Sometimes industry terminology can be incredibly frustrating. For instance, the term content marketing is useful for only a few groups of people. Those deeply entrenched working in the industry and businesses looking for writers to produce content marketing. For everyone else, the term falls drastically short of helping them understand what content marketing actually entails. The term only serves a select few. For everyone else, it leaves wondering and searching for an accurate definition. Our hope, is that by taking a focused look at the area of content marketing, small businesses will be able to see why it is beneficial for their business and provide the information necessary to move towards a content marketing plan they can embrace.
3 Ways Content Marketing Can Help Any Small Business
- Build trust with their audience
- It creates community
- It establishes authority
It Builds Trust
The first and most important thing that content marketing does for any small business is to build trust with their audience. The fact is that people and businesses alike buy from brands they trust. Companies spend millions upon millons of dollars to create a brand which establishes trust with their audience. That audience could be soccer moms, kids, or restaurant owners. No matter the audience, trust is the key ingredient which moves your audience from passive observers to active paying customers. Trust paves the way for healthy interaction with your business in the future.
It Creates Community
Most likley you have come across, the famous find your tribe bit made famous by Seth Godin in his book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. A tribe is just another way of creating community around what you do. By producing helpful content over time, a business becomes a reliable source which people and other businesses can trust. This content is NOT regurgitated information about their products and services, but original content which actually informs their audience on a topic. It is worth noting that the information is most likely related to the business’ industry. This is not by accident and lends toward establishing authority which leads to the next topic.
It Establishes Authority
Authority is one of those qualities everyone likes to have in their back pocket, but no one sits down and says, “Today I am going to establish my authority in XYZ space.” For one, authority is not something which can be established in one day. Many companies hire employees with industry specific authority to add to their arsenal. This method of adding authority is largely resereved for companies with seemingly endless budgets. Small businesses can take a different route to establish authority which will not break their budget. Creating and offering valuable content to their audience over time will produce a similar and in my opinion, a more trustworthy form of authority for any small business.
The Takeaway
While content marketing in and of itself is not new, the methods and implementations used on the internet today are new in the sense that the internet did not exist when content marketing began years ago. The methods seen today are practical adaptations of concepts created long ago. The value here in these concepts is taking the context of your business and taking strategic steps to implement these concepts in ways which build trust, creates community, and establishes authority for your business.
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