We have heard that content is king. This is true but it should be stated this way: the effective creative strategy and distribution of content is king. Content alone won’t improve your marketing efforts and sales results.

Another part of content marketing is that effectively communicating the value of your business, brand, or offering, happens best when you think along the lines of storytelling. All communications and touchpoints are telling and selling in their own way. The challenge and opportunity is to take control of this so you are telling the story you know needs to be told about your offering. In this way you are effectively communicating the value of your business.

This is Content Marketing:

• Building awareness and positioning yourself as the expert in your space by creating a great blog, social posts, company videos, whitepapers, and other content mediums.
• Becoming top of mind with your audience through the right use of advertising mediums (think paid, earned, and owned).
• Increasing your SEO ranking (and ultimately your sales) because of the quantity, quality, and engagement of your content.

This is where you need to play right now in marketing your business. Andrew Wilson, contributor to Business 2 Community said: “In the words of Marcus Sheridan, author of the marketing and business blog The Sales Lion, ‘Content marketing is the weapon Davids use to slay Goliaths every day.’” This is awesome for small and medium businesses, but it also raises that flag for large corporations.

Not long ago a great website was key, and then we added display ads and SEO. After that, email marketing became an important addition. Now, it’s making sure your audience knows and trusts you as quickly as possible through these 3 bullet points being executed well. If you are lagging in content strategy you will be lagging in effectively communicating the value of your business. This leads to a lack of trust, at the very least, for those who are curious but not completely sold on doing business with your company.

Content is STILL king when executed well. Don’t rely on old methods without at least supplementing with a content strategy.