Within the online world, businesses who are using content marketing are way more successful than those who aren’t. Why are they doing better? Because they are giving away useful information and sharing messages with their audience.

But should your business be using content marketing? Can you get away without having a content strategy for your business? Let’s discuss what sort of businesses should be using it.

A website without content cannot be optimised for SEO. It wouldn’t be found by search engines and nobody would visit it to buy your stuff. But does your business really need it?

Your business should use content marketing if you:

• Have a business website
• Rely on search engines to get traffic to your website, not ads
• Need to sell products or services
• Want to build your brand awareness
• Need a loyal fan base of clients or customers
• Are keen to invest in a long-term marketing strategy
• Don’t need instant results as content marketing takes time
• Want to build your authority or thought leadership
• Need to encourage your audience to act
• Are looking for an affordable marketing option
• Want to create a cohesive brand appearance
• Must have excellent website SEO
• Want to be able to measure how successful specific marketing attempts are
• Want to maximise your ROI

Once you’ve made the call to focus on content as a part of your marketing, you need a plan! Called your content marketing strategy, this is the actions you are going to take to get to your goal. It needs to include:

• Why you are creating the content
• A plan for creating your content
• Who the specific audience that you are creating the content is
• Your brand story
• Where you are going to tell your story

One final thing to remember when using content marketing is that it needs reviewing often. Things change and what worked for your company one year, may not another. Or your brand’s story, goals or mission may change. It’s a good idea to review your content strategy at least every six months.