Quality content boosts your personal brand
Content marketing is a powerful tool for brands to establish trust that can generate leads for future sales. We live in an age where providing information is a huge aspect in the success of a brand. Thus, creating useful and helpful content for users is the best way for brands to engage and influence others to become their loyal advocates. The cliché phrase “content is king” is always true. A website or a blog with great content is bound to thrive and succeed even with limited social media promotion or search engine optimization. Otherwise, your marketing campaign will be rendered useless if you don’t provide great content.
Content marketing has many things to offer in your online campaign. As with content marketing for companies, it’s also important for one’s personal branding strategy.
Here are the reasons why:
1. It lets you showcase your expertise. You can use content to establish your authority in a specific industry. People are always on the lookout for information that can address their concerns. Creating blogs or websites about your industry or your brand brings people closer to you. As you share your knowledge with others, you position yourself as an expert whom people can turn to for answers. As such, it is important to publish well-written and researched content that is better than your competitors. Otherwise, it will not generate more buzz for your brand and it will drift away along with the numerous content found on the Internet.
2. It is an avenue to connect with others. Connecting with others is an essential aspect of personal branding. Content marketing helps you create and nurture relationships with others. One way to connect is through blog comments. You provide insights and feedback to others’ blog posts the same way they can comment or leave feedback about the content you provide. It is a great avenue to interact and exchange ideas which helps in educating you more about your industry and build relationships with others.
3. It is a great way to learn. Even if you are already an expert in your industry, there is still a lot more to learn. Content marketing widens your knowledge about your industry and even about other topics. It also helps you to keep abreast with the latest trends in your industry which you can use in creating fresh content. Remember that content must be relevant and applicable at any given time.
Everyone has a unique frame of reference that provides them a vantage point they alone can see. [tweet this]
4. It makes you trustworthy. Trust is a very important thing for personal brands. People choose products or services that they trust. Even if you provide the most accurate, well-researched content, people will still not buy your brand if they don’t think that you’re trustworthy. As such, content marketing is a great way to establish trust. Create content on a consistent basis and continue to interact with people. In effect, they will regard you as someone who is helpful, knowledgeable, and reliable whom they can turn to in case they need something within your expertise.
5. It is a great way to show that you are there for customers. Sharing something that you are passionate about exudes in all channels that you use. Even if you are not blatantly saying that you are passionate about something, the way you express it (through infographics, videos, articles) will speak for itself. In effect, people who have concerns about a topic within your industry will see you as someone whom they can admire and reach out to.
6. It is powerful tool to increase your visibility and awareness about your brand. Creating great content is essential if you want it to be shared across social media channels. Content marketing provides a perfect opportunity for your brand to reach out an audience that you haven’t reached yet. Furthermore, you will get more targeted visits from search engines when you provide more content. In effect, your content can help users share about your brand and this will affect your brand reputation in the long run.
Personal branding is the tool to let people know who you are and what you can do to help them. In order to do so, integrating content marketing in your strategy is a must. In designing your content marketing strategy, take into consideration not only the information that you share but also how it will create an impact on your targeted audience. When you create great, helpful, and high-quality content, you are establishing your personal brand.
Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks “work” and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops – taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy.