The revolution brought forth by the rise of social networks has moved content marketing in the center of the online galaxy. Many other online marketing strategies gravitate around it, creating a potent synergy. 
Content is a driving force behind generating leads, spreading brand awareness and increasing the sales. Hence, marketers strive to put visible signs on the busy highways of the internet and ensure that eager drivers make a turn for their social media, account, blog post or website. This is what allows them to reap many benefits, from increased revenues to enhancing brand building process.
Viral power
Today, a vast majority of marketers use content to capture their messages and shape campaigns. Those who fail to utilize the great potential of content marketing often lose their business to the competition. Furthermore, the surge of social media has introduced us to the phenomenon of the viral content.
Nothing has such immense power to make legions of online users flock to one place. A mind-boggling amount of 2 billion videos are watched on YouTube every day, and at the same time 50 million tweets and 1 billion active Facebook users float around the digital ocean.
The buzz generated around stellar content spills over to the other areas of the digital world, increasing exposure at an unprecedented rate.
This dazzling success would have been paid in thousands of dollars years ago, but today it takes humble resources and a bit of ingenuity to pull it off.
Now just to be clear, content marketing is not only about crafting content with 
viral potential. This is partly due to the fact that this is a hard thing to do, especially with the noise present in the virtual landscape.  Also, you do not want to be a one trick pony, a hip, but passing trend. Content marketing is a long-term commitment and a tool recognized and promoted by the supreme rulers of the online realm.
Google’s Panda Update was just the beginning of the shift towards quality content and its central role at the marketing stage.
Course of nature
Even the best SEO campaigns require that you to earn reputation in a natural, organic way. A long journey starts with a single step, in this case, defining the target audience. Therefore, research the market and once you have a clear idea about your ideal client, use platform like Survey Monkey to gather valuable customer information.
Recommended SEO and Competitive Research Tool: SEMRush (affiliate link)
Turn your finds into insightful content and share it with others. When you hit a wall with creative and strategic thinking, what enables you to come with engaging content is another great piece of content out here. Something like an insightful content marketing guide helps newcomers make sense of all the different marketing aspects that make or break your efforts to boost the traffic.
Demonstrate your worth by reporting the news in your niche, predicting and riding on a wave of trends. Each webinar you attend, white paper you read, and presentation you attend can serve as a building material for quality content.
Platforms like Pinterest can be used to share white papers, reports, charts or product pictures.
Infographics are also on the roll, stealing the online show on social networks. Do not forget to take advantage of newsletter series to boost lead generation and build a wider subscriber base.
Finally, let the customers do the marketing for you and spread the word, which is paramount to the success of your content marketing strategy.
Thus, gather customer feedback, and use it to pull together a list of top questions or complaints. It is also a good idea to include video testimonials and expert product reviews, as this kind of content builds trust with the community.
Another highly-effective way to attract traffic is to use networks like LinkedIn to connect with industry leaders and experts.
Try to guest posts on their blogs, share their content with due credit, and ask them if they would be willing to give an interview. Write an expert take on a popular topic, and never abandon the mission of improving your content foundations.
Get the show on the road
Content marketing has proven its worth time and time again, as seen in this content marketing timeline infographic made by Four Dots. It is widely adopted as a powerful marketing weapon, firing bursts of videos, infographics, audio books, blog posts, tweets, etc. Driving internet traffic on a massive scale is something that requires thorough planning, a solid budget, and in-depth knowledge. The key is to prove industry expertise and show consistency and responsiveness to customers. The investment of time and resources is the cost you pay for at least not falling behind the competition. And if done right, this type of marketing is unparalleled in terms of establishing lasting and meaningful connections with a large community.
Marcus, I’m glad you mentioned Pinterest because I am learning that I am not using my social sites correctly and I’ve started making cool images to attach to my blog posts. Duh! They should all go on Pinterest. That is definitely on my list of adjustments to make in the near future. Also, which infographic program do you use?
Hi Marcie, thank you for commenting.
Of course images work 🙂 we are visual creatures and nice graphics appeal to a large number of people. However, not all niches profit from nice visuals. For some of the blogging niches No.1 should be accuracy and value of information (business, tech, social media, etc.) and you shouldn’t spend too much time on generating nice graphics. On the other hand, fashion, food, lifestyle and other bloggers from similar niches will enjoy nice benefits from utilizing quality images, both in traffic and social media shares.
I don’t use infographic programs, I generate content and “outsource” the design of infographics to a professional designer, since I’m not to creative in that area :). But Jeff Bullas created a list of infographic tools and programs you should definitely check
out.
Hi Marcus,
Content marketing is here to stay – and the earlier we all accept the fact and clue in, the better.
Personally, I’ll add that, focus and preference should be given to the mediums that provide the most ROI (which may not necessarily be quantified in monetary terms).
The point is that, if an option for marketing content resonates with an audience in a fantastic manner, focus should be placed on such an option.
I appreciate your attempt in publishing this.
Be certain to make the day great.
Always,
Akaahan Terungwa
Hi Akaahan, yes if you take a look at the infographic linked in the end of the article you’ll see that content marketing is much older than the internet and internet related marketing. I don’t doubt that it will survive and adapt to any new medium we’ll see in the future.
Also, the other things you point out are correct, that is the general idea – you examine the market and apply the option which brings in the most customers.
Thank you for commenting, have a great day as well.
Marcus
Hey Marcus,
The best content marketing is geared towards the interests of your specific target market and can get them to action.
We have so many options when it comes to products and services. We can do research via Video, Infographic, Podcast, Slideshare, and written blogs.
This is why content marketing isn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon.
In our day and age it is the bloodline of information that all of us are dependent on. Especially if we aren’t sure to invest in a brand.
Thanks for sharing Marcus and I hope you have a great weekend!
Hi Sherman,
Glad to have you commenting and to see you agree!
It was a good weekend overall 🙂
Cheers,
Marcus
Awesome article on Content Marketing.
Can you recommend me some tools and plugin that will help me provide my users a good content?
Thanks
Hi Himanshu,
My favorite tool is BuzzSumo it explores the most shared content based on the keywords you enter and the filters you apply (type of content, date, language, etc.).
Having said that, you must know that BuzzSumo is not free, which is unfortunate as it is quite unique.
Some other “tools” that might help you out are:
Twitter – because twitter :D;
Followerwonk – for finding and following influencers;
Bufferapp – it will display content popular in niches you choose, as well as enable you to schedule your posts for different social media networks. This is a great time-saving tool, I can’t imagine not having something like this 🙂
These are the “tools” I use most frequently and couldn’t imagine my day without any of them. However, there are few others you should take a look at as well, like: ahrefs content explorer, google trends and google news (aim for content freshness), Hootsuite, etc. Also, you can never go wrong with Facebook, Linkedin or Pinterest as I mentioned in the post.
Keep in mind that some of the tools are free, some are freemium and some are paid for and are not cheap.
Hi Marcus,
Let’s put this way, no SEO success without content marketing, and if you want to drive quality targeted traffic……you need careful planned and well-executed content marketing strategies.
Even the best of content will go unnoticed if there are no eye balls looking at it and no brains reading it. This is why we need effective marketing plan to get our content in front of our ideal target audience.
Thanks Marcus, nice reading.
Content is the only tool in SEO, by which you can be on 1st page of SERP…
It is very informative post for bloggers or web masters