In the past month, thanks to the ever-wonderful Twitter, I have had the opportunity to follow both the Mima Summit and Blog World 2009. The Mima Summit, is an impressive Minnesota-based interactive conference that attracts attendees from all over the U.S. and boasts great keynote speakers. Blog World, I am less familiar with, but judging by the top names attending, I know that it is an equally important conference in the world of online marketing.

What I noticed as I followed the Twitter din, was that there was an awful lot of speak about “content marketing”. As an SEO I like anything with the term “content” in it, but content marketing takes things further. More and more people working on their websites, understand that content is important, but the world of social media has made things a little more interesting. Now, great content can earn you search engine traffic but it can also have a major viral effect if your content makes it out into the right social platforms.

So, content marketing, among other things refers to releasing and positioning your content in such a way that it finds itself in the hands of the right people, at the right time. Whether you work in the retail, B2B or industrial marketplace, your content could use some marketing.

The type of content that does well with extra thought and planning are things like:

• Press Releases
• Articles
• Guides
• White Papers
• Videos
• Lists

These types of content can really make an impact if they are easy to Tweet, post and re-blog. So how do you do this? Make sure your content has short sections or paragraphs. Make sure it has a flashy title and make sure it is short enough so the reader can glean the main points and take them to their own sphere and share.

As for the timing – timing can be everything. Releasing a link to your content on Friday night is not smart, for obvious reasons. Aim for a Tuesday or Wednesday morning, when people have their bearings, and are deep into their workweek. They will be likely to repost your content all over the web.

So if you have content, remember that content deserves some marketing just like your products and services.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 3:43 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.