Six Reasons Content Marketing Is Crucial To Your Business

We have been hearing about how “content is king” for a while, but at no time has that phrase been as incredibly accurate as it is today, especially for entrepreneurs who rely on digital marketing campaigns to get the word out about their business.

Considering how smart and discerning audiences have become these days, businesses have to reach prospects and customers with content that’s more valuable, relevant and consistent than what commercials, print ads and other forms of traditional marketing can offer. Audiences have become media-savvy enough to ignore any noise traditional advertising can make, and they rely more on content that will answer their questions and ultimately serve their needs.

We live in an era where quality content has become the rule for businesses, not the exception, and content marketing allows them to produce and deliver the information audiences need.

Some businesses may not be too keen on content marketing because they see it as an unnecessary expense. In reality, content marketing is crucial to your business because of the following reasons:

It Helps Establish Trust With Your Audience

When you provide relevant and valuable content to your audience, they will lean toward trusting your brand.

By engaging your customers and providing answers to their questions through your content, you are, in effect, building a relationship with them.

Produce quality content consistently, and you will improve the reputation of your brand and eventually foster loyalty to it, and that’s always good for your business.

It Makes Audiences Come Back For More

Providing your audiences with quality content gives both your prospects and customers a positive experience whenever they visit your website, social media pages or any digital platform you’re using for your campaign. That positive experience can reinforce their perception of your brand and keep them coming back to consume more of your content.

It Helps Build Authority

Publishing quality content gives you the opportunity to flex your muscles and show audiences your expertise in your field.

When your articles, blog posts, infographics, videos and other types of content answer your audiences’ questions and help them solve specific issues, you are positioning yourself as an industry expert worth their attention. And audiences will always remember the business or brand that gives them the information they need.

Once you’ve built your authority online, higher rankings for your website in search results will likely follow.

It Helps Generate Leads

One of the primary goals of any digital marketing campaign is to generate leads for a business, and content marketing is at the heart of any digital marketing strategy.

With content marketing, people will be able to find you and receive useful information for free. Within that content, you can place calls to action (CTAs) that will be instrumental in getting people to give your business much-needed leads. Of course, they will be more likely to click on those CTAs and get to your landing page if they’re happy with the content you provide them.

It Can Boost Conversions

When all is said and done, a business’s ultimate goal is to make money, and that only becomes possible when it generates conversions.

As mentioned earlier, customers are so much smarter these days and fed up with all the ads businesses bombard them with every second. You will have a hard time getting their attention with commercials and the like.

Content marketing, on the other hand, should provide audiences with useful information that they will pay attention to and come to trust over time. Once that relationship between your customers and your brand is established, it will be easier for your audience to make a purchasing decision — the ultimate conversion — in your favor. After all, you did earn their trust through the quality content you provided them.

Of course, a CTA can help guide them toward making that decision, so don’t forget to put one within your content.

It Can Improve SEO

We’ve all seen the great strides search engines — Google in particular — have taken toward making quality content a top ranking factor. Through earthshaking algorithm changes, Google has made it a must for businesses to publish nothing but useful content if it wants any opportunity to rank high in search results.

By consistently publishing quality content, your business can become more visible online, and your SEO efforts will yield better results.

As an integral part of your digital marketing strategy, content marketing will require a certain amount of resources to carry out. However, don’t consider whatever you spend on it as an expense. With all the benefits you can get from it, always consider content marketing as an investment — one of the best you can make for your business in today’s increasingly digital world.

EVERYDAY HEROES: Library tech specialist answers questions, helps others

Aug. 2—As Tahlequah Public Library's technology specialist, Gerran Walker has worked for several years to answer technology-based questions.

Walker has been employed by the library system since she was a senior at Oktaha High School. After a concurrent class was canceled due to low enrollment, she had a couple of hours free before she had to ride the bus home. Walker began spending time at her high school library, where the part-time librarian eventually asked her if she wanted to help out.

"I started helping her shelve things, [and] helping other kids find what they were looking for, since she wasn't in there all the time, but I was pretty much the in-between to fill in where she couldn't," said Walker.

During Walker's freshman year at Northeastern State University, she began working in the children's department at the Muskogee Public Library, eventually moving to the teen department and finally references. While working in references, she began aiding others with computers.

Walker began helping people with simple computer tasks, such as how to use a mouse. That's when she started learning more about technology and passing that knowledge to others.

"This was 2008 or 2009, so a lot of people didn't even have flip phones," said Walker. "They just had their home phones, [and were] going from having no computer experience at all to needing to fill out job applications. That was, of course, at the time of the Great Recession, so a lot of people who had been at their jobs for 10, 20, 30, or 40 years were suddenly laid off and now they had to figure out how to apply online at all these different places."

As the tech specialist at TPL, Walker assists both patrons and staff with a variety of devices, such as printers, computers, tablets, and more.

"Lots of people are like, 'I'm so dumb,' and I'm like, 'No. You don't know what you don't know,'" said Walker. "'You didn't know how to ride a bike until you learned how to ride a bike. No one thinks you're dumb for not knowing how to ride a bike.'"

While Walker said she enjoys the technology part of her job, she likes to be able to just help people, whether by connecting a laptop to a printer or making the text larger on a phone.

Outreach is also a large part of Walker's job. She goes to places like Go Ye Village to help those who cannot go to the library. Resumé and cover letter building to prepare others for the workforce is another avenue of outreach Walker takes part in.

"It just opens up a whole new world for people. Once you're able to use the computer really well, you're connected to the world," said Walker. "Everything opens up for you, and your world expands [past] just yourself and the immediate people you know."

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