How to Develop Content – Where

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There are people that will tell you that good content is good content, no matter what you’re using it for. Successful content marketers know that is not the case. Content is only as good as the medium which is used to distribute it.

A Facebook post is not a tweet, is not a blog post, is not an article, etc. To successfully build great content, you must first know where you intend to share said content.

If you’re writing for your website, you might use a longer form, writing an article in detail. A blog post might be a little shorter and more to the point. It might use bullets and lists to help people take in the information more quickly.

The content gets even shorter and more creative if you’re posting directly to Facebook or Twitter. Images work best for Pinterest and Instagram, so you will have to say what you want to say with an image and short caption. And if it’s video views you’re after, then you can look to Youtube or Facebook.

It’s also important to know that the same piece of content can be broken up in a variety of different ways and used across a number of different channels. For example, you might write a long-form article for your website. Then you might add a short video to it and post it to Facebook or Youtube. And you might find one key quote to use from it on Twitter. And you might have an image or infographic that outlines the key points and post it to Pinterest.

The key is not to try to force the content you’ve already created onto the distribution channel, but to customize each bit of content so that it’s made for wherever you plan to post it.

Free Marketing Ideas Part 18 – Write Articles

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Welcome to the latest edition of my new weekly blog series, “Free Marketing Ideas”. Each week I will identify and explain a simple marketing idea that you can employ at low or no cost. Last week’s topic was Free Advertising Offers.

This Week’s Topic = Write Articles

Writing articles does not sound like a marketing plan to anyone. But it fits nicely into our free marketing ideas blog series. And that is because it is both free and effective.

When you write an article on a subject related to your business, you are engaging in content marketing. You can submit that article to free article posting sites like ehow, ezinearticles, Technorati, etc. Or you can post the article on your own website and share it across the various social networks that you use, such as Twitter and Facebook. You can even submit it to bloggers as a guest blog.

Here is what publishing an article does for you. First, any inbound links from that article (or to that article if it is posted on your own site) will help your SEO. It will help people find you when they are looking for you. Second, it will help identify you or your company as an expert on a given topic. This adds credibility to your brand that you cannot get through advertising.

When you make writing articles a regular part of your marketing, you are growing your brand’s reach. And all it takes is the time to write the articles. If you don’t have the time, hire a writer and pay per article. Of course this makes it less of a “free” marketing idea, but it is still an inexpensive way to boost your SEO and build your brand online.

The power of the internet and social media is that anyone with something to say has a way to say it. And your brand has something to say. So say it.

Share your thoughts on this idea, and other free marketing ideas in the comments section below and keep the conversation going!