SlideShare Blog

How to Use Buzz Marketing to Turbocharge Your Content Marketing

by Joseph Putnam on June 13, 2012

A lot of people think that generating buzz for a business is hit or miss. They believe that sometimes you get lucky and it happens, but most of the time you don’t.

But if you read Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes, you’ll learn that there’s a lot more to generating buzz than occasionally getting lucky. There’s a science to effective, word-of-mouth-generating, buzz marketing. Not only is it a science, but there are also principles that businesses can follow in order to generate more buzz which ultimately leads to more customers and more sales.

So what exactly is buzz marketing, and how can you apply it to turbocharge your content marketing?

An Introduction to Buzz Marketing

The basic idea behind buzz marketing is that businesses should attempt to do more than advertise their product or service. Instead, businesses should focus on marketing activities that get people talking about their product or service.

With a regular advertisements, you only benefit from the people who see your ad. Thus, if 1,000 people walk by and read an ad on the subway, for example, then 1,000 more people know that your business exists.

But with buzz marketing, every person who sees an ad or promotion tells other people about your business. Let’s say each person on average tells 5 other people. In this scenario, for each 1,000 people who see your ad, 5,000 people find out about your business because each person who saw the ad told 5 of their friends.

So how do you get to this next level? How do you get people talking about your business and not just learning about it themselves?

Enter the Six Buttons of Buzz Marketing

This is where Mark Hughes, author of Buzzmarketing, introduces the six buttons of buzz. By using these buttons, you can get people talking about your brand or business. Here’s what Mark Hughes has to say about it:

“Creating buzz sounds very tough. But it can be easy if you know which buttons to push. Time and time again, these six things push people’s buttons and start conversations.” Buzzmarketing, p. 29

So what are these six buttons of buzz? Here they are:

The taboo
The unusual
The outrageous
The hilarious
The remarkable
The secrets (both kept and revealed)

By learning how to use these buttons, you’ll be on your way to creating more buzz.

Applying Buzz Marketing Principles to Content Marketing

When it comes to content marketing, pushing these six buttons will get more people to talk about and share your content. If you’re interested in turbocharging your content marketing efforts, you first need to understand how each button works. Then, you need to know how to apply them. The following points will do both while also providing examples of content marketing that employs each of these buzz buttons.

1. The Taboo
How it works: Apparently, people like to talk about things that are taboo, i.e. ideas that are controversial and that they’re not supposed to talk about. The unfortunate implication with this point is that people like to talk about things like lies and bathroom humor. The example given in the book is related to parents of young children at a dinner party talking about doo-doo and diapers. It’s a taboo topic, and parents often can’t stay away from it.

How to apply: The point here is that when you talk about something you’re not supposed to talk about, you’ll likely get people’s attention. The easiest way to do this is to talk about something controversial. These types of topics get peoples’ attention and get them talking about your business. If you decide that this button is right for your business (and it’s not the right button for everyone), talking about taboo topics will definitely create buzz and excitement.

Example(s): The following two posts from Copyblogger are examples of taboo content-marketing topics – 21 Warning Signs Your Becoming a Social Media Snob and Are Social Media Experts Worthless? Both of them talk about social media in a controversial way, sparking a discussion that people want to read, share, and talk about.

2. The Unusual
How it works: Another button that can be pushed is the unusual button. Whenever you push this button, you stand out from the crowd because you’re doing something different than everyone else. Anything that is unusual will get people’s attention and get people talking about your product.

How to apply: For content marketing, you want to do something unusual, i.e. you want to do something unique. You don’t want to just do what everyone else is doing. If all of your competitors are writing blog posts, create some videos. If everyone is creating videos, do a series of videos with industry experts. Whatever you can do that is different from your competitors will cause you to stand out from the crowd. Remember, it’s ok to be unusual, and you’re always encouraged to be unique.

Example(s): This post is a good example of doing something unusual or unique. While everyone else is talking about 10 Ways to Get More Twitter Followers, this post stands out by applying the principles of buzz marketing to content marketing. Copyblogger also does a great job pushing this button by writing posts with fascinating and unique titles. Examples include: The Eminem Guide to Becoming a Writing and Marketing Machine and The Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words.

3. Outrageous
How it works: The next button to push is the outrageous button. If you do something outrageous, you’re sure to get people’s attention. In his book, Mark Hughes gives an example of paying to re-name a town Half.com as a marketing stunt for the launching of Half.com. It worked, the town changed its name, and news outlets couldn’t stop talking about Half.com, both the city and the website. It was so outrageous, people had to talk about it.

How to apply: In order to apply this button, you need to do so out of the ordinary, that it gets people’s attention. By doing something highly unusual or unconventional, you’ll get customers’ (and sometimes the media’s) attention.

Example(s): A great example of doing something outrageous is the Swagger Wagon video by Toyota. It’s so unusual to have a rap video about a mini-van that people shared the video to the tune of 10,594,000 views and counting. How’s that for turbocharged content marketing?

4. Hilarious
How it works: People can rarely pass up the opportunity to share something hilarious, and this is probably the number one type of content that goes viral. Whether it’s a funny skit from a comedian, or a video of someone doing something embarrassing, hilarious content spreads quickly.

How to apply: Even though it’s not easy for a lot of businesses to do, creating content that gets people to laugh can be a good way to spread your message. When people laugh about something, they want to share it with their friends, ultimately spreading the message about your business.

Example(s): Sometime last year, four professional golfers created a music video for Farmers Insurance. The video was so hilarious that it went viral with 4,682,259 views at the time this post was written. If this was a regular commercial, nobody would tell their friends about it. Instead, since it was a hilarious video of professional golfers, people couldn’t resist sharing it. Who reaped the benefit? Farmers Insurance did.

5. Remarkable
How it works: People like to share things that are remarkable. If content is average, then it’s not as likely to get shared. When it comes to creating content, taking the time to do something remarkable pays dividends.

How to apply: If you have some interesting statistics about your industry, instead of writing a blog post about it, take some time to create an infographic. Not only are infographics unique, but they’re also remarkable because they’re visually appealing and present statistics and facts in a helpful way. The extra effort to turn stats and facts into an infographic makes them remarkable and shareable. This can be applied to any kind of content. If you write a post in under an hour, it’s probably not remarkable. But if you take three hours to write and re-write a post, there’s a greater likelihood that it will stand out from the crowd of average content.

Example(s): Creating useful infographics like the ones on the KISSmetrics blog is one way to create something remarkable that stands out from the crowd. Another way is to write in-depth posts that are full of helpful content. Here are some examples: The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing and 38 Critical Books Every Blogger Needs to Read.

6. Secrets
How it works: People are always interested in secrets. They want to learn about them, and they want to talk about them. According to Buzzmarketing, people are interested in secrets that are kept and secrets that are revealed.

How to apply: One way to apply this principle is to give customers a behind-the-scenes look at your business. You can provide a view of your business that they wouldn’t normally see. Another way is to talk about a trade-secret that makes your product special.

Example(s): A great example of releasing secrets is the Justin Bieber Never Say Never video. Young girls who wanted see more from behind the scenes with Justin Beiber couldn’t wait to watch this movie and tell their friends about it. As far as keeping secrets, Coca-Cola does this with their secret formula for Coke. They create buzz about their product by playing up the fact that the recipe for Coke is a heavily-guarded secret.

Wrap Up

By following these buzz marketing principles and using the six buttons of buzz, there’s a good chance that you can start generating more attention from your content marketing efforts. Pay attention to the examples of how these buttons were used, and take some time to figure out how to apply the principles for your business. As a bonus, any time you can apply more than one of the principles, there’s an even better chance that your content will get shared.

What about you? Do you have any examples of content marketing that effectively uses buzz marketing principles? If yes, leave a comment and share your example below.

About the author: Joseph Putnam is a freelance copywriter and digital marketing consultant from Orange County. He helps businesses create effective content marketing strategies. He also writes highly shareable and compelling blog content. You can follow him on Twitter and keep up with him on Google+.

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Why Awesome Content Isn’t Enough for Successful Content Marketing

by Joseph Putnam on June 8, 2012

Great content marketing starts with awesome content.

In order to get a higher return on the content you’re spending time and money to produce, it’s important to take the time to generate awesome, shareable content. People share content that stands out, so if your articles, blog posts, white papers, videos, or whatever else are extremely helpful and remarkable, then they’re more likely to get shared and go viral. This increases the ROI for each piece of content that you produce.

With that said, great content is not enough for successful content marketing. A lot of people think that it is, but it’s not.

The reason for this is that great content often doesn’t get noticed and never gets recognized for the great content that it is. Let me explain.

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really fall? On the surface it’s a silly saying because, yes, of course it did fall, but it also makes the point that it doesn’t matter whether it fell or not if no one noticed and no one heard it.

In the same way, if you produce content online, even when it’s awesome, if no one knows that it exists, then there’s no way for people to know how awesome it is.

This may seem like common sense, but it’s a trap that a lot of businesses and a lot of content marketers fall into. They assume that if their content is good enough, visitors will flock to their site, but it’s simply not true. Instead, if they don’t actively promote their content, no matter how good it is, there’s a good chance that it will go unnoticed.

So when you write and produce content, whether it’s a blog post, a Youtube video, or a SlideShare presentation, the first step is to make sure that it’s awesome. Take some extra time to produce content that’s worth consuming and sharing.

But after you take this first step, don’t forget to also take the time to promote your content. Take the time to share it on your social media channels, and take the time to reach out to people who might benefit from consuming the content. Instead of assuming that what you’ve produced will get noticed due to how awesome it is, take the extra time to promote your content so you get more benefit from what you’ve painstakingly produced.

Here’s a final recap: first, create content that stands out from the crowd of mediocre articles, blog posts, Youtube videos, and SlideShare slides. Then, go one step further and promote the content in every possible way. The more you do this, the more attention you’ll draw to what you’ve produced, and the greater the likelihood that your content won’t become the next awesome blog post that no one ever finds out about. If you follow these two principles, your content marketing will be more successful, and the return on the time you invest will be significantly higher.

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Thought leaders publish research and trends as presentations

by Kit Seeborg on June 6, 2012

With the vast amounts of information and data available today, there is a constant stream of research conducted on almost any topic. Websites and blogs are regularly updated with competitive analysis, market research, and the results of scientific inquiry and academic study. But where do you go to find trend analysis and research summed up in one place, in a format that can be re-purposed and shared? Increasingly, thought leaders are using SlideShare as their destination for publishing research in the form of presentations.

Researchers and analysts recognize that uploading presentations to SlideShare:

builds a body of knowledge
establishes credibility as subject matter experts
creates an archive that demonstrates longevity in the subject

Viewers are hungry for well-informed trend analysis such as Internet Trends Report presented by Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers at the D: All Things Digital conference in New York City.

It’s clear from the number of views this presentation has received that the business community wants reports which share statistics, examples, trends and concerns about today’s business climate.

Market research – no more ivory tower
Businesses of any size can view, share and download information that until recently was only available to those who could afford the reports. In the new world of business, forward-thinking companies recognize that there is great value in sharing information.

Rogers Communications is a Canadian provider of wireless, cable TV, home phone, Internet, media and sports properties. Rogers recently commissioned a study on how connected Canadians are using the Internet now and how they want to use it in the future. Rogers published the complete study results on SlideShare.

Presentations compliment research reports
Here are some more examples of ways that researchers are publishing and sharing reports and analyses as presentations on SlideShare…

Altimeter Group is a research-based advisory firm whose business model includes sharing their research and analysis with the business community. Although the consultants at Altimeter publish information on the firm’s website and the consultants’ individual blogs, the central location for their reports is their SlideShare network.

Trendwatching delivers trends, insights and related hands-on innovations to over 160,000 business professionals in more than 180 countries. Each month Trendwatching shares its latest findings in a free Trend Briefing. The slide deck is uploaded to SlideShare, with links to more detail on the Trendwatching.com website.

MIT Sloan Management Review recently shared its survey questions and responses from the 2012 Social Business Global Executive Study and Research Project, conducted with Deloitte. Researchers surveyed more than 3,400 corporate leaders and conducted a series of in-depth interviews with experts and corporate practitioners to discover how social networking is transforming business. The slide deck includes the detailed questions and responses. And on the opening slide there’s a link to the in-depth report on the MIT.edu website.

Research for researchers
Michael Habib is a product manager and librarian who is passionate about creating intuitive user experiences that connect people with the information and experts they need. Michael shared his recent research in the presentation New Technologies: Empowering the Research community for Better Outcomes, examining digital trends and their effect on streamlining scholarly literature research.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project aims to be an authoritative source on the evolution of the internet through surveys that examine how Americans use the internet and how their activities affect their lives. The project generously shares its research which spans from the shift of Americans’ reading habits to a study on how young adults get news and information about their local communities.

More and more thought leaders are posting their analysis of trends as presentations on SlideShare. Even if the primary function of your company is not research, you can increase your reach and influence by sharing knowledge with presentations. Posting research on SlideShare increases the credibility of your company or organization and strengthens your brand. Research and analysis that is published on SlideShare creates an easily findable archive, a body of knowledge.

Expand your network by following presenters who are uploading and sharing content that interests you. When searching and browsing through SlideShare presentations, be sure to ‘favorite’ those that you want to return to. New uploads from people you follow will appear in your SlideShare newsfeed.

Are you using presentations to communicate and distribute research? Let us know in a comment below.

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Etsy: Sharing Their Experiences for the Greater Good – a SlideShare case study

by Guest Author on May 30, 2012

In an interview, Mike Brittain, Director of Engineering at Etsy, discusses how they use SlideShare to give back to the industry. By extending the life of the content they develop for discrete events through their SlideShare Network they can share what their engineering teams have done to help others learn and benefit from their experiences.

Etsy is the marketplace we make together. Etsy enables people anywhere to easily build and directly buy from independent, creative businesses, with 15 million members and 875,000 sellers in over 150 countries. In 2011, Etsy sellers grossed more than $525 million in sales. Over 40 million people visit the site each month. Etsy’s mission is to empower people to change the way the global economy works.

They are not only changing the way business is conducted, they are also changing the way development is done. On an average day, Etsy’s engineering team releases over 40 changes to their website.

“That pace is new for development,” Brittain explained. “We run very quickly, using a process referred to as Continuous Deployment. Every one of our engineers has access to deploy changes to our production website every day. This is what you typically see in small start-ups, but is less common in teams as large as ours, where we have over 100 engineers involved. We have been able to apply the Continuous Development process to a large team and continue to be successful at building new products for the Etsy marketplace.”

It’s why so many companies are interested in hearing from Etsy engineers. “A lot of our speaker content is focused on our engineering processes and tools,” described Brittain. “We share how we put it in place and try to be fairly instructive on how others may be able to operate their teams in a similar fashion.”

While some may consider these processes the “secret sauce” of a successful company and try to hold onto it for themselves, Etsy believes it is best to share. “It’s important that our industry grows,” said Brittain, “and it doesn’t really grow without sharing. We have an engineering culture that is interested in open source. We believe in contributing back, extending open source tools, and exchanging ideas for the greater good.”

To that end, a number of Etsy’s engineers have been speaking at conferences; once the talk is over, they frequently want to share the content with a larger audience, who may be able to benefit from it – this is where SlideShare steps in to help.

“The larger story often occurs after the talk has happened,” explained Brittain. “The ongoing reach we get from publishing these materials on SlideShare and sharing them through social media is a big plus. It helps us reach a much larger audience, keeping the conversation going after the conference or event, while also growing the brand of Etsy’s engineering culture.”

It’s the primary tool Etsy uses to distribute materials from presentations and conferences. They cite SlideShare’s simplicity as its greatest benefit. “It’s clean – it’s a really simple way to publish slides, from a variety of formats. It’s pretty straightforward,” described Brittain. Etsy can send users a single URL, with no need for any additional software, and share all the presentations and other content that best tell their engineering story. Plus, they can use SlideShare’s analytics to understand who is viewing their content and what they are most interested in seeing.

Through the SlideShare Network, Etsy also enables more than 20 of their engineers to post content directly to their own accounts, which is automatically syndicated to the Network at http://slideshare.net/etsy. This helps visitors discover the Etsy brand through its people and engage with the company in a much more personal way. As a result, using the Network, Etsy can build equity in their engineering brand, while their engineers strengthen their professional identity.

“Writing the content for the audiences we are talking to real-time and then sharing the content afterwards is a benefit we get because a site like SlideShare exists.” Brittain continued, “it’s also great for our recruiting efforts. We’ve had job candidates referring to slide decks that were published on SlideShare about Etsy’s culture and technology.

We have also had employees, who spoke at an event and then posted materials to SlideShare, see the number of presentation views and recognize that people outside of Etsy care about what they are talking about, which makes a difference in their outlook on speaking again. In addition, we have had folks solicit speakers from Etsy because they feel the content they found on SlideShare would be a benefit to the folks on their own engineering teams – it’s great marketing for our own technology and culture.”

Brittain summed up, “having our content in one place, on the SlideShare Network, is a benefit to us. The cumulative story of these engineering presentations is greater than that of each individual deck. We would definitely recommend people use it for sharing their content online.” With SlideShare, Etsy is able to share their knowledge with engineers everywhere. This helps Etsy not only bring heart to commerce, but also innovation to development, in their efforts to make the world more fair, sustainable, and fun.

Want a SlideShare Network for your organization? Contact the SlideShare enterprise sales team.

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5 Easy Content Ideas for Effective Content Marketing

by Joseph Putnam on May 24, 2012

Content marketing is all about getting more attention from customers.

Instead of interrupting them with ads, the goal is to provide free content in exchange for attention. This creates a positive interaction where customers receive something of value for free, and it makes them more receptive to future offerings and pitches.

In short, content marketing is an awesome way to capture customers’ attention and create more awareness and interest for your brand.

But how do you do it? What are the easiest types of content to create in order to gain attention and interest from customers? To help, this post covers five easy ideas for effective content marketing.

Content Idea #1: Blog Posts

One of the primary tools for a content marketing strategy that works is a blog that provides value to potential customers. Businesses like Copyblogger, KISSmetrics, and Crazy Egg all use popular blogs to gain more customers.

So how do they do it?

First, they write content that provides value to their customers. They write about topics that get attention from the people who will buy their products, and they teach lessons from their industry that benefit the people who will buy what they sell.

With the KISSmetrics blog as an example, they write blog posts that provide internet marketing advice for their audience. This attracts people who are interested in internet marketing, which is exactly the target market that KISSmetrics wants to attract to their website. Each new blog post becomes another opportunity to create awareness and interest for their products.

When it comes to this kind of strategy, there’s a common mistake that can be made: some businesses make the mistake of writing for industry peers. Instead of writing for their customers, they write posts to impress peers within their industry. This is a bad idea because the whole point of blog posts as content marketing is to attract more customers to the company’s website.

Instead of writing for industry peers, businesses should write their for their customers. This creates value, attracts attention, and draws traffic from the people who ultimately will purchase products. It’s important to remember that customers are the ones who will eventually pay the business’s bills.

Always remember, in order to use a blog effectively for content marketing, you need to do two things: first, write blog posts that provide value to customers, and second, write for your customers. This is a sure-fire formula for blog post content marketing success.

Content Idea #2: Video Tutorials

Another type of content you can create are video tutorials. Videos are a great way to connect with customers, and tutorial videos provide value to a business’s target customers. This type of content works better for some businesses than others, but it can work for almost anyone.

Let’s consider an example.

A fishing lure company traditionally would rely on advertisements to gain attention from customers, but if they wanted to do something different, they could give content marketing a try. In this scenario, tutorial videos are a great place to start.

Tutorial videos are great for a fishing lure company because every fisherman wants to get better at their craft. Every fisherman wants to catch more (and bigger) fish, but not every fisherman knows how.

Instead of coming up with another ad, a lure company could come up with a series of tutorial videos for Youtube. These videos would teach fishermen not only how to become better at fishing, but also how to use the company’s lures more effectively. Instead of paying for an ad that gets customers’ attention, the company provides value to the customer in exchange for attention. Eventually, when the customer goes to the store to buy more lures, who do you think they’re going to buy from? There’s a good chance they’ll buy lures from the company that spent time teaching them how to become better at fishing.

Tutorial videos can be used in this way by many different companies. It just comes down to being creative and learning how to apply this effectively to each individual business.

Idea #3: E-mail Newsletters

Another way to provide content for customers is through e-mail newsletters. With an e-mail newsletter, instead of providing content through a blog, businesses give customers a way to sign up for a pre-written e-mail newsletter that gets sent out through an autoresponder.

In this format, each new customer receives the same information whenever they’re ready for it. The content can be a 5 part, 10 part, or 20 part series of e-mails, and each e-mail provides value for the customer.

One of the great things about e-mail newsletters is that they provide useful content to customers over an extended period of time, and they begins every visitor at the same starting point. Instead of jumping into a blog in the middle of a content cycle, every visitor can start with beginner content at the beginning of the newsletter series.

Also, instead of only hearing from you whenever you write a blog post, customers are sent a pre-determined number of e-mails that have been written ahead of time. This is great for businesses who may not be able to maintain a blog but would still like to keep up with customers over an extended period of time. If you’re not able to maintain a blog, a 20 part e-mail series sent once per week for 20 weeks is a great way to stay in touch with customers and keep them around until they’re ready to buy.

Idea #4: Free Reports

Free reports are another way to effectively use content marketing. With this type of content, instead of providing content over a period of time, a valuable free report is offered as a one-time download in exchange for the customer’s contact information.

Even though you aren’t able to keep in touch with customers for weeks or months on end, free reports are useful because they’re excellent for getting contact information from customers and they provide incredible value. Customers happily exchange contact information for a free report that’s helpful to them.

So how do you do this effectively?

First, write a report that’s super valuable for customers. Figure out what problems they have and what difficulties they face. With an internet marketing company as an example, write a free report on how to more effectively use Facebook for marketing. This is something that 99% of customers will be interested in.

Next, after coming up with the content idea and writing a super helpful report, offer the report on your website in exchange for contact information. Provide a sign up form where customers give their e-mail address in exchange for the free report.

It’s important to note here that you want to provide something really valuable to customers so that they will not only read it but they’ll also be interested in hearing from you. If the free report ends up being lame, they aren’t going to feel very confident in the other services or goods you are hoping to provide. So make sure to write a report that’s useful, easy to read, and incredibly helpful.

Idea #5: SlideShare Presentations

For those who don’t know how to write blog posts, don’t know how to create tutorial videos, but do know how to create Powerpoint presentations, SlideShare provides a great content marketing platform.

With SlideShare, anyone who can create a Powerpoint presentation can upload a presentation that shows off their knowledge and expertise. Each presentation can be uploaded and shared with thousands of viewers in a visually-appealing format.

In fact, instead of just using your Powerpoint for your latest presentation, you can upload it to SlideShare and get more mileage for any presentation you give. Once you sign up and upload your first presentation, you can share the link with anyone at any time. You can share it with potential customers, you can share it on Facebook, and you can share it on Twitter. Each person who views the presentation will be more impressed with your expertise and will potentially become more interested in your service or product.

So again, instead of creating content in a format you are unfamiliar with or filing away your latest presentation, give SlideShare a try, and learn how to extend the valuable information from your slides.

Conclusion

No matter what content marketing idea you decide to pursue, if you do it properly by providing value to potential customers, and then you do a good job of promoting the content, you can create an incredible amount of awareness and interest for your business. Not only so, but unlike with advertisements where you have to pay for each additional view (think Google ads where you pay per click), every content marketing piece becomes an asset in your balance book. You don’t have to keep paying for more and more ads, you can simply continue directing people to your free content, creating unlimited mileage from your content marketing efforts.

If you’re thinking about getting started with content marketing, consider which of these five ideas is right for you, and then take some time to get started. There’s a good chance you’ll be happy with the results.

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What Exactly is Content Marketing and How Does It Benefit Your Business?

by Joseph Putnam on May 10, 2012

Editor’s note: With this post, we begin a series of articles about content marketing by guest author Joseph Putnam. Please share your thoughts in a comment below – we appreciate your feedback.

Content marketing is a relatively new marketing concept where businesses trade content that customers want in exchange for attention.

Traditionally, businesses only used advertising to attract customers’ attention and to market their products and services, but now, with the widely available distribution methods of the internet, businesses can now provide content in exchange for attention.

So what exactly is content marketing, and how can it benefit your business?

A Review of Traditional Advertising
In order to provide a contrast with content marketing, let’s first do a review of traditional advertising.

With traditional methods, advertisements are used to gain attention from customers. In order to get the word out about their products and services, businesses use advertisements to attract attention to their business.

But the problem with traditional advertising is that it interrupts customers. It interrupts them as they’re watching their favorite show, and it interrupts them as they’re walking down the street or driving their car. These interruptions often don’t create the best interactions for brands. Instead of helping customers, businesses interrupt one of their favorite activities.

Not only do ads interrupt customers, but they also rely on brief moments of time to capture attention and deliver a message that will hopefully lead to a sale. Billboards have only a few seconds to convey an important message to customers before they zoom by, and television commercials hope to capture customers’ attention before they decide to leave and heat up dinner during a commercial break.

Regardless, commercials must take advantage of a brief moment in time to convey an important message for businesses. Good advertising is both an art and a science where businesses do their best to maximize the brief amount of attention they receive from customers.

Last but not least, traditional ads are expensive. Billboards, print ads, and commercials cost a lot of money, and even Google advertisements add up as businesses pay per click for people to visit their site.

So what should businesses do? Is there an alternative? Is there another way to get attention from customers besides traditional advertising?

The answer is yes, and it’s called content marketing.

An Introduction to Content Marketing
Content marketing provides an excellent alternative to traditional advertising.

With content marketing, instead of interrupting customers, businesses provide content that their customers want or need, in exchange for their attention.

This content can be in the form of blog posts, e-mail newsletters, Youtube videos, SlideShare presentations, or something else. No matter what the format, the point of content marketing is to provide content that customers want, in exchange for attention, and this is what separates content marketing from traditional advertising.

As mentioned above, traditional ads rely on interrupting customers to capture attention for a brief amount of time. With content marketing, businesses can capture customers’ attention for as long as the customer is willing to use the content. If a blog post is super helpful, they may save it and come back to read it later. Instead of glancing at an ad and then moving on, customers may spend five minutes reading a post, and they may come back later that year to read it again. Each time they interact with the content, it becomes a positive interaction with the business.

Not only is it a positive interaction, but there’s also a high return on investment (ROI) with content marketing. With an ad such as a Google ad, businesses pay each time a visitor comes to their site. Each click becomes an expense on the balance sheet. With content such as a blog post, businesses invest time or money to produce the content, but each additional view is divided from the time or money they paid to produce the post. If a post goes viral and gets shared 2,000 times over the course of a year, businesses only pay the original amount to publish the post, and each visitor after that becomes less and less expensive, compared with costing per click.

In addition, content takes advantage of social sharing to create free advertising. People don’t share Google ads or billboards with their friends, but they do share blog posts and Youtube videos. In short, people share content, not advertisements, so content marketing takes advantage of people’s digital social networks and the social sharing phenomena of the internet.

Recap
To review, content marketing is the act of creating content in the form of blog posts, presentations, free reports, Youtube videos, etc., and offering this content to customers for free in exchange for attention. The benefit of this type of content is that it creates:

A positive brand interaction with customers by giving them something they want or need for free.
Content that people want to consume and spend time reading and watching, compared with content that only grabs attention for brief periods of time.
Content that people not only consume but also share with their digital social networks, creating even more attention for businesses.
An asset on the balance sheet in the form of content that attracts customers’ attention over a long period of time.

Even with all of these benefits, it doesn’t mean that companies will never need to do any traditional advertising. As always, every business needs the right marketing mix to generate more attention, but producing content adds one more component to this mix. And not only does it add another component, but it also decreases businesses’ dependence on traditional ads. Instead of only using something like Google ads to create awareness, businesses can spend less on advertisements and invest in producing content as a way to become less dependent on expensive traditional advertisement.

So if you’re business is looking for ways to create more awareness without breaking the bank, content creation is the way to go. Spend some time to learn more about content marketing, and before long, you’ll know how to use blog posts, e-mail newsletters, free reports, Youtube videos, and SlideShare reports that will provide your business with long-term, attention-generating content. This content will take some time or money to produce in the beginning, but in the end, it will become an attention-generating asset on your balance sheet.

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