What is Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing Really Though?

If you've fallen into the trap of thinking that keeping up on your social media is good enough, it might be time to re-evaluate your thinking.  These days, social media is crucial if you truly want to connect with your current and potential consumers, but if you don't have true content marketing in place to show them when they get to your page, your efforts are likely in vain.  After all, who cares what kind of great tweet you have if you're ultimately not going to learn anything when you click on the link.

There was a time when simply having some keywords on your website was enough to drive traffic your way.  Long gone are the days of just throwing some words on your site and waiting for people to find you!  These days, well-written content marketing is the way people find you on the web.  Unfortunately, over the evolution of the web marketing, there have been some misconceptions that have formed along the way.  To help you navigate your way through some of the questions you might be asking, we've picked some of our top tips to help you clarify confusions:

• Quality and Consistency are King.  You really don't have to spend n absolute fortune on your content; you just have to do it right.  The point of content marketing and inbound marketing is to deliver quality, helpful information to your readers to encourage relationship building.  That said, frequent updates to your site, particularly blog posts, help readers stay in touch with who you are.  You don't have to inundate your audience with information, but you do want to make sure that you're delivering quality content with each post and update.  There are tons of companies and freelancers that are skilled at content writing, but buyer beware: if you skimp too much on your budget, you're likely to get what you pay for.  Quality content writers are often well worth their weight in dollars.

• Content Marketing isn't Going Anywhere.  It may seem like a buzz phrase, but that's because people are only recently realizing just how important it really is.  Content marketing is so vital to any company's success that smart companies figure out how to build it into their marketing strategy from the beginning.  The sooner you can enhance your content marketing, the sooner you're setting yourself up for success in the long run.

• Content Marketing is Related to SEO, but It's not Just SEO.  The purpose of search engine optimization is to do just that: optimize the traffic that comes to you via search engines.  This is largely based on keywords and concepts, but it's also rooted in great content.  True content marketing takes this further; it is not just based in keyword fillers, but it's based in filling your consumers with viable and vital information that proves your value to your audience.

• A Marketing Campaign Should Include Content, but Not End with Content.  This goes both ways, a marketing campaign includes a beginning, middle, and end of a marketing or sales cycle, while content is an ongoing and ever-improving process.  On the other hand, content marketing doesn't just support marketing efforts; it's also about creating relationships with your consumers and providing them with informational material that is also entertaining and shows your company's true self.

At The Very Least

If you are an architect, interior designer, design-build contractor or landscape architect, you probably run advertisements in regional home magazines. At the very least, a blogging strategy is a good first step towards a content marketing approach to lead generation. Here's why. When you advertise in traditional media, there is a disconnect between the ad and the next most frequent action, looking at your website. Without an online presence driven by frequent blog publishing, you are relying on one of two things, client memory or having the ad in front of them when they are researching the services you offer. If the prospect doesn't get your name right or they search for your services in general and you do not blog, your competitors will come up in search results. Write blogs before your advertising to get the best results from your advertising. After all, advertising is expensive and has a lower return than content marketing. Make those marketing dollars go further with online content.