Gone are the days when hard-sell advertising actually worked, as modern consumers have become extremely skilled at tuning out advertising. Rather than convincing people to do something, content marketing is all about educating people to help them find the solutions that they want and need – if your business just happens to offer those solutions, everybody wins! Here is a brief look at what it's all about.

Tell us who you are

Modern consumers want to know about the people behind the businesses that they support, so make it clear that you have nothing to hide. Share your company story on your website, reveal a little about your personal history through your social media profiles and don't miss a chance to talk about those amazing staff members of yours. Put your name and even your photo with any articles or updates you post, online or off, as this will help make it easier to relate to your business. If you sell physical products, include a QR code on the tag and link it to more information about who made the product, when and where.

Quality matters

No longer will keyword stuffing and backlinks lead to online visibility – nowadays, if you want to be visible online, high quality content is essential. Start by offering thoughtful opinions and expert advice, and don't be afraid to give away a few gems for free as this is a great way to build trust and generate interest. Make sure that any images you include are high resolution and that your written content is grammatically correct, relevant and up-to-date – if you aren't much of a writer yourself, hire a professional.

Keep up the flow

Effective content marketing requires that you consistently have something new to offer – ideally you should be updating your online presence at least a couple of times each week. Add blog articles, upload new photos or share some sort of news relating your business. If you can't keep up a steady flow of quality content, hire a content creator to take care of it for you.

Engage

Your content should be aimed at engaging people and building relationships. The best way to do so is to focus on being informative rather than selling things. Get to know your target audience and ensure that your content is relevant, useful and easy to share, and post it at the time of day when your target audience are most likely to see it. Hold fun competitions with decent prizes, reward feedback, create interesting, funny or educational Youtube Videos and always be responsive.

Looks matter

Avoid posting text-heavy content, because not only is it unattractive, but it is less likely to be read and shared. Start by breaking up your content into short sentences and bullet points, because a good dose of white space will help make your pages easier to scan. You will also need plenty of imagery if you hope to capture attention, after all, 90% of information transmitted by your brain is visual. While high quality images are essential, avoid getting carried away with your imagery as you won't want to overwhelm people.

Nowadays, content marketing is a vital part of any effective business marketing strategy. For best results, think of it less as advertising and more as building a relationship.

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Written by Jo Sabin on Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Jo Sabin is Head of Designer Community at DesignCrowd. She's led the company's public relations and social media programs since 2012. With more than ten years' experience working with Australian and international tech startups in the creative industries, Jo has been instrumental in meeting DesignCrowd's objectives in Australia and abroad. Get in touch via Twitter.