Content marketing is all about long-term cumulative effects of adding a single new blog post to your website, or updating your Google+ Local page, or sharing the latest custom design photo to Facebook and Twitter. Everything you publish to the Internet is part of your business' "content marketing."
I realize that the daily duties of a jeweler include talking to customers, repairing jewelry, flipping through catalog for findings, bookkeeping, and worrying if you will still be in business one year from now. While you are handling daily duties you also should be working to build your business a every day. This is where long term content marketing comes into play. And, this is exactly where the Internet is truly a business owner's new bestfriend.
Content marketing allows you to:
• Grow your business with lower long-term costs
• Find new customers every day
• Make your name appear everywhere
To make this work, you need to feed the Internet daily. People searching online expect to find the latest information: the latest news, the latest movie times, and the latest products available on Amazon.com. No one would read a news website if it were not updated daily. No one would visit Amazon.com if it didn't have a current inventory of products.
All popular websites started slowly; even Amazon started out small. They attracted a small audience, which motivated the owners to continually add new products to attract even more people. Amazon built a massive product database that's updated daily.
A lot of daily human labor goes into maintaining Amazon's website to make it what it is. They are the model that many people follow. It starts with feeding content into your website often.
Content includes:
• The words you have on your home page
• The blog entry about a couple that bought a ring from you
• The photos you have on your staff page
• The customer reviews about you on Yelp
• Your website product catalog
You need to get as much information about your store online as possible, and you need to keep it updated often. More is better, and it's more likely your business will appear in the search results.
Google doesn't want you to build your website overnight. They penalize people who try too hard, too fast. You have to grow your online identity naturally, just like a child that needs to eat healthy if they are to grow up strong over 18 years.
Would you feed the child the same exact food every day? Not likely since that leads to health and growth issues. It's the same situation with your online identity; you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again. You need to do things a little different each time.
It doesn't matter how much money you have, or who you are willing to pay; there's no way to force a child to grow up overnight. Likewise, you can't pay to have overnight online success. Your business will grow over time as long as you keep feeding your website a balanced diet.
Think of the proverb "it takes a village to raise a child" and what it means. Similarly, it takes many different people, including employees, programmers, designers, photographers, writers, customers, and even you to raise a website. Paying each one of these people is part of the long term investment of feeding your website. You won't see a direct return of increased sales, but there is a cumulative effect that can be seen over time.
Content creation is the key to long-term success and there's really nothing too difficult about it other than commitment.
