CONTENT MARKETING: WHY YOU MIGHT BE DOING IT WRONG

You create content for your business marketing. Maybe you are active on social media (posts, stories, videos, oh my!). Or maybe you write informative or entertaining blog posts. Maybe sending emails is your thing.

Whatever it is, you’re feeling like you’ve either got this content thing down or you feel like you know what you’re supposed to do and now you just need to make the time to actually do it! (Trust me, we’ve all been there. This is a no-shame zone!) You may have even hired a social media manager, VA, or copywriter to help make sure you get it done. Cheers to that smart decision!

However, what if I told you that you’re actually doing it all wrong. WAIT. WHAT??? Right now you’re thinking, “didn’t she just say that I’m doing a good job? Or at least have good intentions?”

Listen. I’m glad that you are creating content. Don’t stop doing it. In fact, a major part of our services that we offer at The Marketing Engine is to take the time-consuming and skilled task of content creation off of your plate. But here is why you (or your hired help) might be doing it all wrong:

YOU ARE NOT MARKETING YOUR CORE CONTENT.

I’ll explain what CORE CONTENT is in just a bit, and why it is important. (I’m even sharing a huge secret bonus that comes from implementing this strategy!) But first, let’s take a look at the foundations of your marketing efforts.

WHY DO WE PUT SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY INTO MARKETING?

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), marketing is defined as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

That long definition boils down to the idea that you are promoting something of value to your target audience. However, as a business owner, you should also be asking the question, “What’s in it for me?”. There should be a purpose to everything you do in your business and marketing is no exception.

Common sense tells us that creating content and putting it out to our audience is meant to drive the right person to become a client or customer of yours. Sometimes we can lose sight of that goal because we become consumed with the process of churning out as much content as we are capable of just to be able to check it off the list of tasks.

First, do a gut check and ask yourself, am I creating content for the right reasons? Here’s an easy list to check in with. If you have a team or hired outside help, it might help to share this with them, as well.

I CREATE MARKETING CONTENT TO:

1. Share valuable tips or advice in an informative or entertaining way

2. Be seen as an expert in my industry/niche

3. Build awareness about my services or products

4. Connect with my target audience and build a community

5. Drive people/traffic to my website or physical location

6. Convert my audience into paying clients/customers

How many of those reasons can you honestly answer “yes” to? Every single piece of content that you create to put out into the universe should check one or more of those boxes.

IF I’M DOING IT FOR THE RIGHT REASONS, HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT I’M DOING IT WRONG?

So, here’s where I’m going to get technical on you. If you answered yes to those reasons and you are consistently creating marketing content, I’m sending you a virtual high-five. HOWEVER, I want to focus on those last two reasons - because those are the ones that are ultimately about YOU and your business growing and thriving - and explain why I make the claim that you might be doing this content marketing thing “wrong.”

YOUR CORE CONTENT SHOULD BE AT YOUR HOME BASE

We ultimately want to drive people/traffic to our website or physical place of business. The way we do that is by promoting a piece of content that is on our actual website or a place where someone that is interested can get ALL the details about how to pull the trigger and actually do business with you.

Core Content is not social media posts or emails.

Core Content is blog posts and videos ON your website (that includes videos that you make on YouTube and embed into your site). These are the pieces of static content that, unlike social media posts or emails, actually live on your site and can continue to reach an audience. The number of views can grow over a longer period of time. Think about the shelf life of a social media post or an email (instant read/watch and move on) and there is really no comparison.

The purpose of this type of content is to get people on your actual site and to keep them there. Since your website houses the most information that a person can learn about your business, you want as many eyeballs on it for as long as possible.

Your website is the home base of your business and we want to invite people to come visit your home!

When you write a blog post or make an informative/educational/entertaining video, you are hoping that people will read it or watch it and want to learn more. Therefore, your goal should be to drive people to your home base and to that particular piece of content so that they will want to know more and visit other pages of your site.

This is where social media and emails become your tools.

First, write a blog post or create a video that will live on your website. Or you can use YouTube to make videos and embed them on to your site.

Second, promote the heck out of that blog post or video to your target audience via social media posts and your email list. Give them a teaser, a snippet or a quote and get them to click the link to then land on your website to read or watch more.

Third, add it to your rotation. This is not a one-and-done strategy. Revisit your favorite or most popular Core Content every couple of months and re-promote it. Once you’ve got a decent size bank of this Core Content, you magically have more content ideas for social media and email.

Each month, when you are planning out your content, include the promotion of a new blog post or video on your website BUT also save a spot (or 2! or 3!) to re-promote an older piece of Core Content.

(If you’re rolling your eyes and thinking “who has time to pre-plan out their content for a month?”, we’ve got something to help you. Get your FREE MARKETING ENGINE TOOLKIT CONTENT CALENDAR here!)

THE KEY TO CORE CONTENT MARKETING IS TO BE INTENTIONAL

While it may seem like the definition I’m giving you of CONTENT MARKETING is just semantics, it’s important that you recognize the importance and reasoning behind it. Call it what you want. Most people associate the term “content marketing’ with social media posts. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter what you name it.

In fact, to make it easier, I’ll re-name it CORE CONTENT MARKETING for the rest of this blog post just to avoid any confusion.

What matters is that you are being intentional with what you are putting out to your target audience and making sure that you are creating content that will drive potential leads to your website so that they can travel down your sales funnel and then convert into paying clients/customers.

THE HIDDEN BONUS OF CORE CONTENT MARKETING

I promised you a secret hidden bonus if you implement this Core Content Marketing strategy. So here it is….. drumroll please…. Core Content Marketing can boost your SEO!!!

SEO is such an important piece of your Marketing and website strategy that we could write endless blog posts about it and it deserves its own separate dedicated strategy in your marketing plan. SEO is quite frankly, a beast that is tough to tackle. So, it’s a huge benefit that by executing this Core Content strategy, you are inadvertently going to boost your SEO.

The SEO powers that be (read = Google) are constantly scrolling and reading your website for new content copy and video. The more you create this home base type of content, the more you are giving Google the chance to learn more about you, your business and your area of specialty.

This leads to the opportunity to be flagged (in a good way) by Google as a resource for people doing searches for your type of content or services/products. When it comes to SEO, Core Content is king and you’re hurting your chances of being discovered by new leads if you have created a website with a “set it and forget it” approach.


Adding Core Content to your website does for SEO what social media posts and emails just cannot do. Plus, when I mentioned that you can create your Core Content videos on YouTube and then embed them on to your website, you are getting a double whammy because the owner of YouTube is…. you guessed it - Google. They count your YouTube channel pretty high up on the SEO ranking list.

CORE CONTENT MARKETING DONE RIGHT

Finally, I want to make sure that you understand that Core Content Marketing does not replace other types of marketing that you should be using. It is equally important to show up on social media channels with other types of content and to send emails to your list.

What I hope you have learned here is that there is value in creating original content that lives on your home base website and that you should be promoting it with a level of importance that you may not have thought about prior to reading this blog post. Plus this blog post is a piece of CORE CONTENT that now lives on our site! (See what I did there?!?!)

Let us know your thoughts around CORE CONTENT MARKETING and if you are going to implement this strategy into your own business.