What Is Content Marketing?

At its core, content marketing is the creation and sharing of information that is both relevant to your business and seen as valuable by your businesses' target audience. There are many different content marketing tactics available . The critical difference between this form of marketing and traditional marketing is that content marketing indirectly stimulates interest in your company, brand or products as opposed to explicitly promoting a particular product or service. People have been bombarded by ads for so many years that they instinctively mute them, fast forward through them or skip them depending on which medium they are watching the ad.Take YouTube as just one example to clearly see the difference between content marketing and traditional marketing. You've just finished typing in a search for a video on a topic that you really want to learn about. The first thing that happens, typically, is that an ad comes on and starts playing right before your video. If you're like most people, you click that “skip ad” button as soon as you're able to.That ad that comes on is a perfect example of traditional advertising, while the video that you are trying to watch is a perfect example of content marketing. The video you searched for has information that you perceive as valuable and want to watch. It was made by a smart content marketer who will get you as a subscriber to their channel and eventually get you to buy products or services that are related to their channel's subject matter from them. This is in contrast to going for the “hard sell” from the outset, which is that ad that you couldn't skip fast enough.You probably ask yourself: How should I start with content marketing and especially how content marketing can grow your business? Don't worry, I'm going to give you some answers below.