Have you read enough articles about content yet?

While everyone is talking about it, not everyone necessarily understands it, so I’m going to explain the content revolution as I see it. If you’re a sophisticated content marketer, then you’re probably not going to gain much from this (but feel free to keep reading and tell me in the comments where I’ve got it wrong!), but if you’re someone who feels they should be doing more with content but isn’t sure where to start, I hope this will help.

The web has lowered the barriers to entry in publishing to zero. It is now incredibly easy to get a message out there and to target it to whoever you want.

This means every company can be a publisher, and every company should be a publisher.

In 2014, major Australian bank ANZ launched BlueNotes, a major investment that has seen them recruit senior journalists from sources such as The Australian Financial Review, to create a content portal offering news, opinion and insight into key economic issues.

But this strategy is not limited to the big end of town and even very small companies can and should take advantage.

Why?

  1. Search

By creating quality content and putting it on the web, customers who are searching for answers and expertise will find you.

  1. Social

More than 72 per cent of all internet users spend some time on social media every day. Companies can only get a piece of this if they have something worthwhile for their customers to share. To put it simply; create some content, get your customers to share it, more customers will see it.

  1. Pull don’t push

People don’t like to be sold to or marketed at. When they feel they are being sold to, their resistance goes up. By creating quality content, you will instead attract people to you – yes, new customers will come to you and contact you for more information.

  1. Thought leadership/expertise

If you’re at the big end of town, you’ll call it thought leadership, if you’re an engineer running a small firm, then you’ll more likely talk about expertise. Either way, by creating and sharing quality content, you’ll show everyone that you know what you are talking about.

How?

This is probably a bigger topic than I can do justice to here, but it’s not as hard as you think to get started. Here are a few pointers;

  1. Write what you know

It comes back to expertise. It doesn’t have to be fancy, there must be plenty of situations that come up in your business that you can use to demonstrate lessons and share ideas.

  1. It’s not all about you.

As I wrote recently, it’s not about detailing the latest contract you won and what a great team of people you are (even though you are). Put your customers first and write something that will be useful to them.

  1. Engage experts

If you don’t have the skills in house, then get someone who does. It’s easier and cheaper than you think, and while I’ll generally stick to my own advice about not pushing or talking about ourselves, this is something Monkey Media can help you with!