Today we're going to be breaking down the history of content marketing. We actually have some really cool, fun, interesting stats for you that'll help you make your content better, and of course, get more traffic, which is the goal in the long run.
So, where content marketing really started, and started to take off is in 1895. John Deere published a magazine "Furrow" which was an architectural magazine, or agricultural magazine, sorry about that. And each issue reach millions of customers in just a few decades, making it a pioneer in content marketing.
Now this next example is one of my favorites, and this is the Michelin Star. You know how you go to restaurants, there's Michelin's Stars one, two, three, and over the years, it's brands like Michelin that created this in the early 1990s or 1900s, sorry, and that was because they wanted more people driving around in cars.
And here's another interesting concept, soap operas. And the reason they're called soap operas is because a lot of these dramas were sponsored by soap companies and they air during the day, and it was a partnership between radio and television programming, and they created a lot of these soap operas.
And then you have digital marketing that enters the digital age because of Google, YouTube, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, and the list goes on and on. People are now creating content in different forms, like video, audio, and it's helped really spearhead things and now everyone's consuming content even on devices like Alexa or Google Home.
So whatever type of content you decide that you want to go with, and choose whether it's a blog post, or a video, or a course, or eBook, or a Forum, it doesn't matter. There's some things that you need to do if you fundamentally want to succeed.
It first starts off by understanding your target audience. If you don't understand your customer's needs, what they want, their problems, how do you write to them? How do you end up creating content that sells and helps them, so then that way they have that loyalty towards you? By understanding your target audience and what they're looking for, you can better serve them and that'll help you generate sales in the long run.
And once you find your ideal audience, you also want to analyze their behavior. What do they do on a daily basis, where do they spend their time? This is important because if you know that they spend all their time on Facebook, would you want to promote your content on Snapchat when they spend it on Facebook? Of course not, you rather focus promoting your content for wherever they spend their time. And the same goes, you know, it could be the opposite of situation.
And if you're not sure where to get started, a simple way is looking at your competition. If your competition is doing something well, and you know they're being successful, then starting by looking at their strategy is an easy way to figure out where to start. And I like doing this by finding valuable keywords.
So the first step is to go to Ubersuggest. And when you go to Ubersuggest, type in any keyword related to your field and click on the keyword ideas report on the left-hand navigation. Ideally you want to find keywords that are 40 or under when it comes to SEO difficulty, because those are easier to rank for.
So the more estimated visits they have from Google, the more backlinks they have, and the more social shares, the more traction that content has gained, which means the more popular it is. And when you're going through it, just make sure you're picking blog posts that are good, high in quality, and consider going out there and creating better versions of that content because that'll get you traffic.
Now, if you pick the right keywords, your content will be more successful, get more traffic, and you'll generate more sales. If you don't well, you won't do well. So I want you to refine your keyword list. When you refine your keywords, think about which ones have good profit margins, the higher the CPC, typically the more value, and the more money that is going to make you if you rank for it. I also like taking my keywords, group them together, and create content on the same topics.
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