I’ve recently returned from a day of content marketing mastery which was led and hosted by Mark Schaefer and Ian Cleary in Dublin, Ireland. Mark and Ian are amazing marketers and I’ve had the pleasure of knowing them over the past few years.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing at it’s basic form is how we create, market and share valuable content in such a way that it attracts your ideal customers to do business with you. It takes prospects on a journey of discovering your business, through to building a relationship and connection with you to then taking the next step to purchase your services.
What I like about this method of marketing is that it moves away from ego-centric marketing that is masculine, self serving and at times exploitative.
Instead it comes from a heart-centred place of ‘service’, of adding true value to those that need it. It comes from a place of connecting and forming relationships with your potential clients. It’s transitioning your marketing from a place of ‘selling’ to ‘helping’ and using social media to push your marketing content ( such as blog posts, images, ebooks, videos, podcasts, articles) out into the world.
I’m a big believer in that the more you give from the heart, the more the universe gives back to you.
Marketing your business from this place takes more time, but the long term benefits outweigh the short ones. Of course the online world is a noisy place and getting your content seen and shared by others is becoming more challenging, but it is crucial ( there’s no point creating content if no one can see it).
Mark Schaefer found from his book research that people will move and share content for those who they trust, support and love.
For example a marketing influencer who has a large Facebook fan base published one of her ‘quote’ images that was shared on a massive scale by her loyal community. She calculated that if she had paid Facebook for the same advertising exposure, one advert would have cost her business $25,000! Her community trust and support her. They are also aligned with her values and message. This is what helped to spread her message on a large scale introducing her business to more prospects and clients.
Therefore it’s remembering that building relationships and connecting with heart, whether it’s face to face or online is what will build your business.
Business is ultimately about people, it’s so simple but true – that people buy from people they know, like and trust.
They always have done and they always will do.
Until next time…
Leave a Reply