
Why you should share to promote your business
Content marketer: “Sharing your knowledge is vitally important. You need to tell people what you know.”
Business owner: “What?! You want me to tell everyone everything I know.. and put in on the internet? Are you crazy?”
… This is the reaction of many, many people. But in reality sharing your knowledge builds trust and shows you as an authority. People will like you and trust you and when it comes to selling, that is very powerful.
Authors have been sharing their knowledge for years. Remember all those car manuals and books that taught you how to do just about every job you can think of on your car? Did all the mechanics and garages go out of business? No! Why? Because people soon realised that it wasn’t quite so easy… or they just didn’t have the time… or they didn’t want to get their hands dirty.
Believe it or not the same applies to your business. You probably think that telling people how to do “x” means they will go off and do it themselves. It is unlikely that they will actually will. Many people like to understand how something is done but would rather have someone else do it. However, understanding how it is done, gives them a sense of well-being and comfort. They are less likely to feel that they are being ripped off or taken for a ride if they understand how something is done and they will appreciate more the time it takes to complete the job/task.
Some people may try to do “x” themselves, but they will probably contact you when they mess up, or it doesn’t quite turn out how they expected. The thing is you’ve been doing what you do for years, you know all the little quirks and shortcuts to get it just right. You’re the expert!
You don’t need to share every last detail, but being open and upfront is very powerful. By sharing your knowledge you immediately become the expert in their eyes. Sharing your know-how through written content such as articles and blog posts is a great way of doing this. If you can get on camera and share your knowledge through video even better.
So what is “content”?
Content can be:
- Whitepapers
- Reports
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Slide shows
- Powerpoints or Slideshares
- Templates
- Stories
- Blog posts
- Lists
- anything that you have created really!
Content can take many forms and could involve you::
- Answering common questions in your niche
- Creating a blog and establishing yourself as an authority
- Doing something that is unique/different/original
- Creating content that is useful/helpful to the community
- Publishing original research
- Creating lists of helpful resources
- Filming videos
- Publishing how to guides and tutorials
Going Viral
When you create great content that really helps people, they will share it and this in turn create buzz around you and your business. Sometimes your content may even go viral and get shared many times over. It is important therefore that you don’t waste the opportunity to promote yourself and your business. Whatever content you create, ensure that you include a call to action… e.g. call me on 01227 360922 for more, or email if you prefer.
Sharing great content online will encourage visitors to keep coming back for more. Also, the search engines love new and unique blog content and information. They also like to see a web site distributing content regularly, that is why blogs are great way of distributing content.
When people share your great content online it create a link back to your web site, a backlink. In general the more backlinks to your site the better.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a fairly new phrase. This Google Trends chart shows the upward trend of the term “content marketing”:
Content marketing is about creating and sharing content that is specific for your target market. It is about identifying your ideal customer and working out the questions and problems they have, and then creating content to answer the questions and solve the problems. By creating such content and sharing it online, you will attract your ideal customer to you. Imagine that! Rather than you contacting your prospect or potential customer, they contact you! Cold calling is dead.
Sharing your knowledge is very powerful.
It builds your brand, establishes you as an expert, builds trust and attracts customers.
It’s important to share your knowledge in a structured and strategic manner. A strategic content marketing plan will describe in detail your ideal customer, include customer personas and plan out relevant content to attract those customers. Having a calendar of scheduled of content distribution will help plan out your content marketing over the next year. Do you need help in creating customer personas and your strategic marketing plan – contact me.
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