Content marketing

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Organizing for content marketing. This figure depicts how companies organize to create content in harmony.
Organizing for content marketing. This figure depicts how companies organize to create content in harmony.

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.[1] It is often used in order to achieve the following business goals: attract attention and generate leads, expand their customer base, generate or increase online sales, increase brand awareness or credibility, and engage a community of online users. Content marketing attracts new customers by creating and sharing valuable free content as well as by helping companies create sustainable brand loyalty, providing valuable information to consumers, and creating a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.[2]

Content marketing starts with identifying the customer's needs. After that, the information can be presented in a variety of long form and short form formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs, etc.[3] Examples of short form content include short blog posts and social media posts.[4]

Content marketing requires continuous delivery of large amounts of content, preferably within a content marketing strategy.[5]

  1. ^ Pulizzi, Joe; Barrett, Newt (February 2010). ""Get Content Get Customers"-Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing". NSB Management Review. 2 (2): 98–100. Retrieved 29 October 2018.
  2. ^ Le, D., 2013. Content marketing.
  3. ^ "What is Content Marketing?: Content Marketing". Forbes. Retrieved 19 September 2014.
  4. ^ McCoy, Julia (17 February 2023). "What is short-form content? Your guide to when and how to use it". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 13 December 2023.
  5. ^ Lieb, Rebecca (2011-10-14). Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher - How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media. Que Publishing. ISBN 9780789748379.