Content Marketing For Beginners: Complete Guide

If you're new to content marketing and you want to learn how to use it for your business, then keep watching because in this tutorial, I'm going to walk you through a complete guide to content marketing for beginners. Stay tuned. Alright, so let's start with the basics and talk about what content marketing is. Simply put, content marketing is the process of creating and distributing content to attract and retain customers. Meaning, you're creating blog posts, videos, podcasts, or whatever, promoting it, and your content's job is to lead people towards a profitable action. Now, if you've never really bought this whole idea of content that sells, this concept might not make a whole lot of sense or just sound cliché. So to help you better understand, I want to tell you about this piece of metal. This is a Jungle Gym gymnastics bar for kids that I bought recently. Now, in order to understand why I bought this product and how content influenced me to buy it, let's rewind. Over the past year or so, the city of Toronto has locked down three times. And this was the second time that they closed down playgrounds. Now, when you have young children that are being forced to stay at home, they literally climb everything. So my wife and I started researching. We searched on Google for things like, best home climbing equipment for kids. We read some articles and scrolled through the different types of products. Well, this slide will get boring quick, and we already have a bunch of tunnels. And then we saw this. A mini Jungle Gym. So now we were heading in the right direction. So we went back to Google and searched for, best Jungle Gyms. We read through some more blog posts, narrowed our search down to items we might want to buy, watched some videos, only to realize that our oldest child would be too big for the toy. So we went to Amazon to look at more options, found something like this, read the reviews, and then we bought it. We had a problem, searched for solutions, and content from blogs, videos, and reviews led us through our entire purchasing journey. And if you think about why and how you made your last purchase that wasn't a necessity like groceries or clothes, I bet content was involved along the way. With so much information available at the tip of our fingers, we as consumers will be influenced by content. Now, the content we read and watched were from multiple sites and creators. And the Amazon seller who got our $100 or so just happened to luck out. But through the power of content marketing, you can intentionally integrate your company and products within these purchasing journeys. Let me show you an example of what we've done at Ahrefs. If you're unfamiliar with our company, we sell a suite of SEO tools. And in that suite is a keyword research tool called Keywords Explorer. So let's say you decided to use SEO in your digital marketing strategy and you wanted to find a keyword research tool to use. You might go to Google and search for, list of keyword research tools. You click on one of the results, scroll through the list, click on a few here and there, but you're still not ready to make a purchase because you realized, I don't even know how to do keyword research. So you go back to Google and search for, how to do keyword research. Sure enough, you recognize one of the names from the previous article you read, plus they're ranking high in Google. So you click through to their guide. You skim through the guide and you're impressed. You're also introduced to the tool, Keywords Explorer. But you got to head out to the gym, pick up the kids, and get dinner prepared so life goes on as usual. A few days later, you decide to look for more keyword research tutorials. So you go to YouTube and search for, keyword research. Sure enough, you see that same brand that just won't quit. You click on the video, you're impressed by the likes to dislikes ratio, so you look at the comments and see a lot of positive ones. So you keep watching. Mesmerized by the presenter's wisdom, you start taking notes and figure out how to do keyword research. And throughout the time you spent learning how to do keyword research, you learned how to do it using our tools. So not only have you been exposed to our brand and products numerous times through free content, you've now been brought into our ecosystem through various searches simply because we were there when you needed us. So naturally, you'd be more inclined to purchase our tools because you've been educated on them. Content marketing helps to create awareness and attracts potential customers to your content. Your content engages them and builds credibility for your brand. It converts visitors into customers. It allows you to build a loyal following. And for a software product like ours, it helps retain customers because they learn how to do new things with our tools, leading to increased usage. Best of all, your revenue compounds because unlike advertising where your ads stop appearing the minute you stop paying, content that surfaces where and when your customers are searching is consistent. And it's important to note that no matter how good your content is, if your products aren't up to scratch, then content won't save you, at least in the long haul. So with all the flexing out of the way, let's talk about how you can do this for your business. Now, the two main parts of content marketing is to create content and distribute or promote it. And whatever you create should have the goal of attracting and or retaining customers. Let's talk about the content creation side of things. Your content can be in various formats. So that might be blog posts, podcasts, videos, online courses, infographics, free tools, templates, ebooks, checklists, you name it. As long as there's demand from your target audience for that type of content, then pretty much anything is fair game. Now, the type of content you choose will depend on the topic of your content piece. For example, a recipe would work well as a blog post and video. But it probably wouldn't be great as a podcast. Whereas an interview with Gordon Ramsay could work as a podcast, video, or even blog post. But it probably wouldn't be very valuable as a checklist. As a general rule of thumb, start with one format that works for you and rinse and repeat. Then consider exploring another channel. For us, we started with blog posts and then eventually branched out to videos as our team group. Now, creating content alone isn't enough because content isn't the same as content marketing. And unfortunately, the notion of, if you build it and they will come, couldn't be further from the truth. And that's why it's important to have an idea of where you'll be distributing this content. Some common distribution channels would include search, which can be done through search engine optimization or paid ads, social media networks, forums and communities, or email newsletters. For example, if you have a recipe site, then you'd probably want to optimize your content for Google search, YouTube, and or Pinterest. Because these are channels where lots of people are actively looking for recipes every month. Now, if you have a site on golf, you might want to consider YouTube, Google search, and forums and communities. Because these are all places where your target audience would actively be looking for information on the topic. Again, a general rule of thumb would be to pick 2-3 networks to work on and get really good at them. For Ahrefs, our two main content distribution channels are Google search via SEO and YouTube. And our website gets over a million visits from Google search every month and had nearly 600,000 views on YouTube in March. And because these are two channels we've been able to get great results from, let's spend the rest of our time on how to create and promote content on these channels. Let's talk about blog content first. The two most popular distribution channels will be social media and search. When you create content with social media as your primary distribution channel, you're taking on a lot of risk. Getting your blog content to blow up on social media is very unpredictable. And while there are tools that can help you see how many times a post gets shared, you don't know why they were shared. I mean, did they do outreach to get influencers to share their content? Do the creators of that content already have large existing audiences? Or are all of these shares fake because they were purchased to inflate popularity? There are way too many variables, which is one of the reasons why we stay away from trying to create viral-type content. Plus, social media traffic tends to start with a big spike, but it ends up flatlining, leaving your content dead in the water. As for SEO traffic, it's much easier to create predictable and consistent results that will stand the test of time. And there are three basic steps to this process. The first step is to find topics that are relevant to your business. And this step is often referred to as keyword research. To get started, use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer and enter some topics that are broadly related to your niche. So assuming you have a site that sells an online course on parenting, you might search for parenting and toddler. Next, go to the questions report, which will show you keywords phrased as questions as well as the search volume for those keywords. And questions are often problems that your target audience may be facing. Now, since we're selling an online course, you'll want to look for topics that are closely or at least somewhat related to your product. So something like, how to discipline a toddler might be a good fit since you sell a parenting course. The next step is to create the right type of content. Google tries to surface the most relevant content for any given query. So the right type of content from an SEO perspective is one that meets the searcher's needs. This is called search intent, which represents the reason behind the searcher's query. And you can determine this by looking at the top ranking results, or if you're using Keywords Explorer, you can hit the SERP button to see the top 10 pages along with their SEO metrics. In this case, they're all informational blog posts where many have gone with a tactical angle. So you'd probably want to go this route too to have a fighting chance at ranking. And the last step is to promote your content. Promotion can take many forms. And it's best if you go with an inside-out approach, meaning start with channels closest to you and then move outwards to reach new audiences. So you might start by posting on your social media accounts and sending new content to your email newsletters. Then you may want to branch out to communities you're involved in. That might be Reddit, Quora, or social groups that allow link sharing. And finally, you'll want to do some blogger outreach to get backlinks. And this is what you'll need to do to get your pages ranking higher on Google. Now, we've only scratched the surface here with Google SEO, so if you want to learn more, then check out the playlist in our description to our completely free SEO training course where you can learn how to get organic traffic from search month over month. As for YouTube content, there are three main ways we select topics for content. The first way is for YouTube organic search views. To do that, go to Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer, select the YouTube tab to get YouTube search data, and enter a broad keyword related to your niche. Next, go to the Phrase Match report. Now, since YouTube content is almost always informational, you can skim this report and look for relevant keywords to your business. For example, parenting styles might be interesting. Because again, our hypothetical site sells an online course on parenting. And people searching for this would probably be interested in it. So I'll take that keyword and type it into YouTube search. Again, I'll look at the top three videos and see if there are any commonalities and do my best to create a video that matches searcher intent. We have a full video on doing YouTube SEO, which has been a major factor in our channel's growth, so I'll link that up in the description. The second way is to create content on unique topics that might draw in your target audience. Now, the reason why we do this is because YouTube is both a search and social platform. And because there is that social aspect to YouTube, their algorithm rewards videos that attract a lot of clicks that lead to high watch times. So by creating content on a popular topic in your niche that no one else has really talked about, you can potentially get a ton of clicks and if your content is good enough, people will watch it for longer periods of time, leading to YouTube promoting your content to similar audiences. Now, coming up with your own ideas will come down to creativity. But a simple formula you can use is main topic plus main attractor. For example, we created this video called Link Building with Google Ads. Our main topic is link building, which is a popular SEO strategy. And the main attractor is with Google Ads. And that's because no one was really talking about how to use Google Ads to actually get backlinks to your site. So we created our own case study where we shared all of the details with complete transparency. And the third way is to create a series. Series work well because they're meant to be watched in sequential order. This can lead to overall longer watch times across your entire channel. And the longer people are watching your content, the more YouTube will promote your videos. But the biggest benefit is that if your content integrates your offerings in an organic way, there's a significant amount of exposure to your products. For example, our SEO course for beginners teaches how to do SEO and naturally, we use both our free and paid tools in it. And this series has accumulated well over 10,000 hours of watch time in under two months. To put this into perspective, that's about 426.6 days or 1.17 years of continuous content consumption. So potential series ideas might be courses, case studies, building something in public, or if you want to go with more of an entertainment angle, vlogs and shows work well too, depending on your niche. Now, as for the promotion side of things, YouTube does a great job at promoting relevant content on their homepage and sidebar suggestions. But if you don't have an existing audience, it can be tough to get that initial traction. I won't get into that here because we have a full tutorial on how to get more views on YouTube when you're just starting out, as well as a video on how to get more subscribers, which will teach you a lot about how YouTube works. Again, links in the description. Now, content marketing isn't exactly a fast process. It's an ongoing one. And I think this is why people often avoid it. Because we're used to the idea of immediate results. So we turn to things like advertising and direct mail. And there's nothing wrong with more traditional methods of marketing, but content marketing is unique in the sense that it continues to contribute to your bottom line over time. So I want you to think of content marketing like planting seeds. If you want to grow an apple tree, it can take up to 8 years for it to bear fruit. But that same tree will continually put food on the table for years to come. And the longer you wait to plant that seed, the longer it'll take to start reaping the rewards. So if SEO interests you, then I highly recommend taking our free SEO course for beginners. Or if YouTube is the channel you want to focus on, then check out our playlist on YouTube marketing. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, share, and subscribe for more actionable marketing videos like this one. I'll see you in the next tutorial.