Content Marketing: Practical and Philosophical

Blogging is a major part of what I love to do on the internet, and it's tied to a business model I call Content Provider.  This is exactly what Daniel Sharkov writes about - 4 Important Content Marketing Facts You Should Wrap Your Head Around:

Simply put content marketing is the process of creating content with the idea of indirectly promoting a service or a product that you might have. 

It might not even be one of the two – content marketing can be about marketing yourself, your skills or in other words building a personal brand.

I don't blog simply for the sake of blogging, but also for the sake of earning a living.  This point is what makes my blogging Content Marketing.

(image credit)

Here are those four facts Sharkov refers to, plus my comments on each of them:

1.  Never focus your blog posts around length

What I want to tell you is that you shouldn’t tie your posts around reaching a specific number of words. Instead of setting the goal of writing X number of words today, set yourself the goal of writing one full article, regardless of its length.

Sharkov and I exchanges messages on Google+, and I noted:

You've written a nice philosophical piece, the more I think about it. As a longtime poet, for example, I am very confident about my creativity process. An idea, thought, or inspiration determines how long and what shape my poem takes - from a couple of lines, to multiple pages; and sonnet, villanelle or sestina. Often I don't know this to start with. But to your point, I aim simply to write a complete idea or thought and to realize an inspiration fully.   

2.  Know that not only articles are considered content

There is no denying that if you want to improve your blog’s search-engine rankings, you need to have articles. After all without the words, your blog will pretty much be empty in the eyes of the search bots, crawling its pages.

However there is nothing bad in spicing things up a bit every once in awhile!

With the rise of platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, visual content is now on the [pedestal].

The type of content you upload and the balance among different types depend, not only on that idea, thought or inspiration, but also on your purpose for blogging to begin with.  Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and ESPN and Sports Illustrated are primarily still text.  Just an image or two, plus a video, maybe an interactive graphic are all the variety of content in their articles.  Remember, though, that these are very established, in-demand publications.  I love images and videos, but I read them for their text.

Two of my blogs are of this sort:  Leaders Insights and techTrampoline (this one).  Others are more image- and video-laden, for example:  Art Intersections and sportsPond53.    

3. Quality material doesn’t necessarily guarantee social sharing

Having a really high level of expertise in a certain field of knowledge is one thing. Being able to translate that knowledge into content that provides useful information is second. And turning that content into a magnet for social sharing is third.

Unfortunately what often times happens is that someone might really be good at the first two parts of the process. The guy has a lot of knowledge and produces some really interesting pieces of content.

What he lacks however is a marketing approach.

When I shared Sharkov's article on Google+, I wrote:

These facts are very good conceptual and practical points. For example, +Daniel Sharkov does a nice job of breaking down social sharing: expertise, content and promotion. Yet, there's an often elusive fourth thing: pulse. Knowing what millions of people out there really like can, along with those three things, can help you create content that goes viral. A very tall task, to be sure, but it can be accomplished. 

4. Content Marketing won’t improve SEO and traffic right away

Well in fact fresh content is just the starting point. Simply adding page by page to your site, won’t necessarily help your site show high on the search-engine result pages. That’s the simple truth.

Without guest blogging (for both link building and audience building purposes) you will just be burning [tire] and standing still.

Actually you might be better off choosing guest blogging over starting a blog.

I have 13 blogs on Blogger, and for the time being, as I crystallize my concepts for each and build up a good table of contents, I am not actively promoting any of them anywhere.  Just by virtue of Blogger being a Google product and therefore part of its enormous ecosystem, my blogs have had thousands and thousands of visits.  The fact that I deploy AdSense may be the primary reason that Google itself promotes my blogs.

As I wrote on another post on Google+:

I understand the concept of SEO, but I've never paid much attention to it. Instead, as an active blogger, I focus on writing the best possible stuff and making sure that what I write is aligned with the blog purpose and subject.

(image credit)

At the end of the day

I'm on track with what Sharkov advises:  Blogging well is number one, and has been my primary activity over the past year.  I am now sidling into co-blogging, plus interviewing colleagues for select topics, both of which I expect will be audience- and link-building.

Oh, one more thing:  I've worked diligently to participate, engage others meaningfully, share others' posts and blogs, and in general forge relationships with scores of people across social media.  More and more of them are sharing my posts and mentioning me, without my asking them to do so.  

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD