Content Marketing: What is it, why do it and how a good CMS will help

Posted on 28th September, 2017 by Applecado

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There has been a lot of discussion in the last few years about the shift from traditional marketing to content marketing, but do you know what it is and why it is a valuable marketing tool for your business? We’re going to take you through a few points about what content marketing is, why it needs to be part of your marketing strategy and how a good content management system (CMS) can make all the difference.

What is content marketing?

First up, what is it? The Content Marketing Institute describes content marketing as a ‘strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.’

In simpler terms, rather than just pushing your product or service out to your audience via advertising, and other ‘push marketing’ tactics, you’re giving them something valuable such as a relevant ‘how to’ video, tips on how to do something or a blog describing what something is (such as this one!). This content is shared and read by your audience, increasing their loyalty to you, so when the time comes for them to need your service or product you’re already in their mind as a great company. It’s about building credibility, loyalty and relationships.

Content marketing can be:

Why do content marketing?

Increase visibility
It has been said that company websites that have a blog have 55% more visitors than sites that don’t have one, and companies with blogs get 97% more inbound links than others.

Create an audience
One of the top reasons that people follow brands on social media is because they create and share interesting, relevant content. Take supermarkets as an example, when visiting their websites, you are able to find the nearest store and do your online shopping, but you’re also able get great recipe ideas, articles about a healthy lifestyle and other bits of ‘content’. As these are shared on social media, a following and audience is created.

Gives you a wider reach
Blogs on a website will give you on average 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links, thus giving you more space in relevant Google searches and more possibilities for your clients to find your website.

How a good CMS will help

Having great content is one thing, having a great content management system (CMS) that lets you easily share your content is another. You need a CMS that is:

Your CMS should allow your team to easily create, edit and maintain content. As an example your company might have one business blog, but have five contributors. Your system needs to allow each of those individuals to work on the content seamlessly. An easy to use, flexible, organised and supported system will give you and your team time to create great content rather than worry about the technicalities of getting it out there.

Get in touch

As developers of bespoke content management systems we’re able to talk through your needs for a CMS and build it to your exact requirements. We’d love to hear from you to talk through how we can help you.

[Statistics from Content Plus]