More and more successful businesses are jumping onboard the content marketing bandwagon. They understand engaging content improves lead generation and conversion rates, but quality content does more - it builds relationships.
Powerful content not only makes you think, it makes your feeling something. When you read something so compelling, you just have to tell that writer how you loved their work or share it with everyone you know. Am I right?
Well, this is starts a relationship that may lead to much more. So, when you're looking at your content strategy, don't forget to factor in the relationship element. After all, people buy from businesses they trust.
Let's consider these 4 ways powerful content builds relationships:
Relationships Through Powerful Content Marketing
- Commenting on other blogs - Let's face it, commenting on blogs is still one of the least used ways to get people talking. Before, many would use blog commenting as a strategy for back links to their site. Although still relevant, it's more of a mechanism to share insights and start building a relationship with the blog owner and their readers.Just go out and find some related forums, blogs and message boards and then just listen. Find out what everyone is talking about and then join in on the conversation. Add some value to it or you'll be cast out as a spammer.
- Social media content - With social media, everyone can connect on a more personal level and get immediate validation - this helps you build up relationships and trust.Now, it's not as simple as just putting up a blog post and feeding it through Twitter; you need to encourage others to engage with you. Do some social listening and see what their pain points are, then create content that addresses it and let them know about it. Keep building content that attracts and soon it will pay off with powerful relationships with loyal clients.
- Content curation - Sometimes, you need to take a break from building so much original content. It's hard and many businesses understand this. This is where content curation comes in. Think of it like this: content curators are like museum curators; they gather only the best content to show off to their audiences.A good example of content curation is Twitter. LOTS of people tweet out links of useful information from different sources around the net about their industry.Try combining original content with curated content to establish yourself as the go to business for solutions that solve your prospects problems.
- Guest posting on industry blogs - Looking to position your brand in front of a larger audience? Try guest posting on other blogs for added exposure. By writing quality blog posts for established blogs in your industry, you create opportunities to build relationships with the readers of that blog.Now don't just stop at writing the post and leave it at that. Ensure you answer comments to your post and add some value that starts a conversation both on and off the blog.
With the explosion of content marketing, great content does many things like inform and sell products and services. It also creates relationships with readers through storytelling and relating to their problems. After all, don't you connect more with someone who understands what you're already going through?
So, when you start looking at building relationships, don't forget high quality content - it's too important to skimp on.
Photo credit: sepblog
How do you utilize content to build relationships?