Every marketing guru is talking about content marketing and why it’s a good idea – even more so for entrepreneurs. .

As an entrepreneur you have to weigh up effort vs. return. Let’s be clear, if you do decide to add content to your marketing arsenal, it will take work, dedication and commitment.

But, in our opinion, it will be totally worth it.

3 Reasons to consider content marketing

#1 Trust, credibility and liking

As you know, people like doing business with companies they trust and like. So, when a company is searching for your product or service on the Internet, they want to check you and the competition out. If you have more credible and relevant content that educates your target market than your competition, you have a better than even chance of edging them out and winning the business.

#2 Positioning

Relevant content that is useful to your target market helps position you as the go-to expert in your field. Who’d you trust, a company that has three articles and the last one was written in 2012, or a company that has 100s of articles with the last one appearing yesterday? Articles help you build authority.

#3 Improve your rankings in the Google

It is common knowledge that if your company is not ranked (by keyword) in the first page of Google, it has very little chance of being found by your potential customers. When it comes to search, most of us only go to the first page and seldom click to the second page of Google. So, it is always advantageous to be in the Top 10 on Google’s first page.

Google tends to rank websites with good, relevant content (minimum 250 words per article) higher. So, if you’re producing more content than your competitors, you have a better chance of ranking higher on Google and of getting noticed by your potential customers.

So, if you buy the argument that content marketing is worth the effort as many entrepreneurs have already done, the next question is how do you do it.

Below are a couple of pointers to help you on your way:

  • Make sure that you create a blog within your current website. If you have a WordPress or Joomla content management system, this is an easy process. If not, your website administrator should be able to help you set up your blog.
  • Blog articles should be a minimum of 250 words.
  • A good rule of thumb is to write one blog article once a week (four a month). Google sends in spider bots to check your website. The more activity it sees on your website, the more often the spiders visit and ultimately, the better your Google rankings.
  • Leverage your articles by using simple code to send them to your social media properties like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
  • Repurpose all of your articles. So, take an article and put it on Slideshare, video you reading it and put it on You Tube, turn it into a podcast or an infographic.
  • Have social sharing buttons on all your blog posts so that visitors can comment and share your content. Every time your article is shared or commented on, Google sees this as a social signal i.e. someone thought it was worthwhile sharing or commenting on. This helps improve your Google rankings.
  • Design a content marketing calendar for a full year so that you have a sustained content strategy. So, plan for 48 articles a year (4 a week) and plan who’ll write them. If you take 48 blog posts, 48 posts on Facebook, 48 on LinkedIn, 48 tweets, 48 videos on You Tube and 48 slide decks on Slideshare that equals 288 touch points a year. Not a bad return on effort.

Consider adding content marketing to your marketing strategy and watch your Google rankings, credibility and authority soar.