You’re a college student. How many blog posts do you read in a day?
How many YouTube videos do you watch?
When you’re scrolling through your feed, how many click bait links, infographics, photos, polls, comment threads do you interact with?
Probably far too many to count.
All of the content listed—every single type—is a form of online advertising. It could be for a business, it could be for personal branding, it could simply be for fun, but every piece of content you interact with on a daily basis is selling you something that you think is worth your time—all 4 hours of your 5 minute break.
This is the concept known as concept marketing. And it is powerful.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is the process through which a business promotes their brand by creating interactive media to engage with the public. In layman’s terms, content marketing is this blog post you are reading now. This blog post was created out of kindness, to educate you on the art of content marketing. But there is another reason as well. As you read on, you will receive useful information that will help you move forward with developing your own business, and you will begin to view your brand more highly.
This is the power of content marketing. The better your brand is viewed by the public, the more likely your leads will turn into sales.
So how exactly does this work? Read the following 3 tips to help you get started creating your own content to help establish your brand
Tip #1: Be Authoritative
Not only does content creation give your business visibility on social media, but it gives you the opportunity to establish yourself as an authority on your topic. Anyone can post advertisements for their Etsy shop or startup on social media. Creating engaging content allows you to go the extra mile for your customers—and for yourself.
Through content creation, you have the power to discuss your brand without ever talking about yourself. You can discuss the history, trends and common problems within your niche with your audience. Starting this conversation with your audience shows them that you know what you are talking about. This gives you the chance to answer their questions—often before they are even asked.
Then—within your blog post or YouTube video—you can place a simple call to action which invites people to learn more. By providing them with quality information from the get go, you are selling your audience on who you are long before you are trying to tell them what you do. By doing this, they will already be in a buying mindset when they come to learn about your product. This makes selling 100% more simple—all from the comfort of your dorm room.
Tip #2: Content Clarity
In this process of creating content, you want to be sure that each piece you create sends a clear, concise message. Just like writing an essay requires a clear flow of thought, so too does creating content that will answer your audience’s questions.
During your planning sessions, brainstorm out the main topics you want to cover. Then determine which topics can be combined into one post, which topics need to be expanded into a series, and which topics can be left out all together. From there, you can create a logical outline of your first few posts to see just how you are going to work this out.
Obviously, you want your content creation process to be fresh and exciting. However, you cannot refrain from doing real work if you want to make real money. Put that college education to use long before you finish gaining it and you will achieve so much more than everyone else—and you haven’t even graduated yet!
Tip #3: Take Advantage of Social Media Automation
The last tip you need to keep in mind is online consistency. If you look at any established business’ social media site, you will find that a big reason behind their success is because they have a constant flow of content coming out at least one day a week.
Consumers look for consistency in a brand long before they are thinking of purchasing. If you show your consumers this consistency by posting on the same day at the same time every time, you show your consumers that you care about their time and interest.
This is done through super easy apps. Programs like Hootsuite allow you to schedule your social media and content posts to go out at a consistent rate. This allows you to queue up your content to release whenever you please. Just remember, these programs will not generate content for you. You are responsible for creating the content and filling up the queue on a regular basis. This way, though, if you have a huge paper due and just can’t create content this week you have a flow already set up for you so you can maintain that consistency.
Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today’s business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Contact her @JazzyWilliams88
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