Content Marketing vs. Inbound vs. SEO

I’ve shared with lots of friends and business connections that this year is about the number 40. The big 4-0. OK, I don’t actually think it’s that big, because when you turn this number, double this number now looks large. Am I right?

Regardless, I’m at 40 and have embraced the number, that is, for lists and today I’m bringing you 40 things about content marketing.

I’m just as passionate about this list of 40 content marketing items as I am about my other groups of 40 because I live and breathe the items that make up this list each day. In our world of creating crazy-good content by telling crazy-good stories, I can’t help but put my heart into each and every thing. It’s also a list that showcases how content marketing has evolved, because based on some of the conversations I’ve had, most of the business world is missing the golden opportunities content marketing brings to your client services, sales team, marketing team, prospects, clients and anyone else that finds themselves engaged by your content. See how that works? Let’s get this list started (as Matt Kiefer likes to say)…

1. Content marketing is about telling a story
2. Your story, the real one
3. Not some lame story that you made up to sound good but that has no meaning and lacks depth
4. Which means good content marketing, the crazy-good kind we bring, takes time and talent
5. It means we use this content to look at SEO
6. And it means it’s NOT SEO
7. Because most of the way people think about SEO is actually dead
8. There, I said it – SEO of 12 months ago is actually, seriously, chalk it up dead
9. If you’re thinking you need SEO today, you actually want to be talking about content
10. Content that’s relevant, filled with some of the characteristics of telling a good story and helps your audience find themselves in your work
11. It’s played out on various channels, like your blog, for starters, which isn’t dead
12. And social channels, like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
13. Like visual channels like Flickr, Instagram, YouTube and SlideShare
14. And digital channels like iTunes, Google Play and Kindles
15. It’s playful
16. It’s serious
17. It’s 100% your stuff
18. This doesn’t mean you don’t think about keywords and phrases, even those long tail ones, that make sense for your product or services
19. It just means you evolve with the way that’s relevant for what you want to see in your results today
20. And it also means it works with Inbound marketing
21. Oh yeah, I used the “I” word
22. Inbound marketing cannot exist without content marketing, they need to act like BFFs
23. Because if you want inbound, i.e. leads, then you need to have content that someone wants
24. Which brings us to what does your audience want?
25. What they want typically has absolutely nothing to do with what you want to sell them
26.  You have to go bigger and better and deeper than that
27. What’s the one thing your audience really needs? Really?!
28. No, really
29. Now give them that
30. Give them that in one big, in depth, valuable way
31. Through all those (and maybe more) channels I mentioned above
32. And stay right there in those few select channels
33. With that very select audience
34. And your very focused content
35. And you’ll start to find that zen place
36. That feels right, acts right and brings you that engagement you’ve been searching for
37. And your audience has been searching for
38. Because it’s real
39. And you made it available to them
40. And your content marketing worked

Inspiration for this type of list came from the Communimatrix. Check her out.