Justifying the virtue of content marketing over traditional advertising can be difficult for some.

How can an online marketing professional effectively convince executives within their company (as part of a marketing team) or prospective clients (outside executives) of the value of developing informative content?

Content Marketing Institute recently compiled some tips from some of the best content marketers around on how to do this.

Here’s a couple of their responses to the question – “Content marketing can be a new way of thinking for some marketing teams. How would you explain the value of content marketing to a manager or executive who is primarily familiar with traditional advertising approaches?”

“Content Marketing has significant value in a few different ways.  For one, the content you create and distribute on the web has a much longer shelf life at a lower cost then any traditional campaigns you will run.  Each object of content you create can add the the total poll of content that represents your brand and works to get your customers talking back to you.  Over time when your collection of content grows larger, you will notice increases in online traffic and engagement.  A bigger collection attracts more interest.” Nate Riggs

“The value of content marketing lies in the engagement between the customer and your company. Traditional advertising shouts at prospect customers whereas content marketing talks with them. Essentially, it is about the creation and participation in meaningful conversations and development of relationships. Content marketing can benefit your company by increasing sales leads and positioning your company/brand as a thought leader, in addition to increasing the number of visitors to your website.” Amanda Maksymiw

Nate and Amanda hit on probably the two biggest advantages of content marketing over traditional advertising. One being cost – which one commenter says is one of the best ways to talk to someone clung to traditional advertising – and the other being the fact traditional advertising is not about the customer but about you.

As Amanda says, traditional advertising shouts while content marketing pulls up a chair and talks.

Other reasons you can provide your superiors or prospective clients include:

• Draw customers in through relevant content rather than one-size fits all materials
• More dynamic, easier to change
• Has a longer shelf life
• Easier to measure, more metrics and tools available
• Fewer risks and costs
• Reaches a wider audience
• …and more

Besides discussing the benefits of content marketing over traditional advertising, we also get a glimpse into some of the ways you can show your boss or prospective client the advantages of building content rather than using traditional advertising.

This is where testing comes in – nothing is more convincing than data to backup your claims of increased traffic, conversions and revenues. Show your prospect data from previously successful content marketing campaigns, provide word-of-mouth referrals and more.

Traditional advertising has been on a consistent downward trend for quite some time now. There are still some instances where it can work but as CMI and others say, there’s only one way to measure progress and that’s sales.

Providing these reasons along with some data to back it up will go a long way toward convincing your bosses or prospective clients that content marketing is an effective way to spend their marketing dollar.

Other Posts You May Be Interested In

3 Ways Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing Work Together

Top 10 Ways to Connect your Customers with Good Content

Making your Content Work for You in Better, More Valuable Ways

Informative and timely content serves to answer questions, reduce doubts and works to assure customers that your business can fill their needs. Since they’re not visiting you at a storefront and able to speak with you face-to-face, web content in the form of blogs, white papers and articles helps to build this rapport and trust.

But with so many options online, where should I be focusing my efforts to develop useful content for my customers?

An understandable question indeed – with web and social media marketing tools changing all the time it seems, it can be a difficult challenge to know how you should communicate your knowledge to customers through your website.

Continue reading for the top 10 ways to connect with your customers through content as identified by the Content Marketing Institute. There are many other options beyond these 10 but according CMI and their users, the following are the most tried and true methods for connecting with customers. To see all 42 and some real-world examples of each, check out their presentation online.

Top 10 Ways for Connecting with Your Customers through Content

1. Blogs

Short for ‘weblog,’ a blog provides an easy way to share quick bits of things interesting to your readers. Easy to use, good blogging platforms like WordPress provide easy ways to syndicate what you put online (RSS, social media ‘share’ and so forth). They’re also great for facilitating conversation through comments.

You should also be open to including negative comments…much about you and your company can be determined from how you handle negative feedback. And to really make blogging work, comment on other blogs and perhaps keep a ‘top-10’ list of places you visit for your readers to see.

2. E-newsletter

A means of regular communication with both current and future customers, an e-newsletter is usually distributed weekly or monthly. E-newsletters are generally delivered through email but you can also keep an archived list on your website. Both current and future customers can opt to receive your e-newsletter through a quick signup from your homepage or blog.

The e-newsletter itself can include both full-length articles and brief descriptions with links to more on your site. And they can serve as a vehicle to announce other content found on your site.

DON’T SPAM – GET PERMISSION BEFORE DISTRIBUTING AND OFFER AN OPT-OUT

3. White Papers

Generally around 8-12 pages long, white papers cover issues that require a lot of explanation. They’re great for communicating thought leadership on a particular topic important for your buyers to know. White papers can also be referred to as a ‘research report’ or ‘technical brief.’

White papers can also be available to readers in different formats – electronic PDF, print or even digital magazines.

4. Article

Flexible in both length and format, articles can provide opportunity for you to address issues, trends and concerns of interest to your intended audience. Coupled with other online mediums and in-person speaking, articles are a very traditional tool for establishing thought leadership in any particular industry.

But you have to be consistent and plan on a series of articles to create a meaningful impact. And you should also look for additional ways to spread your article around, either through print media, online syndication sites and even your blog.

5. E-book

Anywhere from 12-40 pages in length, e-books are useful for presenting very complex subjects in a very reader friendly fashion. Content is both informative and entertaining. E-books should also have a collegial tone and be formatted to facilitate skimming and scanning. You should in fact make liberal use of bullets, callouts, sidebars, graphs and so on.

And include a good call-to-action at the end and let your readers know what they should do next.

6. Case Study

Case studies are great for communicating how your products or services help a real world customer. They’re generally 1-2 pages in length and combine both the value of a customer testimonial and a story at the same time. Most follow a simple 3-stage format – challenge, solution and results.

Use direct quotes, especially in the results area, to re-enforce the story.

7. Testimonials

Boasting about ourselves doesn’t yield near the interest as a testimonial from a real-world customer does. These quick quotes from a customer or client provide a trustworthy insight that builds credibility and helps overcome skepticism.

Create a process for obtaining testimonials from your clients. Some marketers are finding LinkedIn to be a great source for obtaining these. And pepper testimonials throughout your site – don’t overwhelm your visitor with a long page of quotes.

8. Microblogging (a.k.a Twitter)

Limited to 140 characters in length, a microblog like Twitter severely limits content. But the reach and speed of microblogging provides the opportunity to converse with prospects in close to real time.  Search tools on Twitter allow you to search for hot topics and address emerging concerns.

Use Twitter as a listening post to see what people are saying about you and your industry. It’s practically impossible for you to be in control so don’t invest much time in trying to shape the conversation. Tools like TweetDeck and others can help you manage your engagements on Twitter.

9. Webinar/Webcast

An online equivalent to a live presentation, a webinar (audio and slides) or webcast (audio, video and slides) delivers content visually slide by slide. Users can either sign-up to see a live version or download the presentation and watch it at their leisure.

Webinars should also include a good call-to-action at the end and links to relevant e-books, articles and other content on your site. You should also promote your webinar aggressively in other areas of your website and blog.

10. Video

Once difficult, innovative sites like YouTube and Vimeo has made uploading and sharing videos much easier. Embed codes allow you to place the video directly on your site and social sharing tools on YouTube and others makes it easier for your video to go viral.

If you’ve given a presentation at a conference, upload the video and embed it on your blog and website. Or create a series of videos on topics interesting to your target audience. Don’t obsess over perfection but do take a few minutes to make edits and make your video look more professional. iMovie and Final Cut are two inexpensive tools to help you easily make more professional looking videos.

As you can see, options for generating web content vary far and wide. There are other methods too that we didn’t discuss here but these top 10 are recognized as both some of the easiest and most effective methods for building content for your site.

Remember, it’s about much more than just satisfying search engines. You also have to present valuable information that answers questions, addresses concerns and overcomes skepticism.

We’ve always extolled (…and still do) the value of generating a steady flow of press releases announcing news at your company – a new product, new hire or a professional award or recognition – are just a few newsworthy topics you can announce through a press release.

Considering the fact that 92% of journalists use search engine feeds like Google News or Yahoo! News to find newsworthy topics (…daily for 81% of journalists according to research firm Marketing Sherpa), not developing a steady schedule of press releases can put you at extreme disadvantage.

And recent research from TEKGroup International analyzing journalists on media relations practices found over 70% journalists read one or more blogs daily…just under 30% regularly use social media in their jobs and approximately 37% subscribe to RSS feeds…50% regularly visit Google News.

We can even glean more information from the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from the Social Media Examiner. Over 80% of respondents in this survey say they plan to either increase press release frequency or keep it the same.  Of those respondents who say they will increase their frequency of press releases (43%), approximately 52% were small business owners while only 24% were larger companies.

Another interesting fact from the report – when asked to rank all types of marketing they were using or planning to implement, respondents ranked press releases at #4 at 57%, just below event marketing.

Despite the fact Google’s Panda update somewhat diminished the value of links from distribution sites, we can see still see the inherent value of developing newsworthy press releases.

Remember one important point – write press releases with both the search engines and social media networks in mind.

Doing so will ensure you reach both your target audience and hungry journalists looking for a great news topic.

Proper press release optimization and targeting not only helps you rank high in Google News and other outlets, they help you engage both your audience and journalists. Eventhough the link value has diminished somewhat, be sure you still include press releases in your online marketing strategy.

Related Posts

5 Common Mistakes that Stop Press Releases Cold

7 Things Google’s Farmer Update Penalized Sites For – And What you Can Do About It

Fast Track your PR with Paid Press Release Distribution Outlets

Free Press Release Distribution – A Great Way to Get your PR Noticed

Debbie Williams of Sprout Content made the journey all the way from Florida to ConFab and without fail, came away feeling enlightened and energized to try new things and further develop her talents.

Check out her synopsis of the content development and web writers’ event. Her write-up was quite energizing in of itself and reminded me of one thing – always keep moving forward. As web writers and online marketers, you have to stay energized and up-to-date on the latest techniques to ensure you keep up.

Being stagnant and thinking ‘best practices’ or ‘standard procedures’ in this industry will ensure long-term decline and mediocrity.

Businesses looking for expert search engine optimization and online marketing services turn to TopSeos for unvarnished opinion on who can best deliver results online. They regularly evaluate and rank firms in a variety of areas, including content creation, search engine optimization, social media and more.

Building content not only drives high search engine rankings, it also establishes credibility and trust with your readers.

With Google’s recent update affecting ‘content farms,’ unique, relevant and informative content is now more important than ever. Businesses and websites can no longer afford to neglect content. Simple ‘cut & paste’ and other quick tactics will no longer work.

We invite you to check out TopSeos and see their rankings for search engine and online marketing firms in all areas of concern…they provide great summaries of what each company offers.

To see how building an online presence can help your company succeed, check out our expert web copywriting services as well as our SEO, graphic design and social media services.

And check back with us here later in the week as we review a new e-book from HubSpot on how you can use social media to turn prospects into dedicated ‘brand evangelists.’ Experts offer great tips on how you can go from having a simple profile to one where your ‘friends’ actively engage their friends vis-à-vis your company’s products and services.

Now of course we all understand how people use keywords on Google and even some social media channels to find things they’re looking for.

Say for example you’re in Florida and trying to find the closest mountain rental cabin to take your family to for vacation. You may search for ‘north Georgia cabin rental,’ or maybe ‘mountain rental cabins closest to Florida’ if you’re using a more long-tail keyword. Google will take this and search their index for those terms and provide you with a list of results.

In a non-technical sense, this is what search engines used to do. They would crawl websites and index keywords but do NO other analysis. The more keywords you had in your content, the better. But anyone whose written content for a website in the last 5 years knows, you can’t simply stuff your content with keywords and get ahead.

(In fact, sites get harshly penalized for this practice now)

Search engines now use more sophisticated approaches to analyzing content. As we know from Google’s latest update, they take a much sharper eye to the content sites use and how they develop it.

And let’s not forget the whole canary in coal mine to begin with – relevancy. Simply analyzing keywords often yielded varied results irrelevant to what the searcher was looking for.

But one method, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), analyses the context of words and how they’re used on a page. It’s a sophisticated method Google and others use to provide relevant search results to their users.

What Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI, is on a technical level is a computer algorithm that uses mathematical methods to identify patterns in the relationships of terms and concepts.

What does that mean in English?

Well we all remember good ‘ol grammar school and the days of learning about synonyms, which are different words with the same meaning. Think “car” and “automobile.”

(Don’t worry, I had to look that up to be sure I was correct too   : )

Anyway, that’s easy enough for search engines to identify. But there are words you could call polynyms, or words that have multiple meanings. (Or “a name consisting of multiple words” according to http://en.wiktionary.org/). The opposite of a polynym is a mononym, or a single name.

When you say ‘apple,’ are you referring to the fruit or the computer?

Before LSI, these kinds of terms would confuse search engines. Was a user searching for ‘windows’ looking for new windows for their home or were they looking for information on the popular operating system? It’s difficult to know.

What LSI did was help search engines understand keywords in the context of other words on the page. If a page has ‘apple’ and ‘computer’ and especially ‘MacOS’ on it, then it must be about Apple Computers. If it has ‘apple’ and ‘tree’ and/or ‘pie,’ then it must be about the fruit.

How is this a new way of looking at keywords?

Since LSI is examining the relationships words have with each other rather than their quantity, keywords can often be spaced apart and still be linked together through LSI. Just think about how Google displays results for a 3-4 word term you enter.

Example:

Search term: “how to bake pork chops”

5^th result

How To Make Tender and Juicy Pork Chops – Cooking Tips

Want the secret on how to make tender and juicy pork chops? From meat selection to baking in the oven, learn to bake and  cook pork chops perfectly.
www.howtodothings.com › Food & Drink › Comfort Foods – Cached – Similar

Learning about LSI has made me wonder if keywords should almost be an afterthought when writing web content, site descriptions and meta-tags.

Keywords of course do belong in your content but do they need to be all together? As this site description shows, the relationships of all the words in this description and site copy told Google the site is about ‘how to bake pork chops.’

While it is difficult, I’m trying to put keywords more on the back burner.

But is LSI something you should fret over too much? Absolutely not says Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz. While it’s something you should know about, it’s by no means a critical component of ranking high in the search engines.

Has anyone ever tried this? Let me know if you have and I’ll certainly report on any progress or data when I have it.

As you know from our post on March 4^th, Google recently updated its algorithm to weed out sites with less than stellar content. Many of the sites affected contained low-quality content that either wasn’t very good or was simply copied from another website.

Affected sites have seen a big drop off – as much as 50% in some cases – of traffic coming from organic (free) search results. This can have devastating impacts for websites dependent on organic traffic to drive leads and revenues.

Likely you would have noticed your site’s drop off in rankings and traffic by now. If so, you can jump ahead and use Google Webmaster to find out which specific pages have been affected.

If you’re at the ‘Dashboard’ for Google Webmaster tools, choose the ‘search engines’ option under ‘traffic sources’ to see a line graph of web traffic. The Panda update occurred around February 22^nd so if your site is affected, you will likely see a big drop off in referring traffic after the 22^nd of last month.

A big unknown at this point though is whether Google’s Panda update affects all pages on a site or just specific ones. To see a general picture, choose the “top landing pages” option underneath the “Content” section. You can filter the results further to see if Panda affected all pages or just a select few.

Determining this will help identify the specific pages Google considered to be too ‘spammy.’ Once you know this you can then either remove those pages or re-write them with compelling, engaging content. To learn more, read Mark Nunney’s article on Wordtracker to learn more.

Over 12% of websites in the U.S. were affected by this update. As of this writing, this update has only occurred for websites in the United States.

Good SEO most certainly leads to higher rankings. How high also depends on the quality of content, usability and the industry/keywords you’re optimizing for.

Much of the craft of ranking high in the search engines stems from a close watch of what’s going on with Google and the algorithm it uses to crawl and rank sites.

As you may know, there’s over probably 200 factors they consider important.

One of those is content and as I can tell you from personal experience, content is a central pillar to successfully using the Internet to drive leads and revenue to your business.

But some ‘low-quality’ sites are seeing a significant decline in their traffic.

The main reason you ask?

Some interviews with Google spam chief Matt Cutts and Google researcher Amit Singal offer some insights into Google’s Panda update…continue reading for a quick summary.

In late 2009, Google’s Caffeine update improved the search engine’s indexing process. This provided Google with lots of content – some good, some not so good.

Cutts comments in a Wired Magazine interview that many sites were simply producing content from the perspective of “What’s the bare minimum that I can do that’s not spam?”

Without the ability to consistently define what a low-quality site is, many webmasters and SEOs believe Google is utilizing more human reviewers. Cutts and Singal say they’re trying to develop an automatic system to screen this.

Of course, Google doesn’t let the entire cat out of the bag in regards to their algorithm and in a way, understandably so.

But from this interview, we can discern what they’re looking and penalizing sites for.

We can however discern how Google is asking human reviewers several questions to determine if it ‘trusts’ a site or not. And that seems to be the big key – does Google trust your site.

Large domains like CNN.com or Walmart.com generally are trusted.

But smaller sites are looked at more carefully…ones where content seems questionable and untrustworthy to third-party review are seeing some declines in rankings.

The takeaway here?

Be sure you take steps to ensure your site is trustworthy. In regards to content, be sure you put original content online…don’t take things from other people and rehash them. Many of the sites who saw drops in rankings and traffic (one site who lost ground lost 10% of its revenue and had to subsequently reduce staff) were engaging in a practice called ‘content scrubbing’

In essence, content scrubbing is a situation where a site may have content to similar (…or not unique enough) from another site.

It’s not that anyone did anything technically wrong but rather a case where some sites have seen a sudden drop off in rankings and traffic.

Did your website experience any sudden drop like this recently?

If so, drop us a quick comment and tell us about it…if you’re gathering content from various sources and not re-purposing it enough, it’s possible this is the reason.

Although we placed #4 again for March, 2011, we’re proud to be included among the top web copywriting firms out there.

Regardless of this accomplishment though, our goals of creating informative, keyword-rich, high quality content for our clients remain the same. Building content like this helps drive higher search engine rankings and more business conversions.

Topseos.com is a site many small businesses rely on to provide them unbiased reviews of various search engine marketing and web copywriting firms. They provide regular evaluations and ranking lists for a variety of areas, including content creation, SEO, social media, graphic design and more.

SEO Advantage has in fact enjoyed top spot(s) on other lists from Topseos.com, namely social media.

We invite you to learn more about Topseos.com and view their rankings in these areas and more. They can provide you with a full summary of what each company offers.

Of course we invite you to check out our expert web copywriting services and other online marketing services like SEO, graphic design, social media and more today and see how building your web presence can pay long-term dividends for your business.

On another note, let me apologize with the lack of new posts in the last couple of weeks. We’ve been working on a few changes we’ll roll out soon in addition to some problems with a couple of posts.

Check back this Friday (…or next Monday at the latest) to read about ways you can tweak your LinkedIn profile to get more business leads and professional connections.

Being successful at blogging requires a steady stream of fresh, engaging content. The more the better but usually once a week is the absolute minimum. Two years ago for instance, we were posting 3 posts a week on SEOe.

But building that content takes time – time to research, time to write, time to edit and time to manage comments and so on. With only so many hours in the day, it may seem daunting and maybe even impossible to write enough posts readers find engaging and informative.

If I had a nickel for every blog that gets started and putters out, I could retire to a life of leisure tomorrow.

Unfortunately though, many blog owners and small businesses find it very challenging to maintain a flow of consistent copy.

MyBlogGuest.com is a service where you can connect with other bloggers and find great guest material

Guest posting has several benefits for both blog owners and blog writers.

One benefit for you – the blog owner – is that you can maintain steady flow of content much easier. For example, if you’re too busy to write something from scratch yourself, find an article on MyBlogGuest.com to use.

Two ways blog owners can get material for their blog

One is to find articles authors have already posted on the site. There’s a wide range of topics available.

The other is to find authors in your niche and contact them directly.

Of course, guest posts benefit the blog owner by widening the audience. If you have a guest posting something on your blog, their readers are naturally going to be interested. And don’t forget the opportunities for networking and getting a fresh new perspective from others in your field.

For writers, guest blogging helps build their brand, reach new audiences and build links to their site(s).

To get more benefit from MyBlogGuest.com, you should write two or three posts/articles and put them on the site for distribution. Someone will eventually pick them up and use them on their blog. Of course, they have to be members to do this and must follow strict guidelines for crediting the author and linking to their site.

Ann Smarty, creator of MyBlogGuest.com, has a tremendously powerful tool here. I look forward to using it and helping others use tools like this to help them build their blogs. Expect to see more guest posts (…perhaps one a month) here on SEOe going forward.

And if you find any other services like these, let us know by leaving a comment.