What is content marketing?

What is content marketing? Because content marketing is a great asset to any marketing strategy and can be very affordable it’s worth the time to understand it better.

Our team are so used to using the term content marketing that it took a curious client to stop us one afternoon and say ‘Hey guys, what is content marketing?’ 

Oops, our bad for making the mistake of thinking everyone would know what we’re talking about. 

Our apologies for using lingo and buzz words.  It’s generally not our style but we were just so in our own world when we got that deserved reality check- thanks Scott for bringing it to our attention!

So we’d like to fix this oversight by dedicating an episode to the topic of ‘What is content marketing?’ 

According to Wikipedia the definition is:
Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.

That’s it in a nutshell but if you want to understand it a bit more and learn how you can use it for your own purpose, have a listen to this episode and we’ll share some insights.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, welcome. Today we are talking about content marketing and what is content marketing anyway?

SPEAKER_00 0:07

It's a great question. What is content marketing? I think oh I'm Sue Collins.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

I'm Mike Hill.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

And this is the Moonshine Moonshot series, so welcome. Yeah, so what is content marketing? It's it's um I think it's something we often forget. It's kind of a buzzword, content marketing, and maybe some people don't actually kind of know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Yeah, yesterday I was on a call with one of our customers, and you know, I I just dropped content marketing, like he should know exactly what I was talking about. And he said, hang on, what is that? Just explain that to me. And I realized that I've really taken this for granted and it needs explanation, and it deserves explanation because it's such a big trend at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

It is, and I think anyone who's involved in communications, marketing, media, any anything to do with you know online promotion of any description is going to understand what content marketing means. But for everybody else, basically what you're talking about is when you produce videos, blogs, um, social media posts, um, anything that's content is going to be marketed to get people to look at it. So if it's content and you're trying to get it in front of people, that's content marketing.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Okay, no worries. So let's use Gandalf and the yesno buttons for this about what is and what isn't content marketing. So let's say that I make a video and I post that video as a LinkedIn post and it shares information um with the group that is useful. Is that or isn't that content marketing?

unknown 1:42

I said yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Well, there you go. Yes. What if I made an advertisement that ran as a promoted piece of content on the same platform, LinkedIn, that shows in the top right hand corner of um the interface, the website, uh, that is like an advertisement selling either with a still image or a video? Is that content marketing?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

All right.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

That is more traditional advertising at that point. I've got one for you. If you're watching uh regular broadcast television and you see a commercial, is that content marketing?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Is it an info commercial?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

I'm still saying no to that one.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

It is content, but it is advertising.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yeah, it's scripted, it's not really about sharing, it's more about the hardest cell.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, so I I think that gets a little bit into this blurry line between what is advertising and what is marketing.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

It's probably not that important for the general kind of use, but I think anytime you're creating content and you're sharing it, so you're putting it up on social media, you're putting it up on YouTube, you're putting it on your website, you're putting it within a blog, you're in some way creating something that you want to drive your audience to so that they can connect with it, learn from it, share it, learn more about you, be part of your ecosystem, that is content marketing.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

So if it's free and it adds value in some way to the audience, is it content marketing?

unknown 3:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Okay, I think that's the key. It does get very blurry because of how, you know, advertising, product placement, uh, sponsorship, it, you know, the the way that these all morph and fuse together, but I think the key thing for me is that it adds value and it's content that is meant to be shared to add value to the experience of those who are receiving the message.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

And just to take out the confusion, if you create a video and it's two minutes long and it's designed for your Facebook community and you put it on your Facebook page, that is content, and when you share it, it becomes marketing. Yeah. If you do a boost or if you do a paid promotion, is it still content marketing? Yes, yes. Yes, because it's still content that you're marketing.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

You're just amplifying it. You're paying more to share it. It gets pretty fuzzy in there, but I think it's why would you do content marketing?

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Okay, so content marketing is a fantastic way to create brand recognition. So it's it's it's a really um manageable way for any kind of individual, business, anyone at all, really, any individual, particularly entrepreneurs and sole traders and artists and you know, any and everyone. Big corporations. Big corporations. It's it's just about sharing information that is helpful to the audience that you're talking to, and it helps them understand who you are or your brand is or your mission or whatever it is that you're trying to communicate. And they can get to know you in a much more real sense, so that when the time comes that they need your service or they're, you know, wanting to watch whatever you've created, there's there's a rapport there already, they already understand and know who you are. So it's just a really effective way to to really, you know, um connect with other other people.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yeah, it it's more social, it's more authentic because it's not. I mean, there is a place for advertising. I think advertising's important in the mix. Advertising is very tightly messaged and has a call to action and inspires you to take that action. That's fine. Um, content marketing's different because it doesn't need to be structured in that way with strong call to action, you know, strongly messaged because it's more about sharing and it's more about sharing valuable information or something valuable. Uh, and that is a great way of pulling down barriers, building trust, uh, building rapport, finding common ground with your audience. So I think that's where it has a big benefit.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

So the types of things you can use for this are written. So you've got blogs, you've got posts, you've got um your website copy, all of that, anything to do with copywriting. Um you've got images, um, so just photos, it could be professional photos, could be photos on your iPhone, it could be any kind of visual photo. Um, and then you've got videos.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

And audio, because it could be a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Oh, yeah, and and audio. So anything that's um a way of communicating with an audience that can go online across social media platforms, on a website, YouTube, etc.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Yeah, that's right. And I think the big difference between content marketing and advertising is often, you know, ads are more expensive because there's higher production values, there's more to them in terms of what goes into them. Uh, so they're gonna cost more, uh, and but you probably need less of them because with content marketing, you need a lot of content. So uh I think it can be produced more cost-effectively, but you're not just gonna keep running the same bit of content, you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

That's right, that's right. You need to you need to have it being refreshed regularly. So whether that's once a week, once a month, or four times a day is totally dependent on your brand and what you're trying to do and what sort of audience that you have. Um, but it it it does need to be consistent and it does need to happen regularly.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

It needs to happen pretty frequently, like you know, at least once every week or once every two weeks would probably be the lowest frequency you'd want to do, and that can go right up to multiple times a day across different platforms. Because of course, content marketing lends itself really well to versioning, and you can check out our versioning episode to learn more about that. But you can have uh, you know, a great piece of content marketing video, which might be a minute or two long, that becomes a series of tweets, something for Insta, something for Facebook, on YouTube, and gets published on your blog, which really helps with your organic SEO. Uh, all of this together is what makes the big difference. And I think the big benefit of all of that activity together is that you're not paying to play every time, or you know, bidding to play if you're using platforms that are on an auction-based system, which can end up being really quite expensive if you just stick with traditional advertising model. Not only is it more authentic and has all of those benefits we talked about before in terms of building rapport, but because it's going across different platforms, building audience, cross-connecting, and building your online profile, everything rises up, and that value comes to you at the cost of making and publishing the content, uh, which often is cheaper than the cost of advertising.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yeah, and I think um something that we missed in all of this that's just sprung into my mind is email newsletters. Okay. So um, or EDMs as they're called in the business.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

So is that content marketing or not, or does it depend?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

I think it is content marketing. As long as it's not a sales email if it's if it's useful content, if it's sharing useful information with your audience.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Dare I say if it's an email that you don't unsubscribe to, because if you're unsubscribing to an email, it's probably telling you that it's not adding value to you. Yeah, or it's not your interest area or yeah, so it's become, you know, so that's now gone into the category of I'm not getting value out of this, um, I'm gonna unsubscribe. So it's very important with email marketing that it's adding value, you know, who your audience is, that it's segmented, and you're giving them something that they, you know, they actually want, and you're adding value there.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

And I think when you're thinking about content marketing, it's a long game. Okay. So content marketing is not flash in the pan. In any individual post is a flash in the pan, but it's the collection of all the posts and all the other content you create over a period of time that's gonna build your audience. I think sometimes people really think that they'll put out two videos and suddenly they're gonna have a thousand views and 16 phone calls an hour and it's all gonna go gangbusters. Content marketing doesn't work that way. You've got to really put in the time and the effort to really build your audience over time, and it does pay off, but it's not gonna pay off in a very quick way, whereas advertising is designed to get in front of many eyeballs really fast, so that's a really big difference.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

You're on the journey, uh, you're part of a community, um, you can use both together. It's not an either-or. Um, I think it's good to use both together rather than just you know one or the other. Uh, but I think there is a lot to be said for content marketing, and uh I hope that this helped in terms of explaining a bit more about what content marketing is and why you might consider doing it.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

And for example, this, what we're doing right now, is part of our Moonshine agency, content marketing. Yes, it is. And we never got to Gandalf, so why is Gandalf here? Why we've got the yes and no buttons, but is he just the overseer?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Making sure we get.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

He's just a fixture, right? Like he's invited to any party I'm involved in. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Anyway, so I hope that clarifies a little bit about content marketing. Um, we can certainly go into um marketing strategies and a whole lot of other things, but I think that's probably a different podcast or um series episode again. So we might come back to that once you've sent in some questions and we kind of know a bit more about what you want to know about. And I have a favour to ask you all. It would be so awesome if you could write us a review or click like or share this with someone you know who might find it helpful.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Alright, see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Adios.