Content Marketing is a must to get your site and brand ranked.
What Do We Mean By Content Marketing?
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“Content Marketing” is an activity that has been in existence pre-Internet, but it’s taken a more central role in marketing strategies owing to the multitude of online channels that we now have.
When we refer to “content marketing” with reference to today’s digital marketing strategy we are referring to the creation and sharing of online material (which includes media such as videos, blogs, and social media posts). Of central importance to “content marketing” is the principle that you are not “selling” your brand per se, rather, you are associating your name and brand with some “thought leadership”. Content marketing is, therefore, an act of publishing content that is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.
No One Likes Being Sold To
I’ve never lived in a city with more junk phonecalls than Hong Kong.
It’s outrageous.
The sheer quantity of spam calls (from a real human) is staggering and I’d be curious to know of its’ genuine effectiveness.
The instant reaction from receiving a “sales call” will elicit a “negativity-bias” reaction within ourselves, in other words, we’re instantly untrusting of the offer being made to us, even if it’s a good one. Content marketing is the solution here. It’s far more effective to generate trust and recognition as “the solution” or “the answer” to the problem that you have.
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
Made famous by Gary Vaynerchuk, the term: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook is really, in my opinion, all about content marketing.
The “Jabs” refer to non-sales direct messaging whilst the “Right Hook” refers to the sales offer, which could be a promotion or other.
Brands are fatally thinking of social media as a distribution channel rather than a storytelling channel, and that’s where the content marketing piece can really excel.
Being able to offer content marketing pieces of content (be it a video or other) that has value is key to this concept. By offering, and constantly offering, value to your community will increase the value that your brand has to their daily lives.
So, if you apply content marketing to real-life examples of offering SEO in Hong Kong, here’s what you could do:
Jab 1: Push out a 1,000 word, genuinely useful article, on how to do local Hong Kong SEO with tons of examples;
Jab 2: Push out a 1,000 word, genuinely useful article, with a 15-minute video, on free SEO content marketing tools that you can use, and offer a ton of practical examples and tutorials;
Jab 3: Push out a 1,000 word, genuinely useful article, with a 10-minute video, on ways to attract more inbound SEO links which will help with your local Hong Kong based marketing campaign. Within the copy, you could include some “swipe-copy” which the reader can use in their email outreach.
Right Hook: Offer your readers and community your service as a Hong Kong based digital marketing consultant to do all the steps offered in steps (i.e. ‘Jabs’) one to three.
In Summary
Content marketing is a must.
There is no other way around it.
From experience, I always feel that the best way to do content marketing is to batch-process your content. It’s better to brainstorm content ideas and come up with 20 or so “Jabs” that will generate enough buzz and “leads” via a newsletter email signup that you’d then be able to offer your “Right Hook” to.
What do you think? Do you agree with my (basic) content marketing strategy?