Every week I work with clients to produce high quality content for their online properties. It’s not easy consistently producing content that accomplishes business objectives via thought leadership rather than overt promotion.
When done well, a content marketing strategy can deliver most of the benefits of a traditional PR campaign. These include brand awareness, closer connection to influencers in your niche and placed stories. I wrote about this in more detail last year.
There’s no better validation of quality content than when a trade magazine asks to reprint your story. Last week a trade magazine republished a client blog post, increasing the reach and credibility of my client’s position on an important industry issue. Rather than us pitching them to write about us, they repeat our story verbatim.
That’s the kind of role reversal quality content marketing creates. Placing stories in the media is never the end objective of my engagements — that remains integrating with and supporting the client’s sales process. But it’s satisfying validation that we’re putting out quality stuff.