The following article is part of a new series presented by Jewish Content Network which will discuss business ideas, marketing advice, and feature new business technologies, in an effort to help small business and organizations thrive and succeed. 

Content marketing is a mainstay of digital marketing at this point. On a broad level, there are basically two types of marketing: paid and organic.

Paid marketing involves paying a platform like Facebook, Google or Jewish Content Network to show your ads to people. The plus side is that you see instant results. It’s also far more affordable, and measurable, than the average print or billboard ad. The downside of paid advertising though, is that as soon as you stop paying, the traffic to your site as well.

Organic Marketing

On the other extreme we have organic marketing. Here you create content that delivers value to your readers, to the point where search engines recognize you as an expert and organically serve your content to your readers – for free. The key benefit of organic content marketing is that it can pay itself back for years. People can keep coming back to your content years after you last created it.

However, it can take a long time to establish this expertise and optimize yourself for search engines (SEO). It can take a lot of effort to write quality content that delivers real value to people. And establishing relationships with other websites so they link back to you to indicate your value as a useful resource can also take a lot of work.

The buying process for content marketing can also take longer. How do you go from writing a helpful article to getting people to actually buy from you? By writing additional helpful articles. And here lies the key. Content marketing is about consistent, repetitive delivery of value to your potential customers. Let them know the inside scoop of your industry – your personal opinions, your industry best practices, examples of how people used your product or service successfully.

When you consistently deliver value to people, you build a stronger relationship with them. Yes, you might have been able to shove an ad in front of their face and get them to buy once, but imagine if you brought that client in by having previously sending them five helpful articles? Who’ll be more likely to buy again, or tell their friend about you?

It’s All About Relationships

Content marketing is about creating a relationship with your clients. I relationship where you give, give, give, and only then ask. You, the expert, do whatever you can to empower your potential clients with the knowledge they need to make an educated decision about their need, and choose the best person – hopefully you – to solve it for them.

How to get started with content marketing:

1. Brainstorm – I often recommend you start your content marketing with the top questions you get asked by potential clients (“What is Internet Hosting, and Why Must I Pay for It?”). You could probably write an entire article to answer each of them. It’ll save you time, and make you look like an expert when you have an article you wrote answer it for them, instead of you.

Some other ideas include sharing insights on industry trends – which you could either agree or disagree with (“Why Corrugated Roofs Are All the Rage Right Now – And Why They’re a Terrible Idea”); as well as case studies of you actually helping clients (“How Charity Central Doubled Their Donations After Implementing Our Unique CRM Strategy.”) Hubspot has a free online course where you can learn about the nuances of the type of content to create for your readers.

2. Create – writing isn’t rocket science. If you need to, you can pay someone else to write it. But you could also practice writing yourself – just write like you talk. Stay short and to the point. And format your articles to have a lot of white space, which makes it much easier to read online. We recommend a site called Copyblogger and the book On Writing Well to learn more about how to write effective content.
3. Share – try to get your content as widely read as possible. Start with your own website. Once published, email it to your email list and share it on social media. Social Media Examiner is a great resource to stay abreast of social media trends, Mailchimp is our email marketing tool of choice, and Buffer or Hootsuite can help you streamline your social media management process.

The crux of all this? Just get started. You might take some time to see results. You might not be happy with your initial creations. But persistency is the key to success, and you’re infinitely better off than someone who hasn’t even tried. You’ll get practice, you’ll improve, and you’ll build a repertoire of content that will serve you well for years to come.

The Power of Native Ads

A hybrid model that combines the relationship-building aspects of content marketing with the instant results of paid marketing, is native advertising. These ads appear on content websites as suggested content, allowing users to organically flow from their current content experience to a new content experience – the one you’ve created for them.

For example, while reading Matzav.com, a reader might see an article – which you paid to place there – about an amazingly luxuriant Sukkah you have available for sale (This is an actual successful client we had). They click on this link and are taken to a fascinating article about this Sukkah – what motivated its design, a photo gallery of its cool features, a timeline of its creation process.

It’s far more likely that this client will click on this link, and potentially buy the product, when every part of the process was created to be interesting and engaging for them. That is the beauty of content marketing, and it’s something you can start doing today with a single article and a platform like the Jewish Content Network.

Chaim Chernoff is the Chief Marketing Officer at the Jewish Content Network. Always on the lookout for latest digital marketing trends, Chaim aims to help businesses expand their presence and grow their business in the digital world.  Do you have marketing questions? Send an email to: [email protected]