- Keywords: keywords that we are going to use to attract traffic to our website through search engines
- SERPs: refer to the results that the search engine shows when performing a search.Â
- Attractive content: content that is creative and can be useful to the user who visits it.Â
- Inbound marketing: work methodology whose marketing actions are intended to attract and create relationships in a non-intrusive way.Â
- Branded Content: attractive content for the user that allows establishing relationships between the brand and the customer.Â
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Therefore, when considering creating a content marketing strategy, you will have to take these factors into account and reach a balance. Because, although users are not stupid and are aware that your content has a double intention, no one likes to feel that “they are being sold the bike.”
To avoid this and for your content to work, you will have to try to generate content that can be interesting and valuable to the user and can generate engagement with your brand; work so that your website appears among the first search results; carry out a prior study of the keywords and include them naturally in your content; make sure to implement links that give authority to your page; and you will have to include an SEO strategy that guarantees that all of this works correctly and that you can modify what is not giving results. It is not a simple process, but don’t let that make you rule out a content strategy, remember Bill, that’s where the money is.
The best option is to have a marketing agency that specializes in these topics and has experts from each of the areas that carry out digital media planning. Because, believe us, you’re going to need it.Â
And The Queen?
In matters of monarchy, a king is nothing without a queen. And when it comes to marketing, the same thing happens as in chess. Although we all agree that the most important figure is the king, who can deny the importance of the queen? The game may continue if you lose the queen, but you probably won’t win it. But who will be this mysterious queen we are talking about? Surely you already know, that we are talking about Social Networks.
Social media in your content strategy
Social Media is the distribution channel for a large part of the content we find on the Internet. And they are also the ones that receive the most visits from users per day. In your content strategy, you cannot forget to work on social networks, and they have countless advantages. First of all, we must differentiate that there are two types of content on social networks: paid vs organic.
Social Ads vs organic content
We will explore paid content in another post in which we will immerse ourselves in the wonderful world of Social Ads, but we will give you a couple of touches before continuing. They are content that we pay to the different social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) so that they impact a segmented audience and in a specific format for each of the campaigns. You have to know that in a good Social Media strategy it is essential to work on both paid and organic.
When we talk about organic we refer to the content created and published on the brand’s online profile. Among the benefits of this type of content is the possibility of direct interaction with the user. It can also help us establish ties with the client so that they can amplify our content by sharing it on their social networks as a speaker, and so that we can direct our strategy based on direct feedback from the consumer.Â
There are a series of key steps when managing our content on social networks: developing a strategy, planning the content, preparing the material, programming the content, publishing the content, analyzing the results, feedback, and re-elaborating the strategy. In addition, you will have to take into account the user profile of each social network when developing this strategy. Because users do not come to Instagram looking for the same thing as they do to LinkedIn.Â
To summarize, we only have to add one last note, and that is that the content is the vehicle, the message, and social networks are the road, the channel. The operation is simple, the same on which communication is based. But the strategies to make everything work the right way are like the mechanism of a Swiss clock. So if you want your content to be the king of your business, look for a marketing agency that can guide you on this wonderful journey.
Don’t miss out checking our guide to the Best Time to Post on Facebook and Social Media in Egypt
