Good Content Marketing Builds Trust

by | Dec 8, 2013 | Articles, Content Marketing

By Maximilian Schönherr (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsDecember 12, 2014: Businesses have been cranking out sales literature, brochures, handouts, white papers, and case studies for years, but this kind of sales-oriented “marketing collateral” works poorly online, and is only tangentially related to the modern discipline we call “content marketing.”

Study after study demonstrates that searchers prefer organic links over paid links. Those seeking authoritative information on companies and products prefer neutral 3rd party SWOT assessments to one-sided white papers generated by the business. This online audience is looking for content that can be trusted, and this quest is aligned with and reinforced by the bias of search engines toward “trusted, link-worthy content.”

Unfortunately, too many businesses owners make the mistake of believing they can simply repurpose sales-oriented content, shovel it online, and expect people (and search engines) to trust it and consider it “relevant.” To excel at content marketing, you must think of content in a totally different way.

Think Like a Publisher
The best newspaper and magazine publishers have always understood that the trust built between publisher and reader constitutes a nearly sacred bond. This bond may take years to build, can be shattered in a moment, but if maintained provides a foundation strong enough to build an empire. A good publisher will run an article because it’s a good article, not because it will necessarily boost circulation for that issue. Content in this context is generated not to generate a sale, but because it serves some larger purpose – to inform, to address an issue, and to tell the truth. In today’s data-driven, instant-ROI-obsessed world of online marketing, such a viewpoint might seem quaint. But this is exactly the mindset you must be in if you are going to generate high-quality content that is shared, linked to, referred to, and respected online.

Regard Content Marketing as an Investment, Not a Cost
It’s natural for business owners to focus exclusively on instantaneous ROI, quarterly projections, stock prices, and other short-term success metrics, but this obsession must be tempered and balanced by a longer-term view, because neither Rome — nor any successful online brand –was built in a day. If you are championing your business’ content marketing efforts, you must be prepared to defend your budget internally against those deriding your department as a “cost center that’s never made a sale.” You must understand that your department is not there to make sales, it’s there to build trust, loyalty, and enhance lifetime value, and these values may not be immediately quantifiable.

Use Trustworthy Content To Build Relationships
What you are doing is using content to build an enduring network of connections and relationships, and building this network requires an investment that will not likely be recouped in a few months. Without metrics and attribution models to justify your efforts, your battle against the short-term thinkers and number-crunching data geeks may be lonely and at times hopeless. But if you understand what you are doing, think like a publisher make your case, and never doubt the fact that that your content is a valuable asset whose value  – in the form of sales, profitability, and market share — will realize itself in time, you cannot fail.

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