People have been getting pretty tired of marketing messages being ‘pushed’ on them for some time. Now with the internet they are really over it. No one wants to click on your banner ad. Fewer people are opening your emails. And pop-up ads drive us nuts.

There is another way though. And that’s to get your head around how this new media really works, and work with it. The video here provides a great intro to how you can make a mark on the internet.

Instead of interrupting people with your message, what you need to do is give them something so good they not only thank you for it, the reaction you get is: “wow that’s amazing, I have to share this.” So they go on Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin or Pinterest and pass it onto their friends.

Think about it: people are on the internet to discover things, communicate with their friends and represent to the world who they are. You can create ‘content’ that can help them with that.

Don’t think of the internet as another way of advertising. Instead put material on the internet that’s interesting, useful, insightful, inspiring, enlightening, unusual and maybe even educational.

This kind of marketing has been called many things, but the name you no doubt have heard (and will hear more of) is “content marketing”.

Simply put, content marketing is about creating material your audience enjoys paying attention to, that they want to share, and that demonstrates you’d be a good person to do business with.

This post is the first in our series of posts on content marketing. In the posts to come we’ll get stuck into how to do it.

Have another look at the video in this post. If you can really do what it suggests i.e. switch people’s thinking you’ll be onto something that’ll go gangbusters on the internet. In the posts to come we’ll also look more closely at the secret sauce that goes beyond ‘the how’ to supercharge engagement with your audience – understanding ‘the why’ of content marketing.

Useful links:
Our series of posts on content marketing
Articles we’ve found on content marketing
Videos on content marketing

What do you think? Leave us a comment and let us know …

By Phil Stubbs