While many people think blogging and content marketing are the same, experts know there is a vast difference between these two terms. For any brand to survive, it is important that you have a holistic marketing strategy in order to generate revenue. One of the least expensive and highly effective ways of generating leads is through content marketing. Let’s take a closer look at what it entails.

Understanding your audience

Top content marketing companies realize that the first step lies in getting to know the audience really well. This includes finding out what kind of content they like, where they go to find it, how long they spend on it, how they react to different kinds of content etc. It isn’t about just typing out engaging content that appeals to the masses. There has to be a deeper understanding of how the target market consumes content.

Using different media

A good content strategy would include more than just blogging or publishing articles. Today, strategists use podcasts, infographics, videos, webinars, audiobooks and many other products to communicate their ideas and brand message across to their target audience. It is important to move with the times and keep abreast with what consumers are looking for.

Search Engine Optimisation

Whether it’s writing a blog or publishing a video, top content marketing companies know that content needs to be optimized for the search engines. Many offer professional SEO services which help consumers find your content in search listings. Rankings can be improved in many works such as using industry-specific and popular keywords, writing intelligent descriptions and tags or even optimizing your visual content.

Review of analytics

Whether it is to review the success of SEO services that you have enlisted or to check the popularity of a particular blog post, analytics help you measure progress. Analysing trends is a key part of a content strategy as it helps to identify areas of improvement so you can tweak essential elements to get better results. For example, based on results, you may need to change a keyword entirely or continue using another which is performing better.

The value of promotion

A blogger would only concentrate on publishing online content; however, a content marketer would also follow-through with promotion. It is important to create a lasting relationship with the consumer and this is where marketing takes over. Unless a blog post has viral content, it would defeat the purpose and go unnoticed. When you hire top content marketing companies they ensure that every post is not just written for the audience but written in such a way that it will create a vital link to the outside world.

Get the sale

Content marketing is always centered on a strong call-to-action. That is the end objective so it’s a lot more dynamic than blogging. It isn’t enough just to engage the audience but they need to know the next step to take. This is where content marketing comes in as it closes the loop and completes the sales cycle. Therefore, while blogging does constitute a small part of content marketing, the two terms cannot be used interchangeably.