Post by account_disabled on Feb 27, 2024 0:58:02 GMT -6
The web is full of questions about online marketing and digital professions, and content marketing is no exception , a strategy widely used abroad, which in Italy is viewed, in part, with skepticism. In fact, to date, there is still some confusion about what it is, concretely, but above all about what advantages it brings to companies. If it is true that company blogs, YouTube videos and e-books attract the curiosity of many, it is equally true that not everyone is able to grasp the potential of these marketing "tools" and understand what their return on investment is and how is generated. By reviewing some of the questions that have been asked to me since I started dealing with content marketing , I will try to explain what it is , and why more and more companies decide to invest in this type of strategy. When was content marketing born? Many identify the birth of content marketing with the creation of The Furrow , a magazine first published in 1895 by John Deere , a manufacturer of agricultural machinery.
The idea had a surprising outcome even for its creator: in a short time, The Furrow Panama mobile number list became a point of reference for farmers looking for advice on cultivation techniques, use and maintenance of machinery, and it still is today, so much so that it is printed in fourteen languages and read by 2 million people around the world. To be picky, however, this is not the first example in the history of content marketing: more than 100 years earlier, in 1732, a guy named Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richard's Almanac for the first time , an annual almanac - precisely – full of aphorisms, poems, astronomical information, and idioms that became common in American speech. What is surprising today, almost 300 years later, is that behind the enormous success of this editorial product there was a commercial intent that was very little evident, and therefore more effective: if Franklin's apparent objective was to entertain his contemporaries with an entertaining calendar, in fact, the real one was to promote his activity as a publisher through the almanac. And he did it by feeding his readers (potential customers) the contents they loved.
There are plenty of historical examples, but I won't be so cruel as to keep you here to retrace all the chronological stages of content marketing. If the topic interests you, have fun reading this nice infographic. Infographic history of content marketing Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com What is content marketing? I begin my "explanation" by recycling the (perfect and unimprovable) definition on the Content Marketing Institute website , according to which content marketing is " a strategic marketing approach focused on the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and coherent content to attract and retain a defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action .” A few words which are already enough for us to understand how the contents we are talking about are very distant from the classic frontal presentation of the leading company in the sector , which sounds and sings itself about the quality of its goods and services. In fact, a strategy of this type involves the creation of content that is not self-referential, but rather useful to the reader - potential customer. Let's see which ones.
The idea had a surprising outcome even for its creator: in a short time, The Furrow Panama mobile number list became a point of reference for farmers looking for advice on cultivation techniques, use and maintenance of machinery, and it still is today, so much so that it is printed in fourteen languages and read by 2 million people around the world. To be picky, however, this is not the first example in the history of content marketing: more than 100 years earlier, in 1732, a guy named Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richard's Almanac for the first time , an annual almanac - precisely – full of aphorisms, poems, astronomical information, and idioms that became common in American speech. What is surprising today, almost 300 years later, is that behind the enormous success of this editorial product there was a commercial intent that was very little evident, and therefore more effective: if Franklin's apparent objective was to entertain his contemporaries with an entertaining calendar, in fact, the real one was to promote his activity as a publisher through the almanac. And he did it by feeding his readers (potential customers) the contents they loved.
There are plenty of historical examples, but I won't be so cruel as to keep you here to retrace all the chronological stages of content marketing. If the topic interests you, have fun reading this nice infographic. Infographic history of content marketing Source: contentmarketinginstitute.com What is content marketing? I begin my "explanation" by recycling the (perfect and unimprovable) definition on the Content Marketing Institute website , according to which content marketing is " a strategic marketing approach focused on the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and coherent content to attract and retain a defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action .” A few words which are already enough for us to understand how the contents we are talking about are very distant from the classic frontal presentation of the leading company in the sector , which sounds and sings itself about the quality of its goods and services. In fact, a strategy of this type involves the creation of content that is not self-referential, but rather useful to the reader - potential customer. Let's see which ones.