Why Blogging is the most powerful form of content marketing

Why blog posts and articles is still the most powerful form of content marketing

The way SEO has been evolved and changed overtime, same is the case with content. However, SEO is much younger than the content itself. But the Content and Content Marketing has its roots back in 1700’s. Content Marketing in its actual form started first in 1731 to promote Benjamin Franklin’s printing business by publishing a magazine.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE WORDS, WHETHER THEY ARE PRESENTED IN TEXT, VOICE, IMAGE, INFO-GRAPHIC OR VIDEO.

Let me just cover the brief history of content marketing which could give you some insights how content marketing has evolved over-time and what is the most powerful element in content marketing.

Since, the content marketing has started it has one thing in common, “The words” You heard that right, “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE WORDS, WHETHER THEY ARE PRESENTED IN TEXT, IMAGE, INFO-GRAPHICS OR VIDEOS” words are the core service and the other are add-ons to it.

LET’S START WITH THE HISTORY:

1732: Benjamin Franklin started publishing in order to promote printing business.

1801: Librairie Galignani started content strategies to promote book store like; featuring articles of authors, publishing own newspaper, opening reading room, creating original books.

1861: American Bee journal was launched which is still being published today.

1867: The locomotive magazine was started.

1882: Edison electric lighting company bulletin was published to spread the word on benefits of using electric lighting.

1900: Michelin guide was developed to help the drivers to maintain their cars.

1904: JELL-O company published first recipe book which increased their sales by $1 million in two years.

1930: P&G started producing radio content in partnership with Oxydol.

1968: Weight watchers magazine was launched.

2001: The term “content marketing” was first used by Penton Custom Media.

2004: STIR magazine was launched by Sherwin Williams for interior designers and architects.

2006: The first YouTube video series “Will It Blend” was published by Blendtec which received 235 million views.

2007: American Express launches open forum.

2008: Handbook of content marketing “Get content get customers” released.

2013: Red bull media released 20 mini movies.

2014: LEGO movie was released in content marketing effort.

2015: First documentary film about content marketing was published “The story of content: rise of the new marketing”.

And there are much more development in the recent era….the list goes on…..

 

WHAT IS COMMON IN CONTENT MARKETING?

As I have mentioned above there is one thing common in content marketing since 1730’s till today and that is “Words” without words or text there is nothing in content marketing.

Now let’s focus on how words have been transformed into various content marketing forms;

VIDEOS:

Videos are becoming the most popular form of content marketing these days, what changed the form of content from text to video? Its technology, rise of integrated media technology, Web, multimedia and mobile technology has penetrated sharply into the global audience. People are now just a touch away from videos around the world.

Just watch this video as an example of marvelous Video content:

 

Words still have immense power, I would rather say, “Only the words have power” but it has to be revealed through different presentation techniques, video is just one of them.

INFORGRAPHIC:

Info graphic is another popular form of content marketing, the purpose of info-graphic is to present data, stats and marketing messages in a visual content. It could make a long story short with remarkably graphicised presentation.

Let’s have a look at an info-graphic published on backlinko, how it represents content in it.

 

If this information is presented in an article it might be long and boring for some viewers, but this info-graphic cuts the long story short with clear message which can be grasped in just few minutes.

In the above examples you must have acknowledged the power of words which has been displayed in different formats.

Now move on to the next phase of discussion;

THEN HOW PUBLISHING ARTICLES AND BLOG POSTS IS STILL THE MOST POWERFUL FORM:

Nevertheless, videos, info-graphics, images are getting extremely important for content marketing yet these things are incomplete without written text. Even to promote a video you may need to write a small blog post, similarly to promote info-graphic you may need to write things in detail that are presented in.

 

WHAT ARTICLE OR BLOG POST REQUIRES:

An article or blog post requires none of the above things, you can simply write a blog post with headings and sub-headings. However, videos, images and info-graphic make a blog post standout.

So why people are doing much more to make videos and info-graphics rather they can simply post articles

Despite the fact that videos, images and info-graphics takes more time, energy, money and effort to produce but still organizations and websites actively produce this type of content. The reason for this is the audience.

There are top 4 reasons why the videos and info-graphics are produced:

• Audience is everywhere on the web
• They have different learning styles
• People have different liking and disliking
• Not everyone reads

BUT THAT’S ALL ABOUT THE AUDIENCE PREFERENCE AND TARGETING

Let’s figure out what Google prefers;

Below you will see a search term “Tips to maximize sales” all you get in the search results are the blog posts and articles.

 

Let’s try some other search term such as “fix the mobile battery drain issue”

This search term should have a practical demonstration in other words, it should contain some videos in the search results but all you get is the written content.

 

There are many other terms which have videos associated with them in search results, but it is observed that mostly the articles and blog posts appear on the first page of Google. This means Google still gives much importance to the articles in search results.

So the point is, articles take much less effort as compared to videos and info-graphics and with that less effort if you are able to make it to the first page of search results, then article posting becomes the most powerful tool in content marketing.

You just have to figure out which topics require which format and which is best suited for search results as well as the targeted audience.