How to Make Money on Content Marketing

Content marketing has been universally recognized as a low cost, and effective method of product and services positioning in the marketplace. It has become a particularly well-suited priority marketing strategy for small and micro businesses. To a great degree, the small players are not disadvantaged, because many of them have acquired or contracted the expertise to generate high-quality content, direct visitors to other marketing messages on their site, and skillfully link to other sites. This creates a massive win/win cycle, which can benefit even the smallest contributors of content. Thousands of articles, podcasts and videos are produced and posted every single day by people like yourself.

Google's Adsense algorithms can automatically search and match the most suitably associated content for their advertisers and provides advertising income for both Google and the submitted content. Everyone can participate in this income stream. Google's AI-driven algorithms, can pick through the maze of content on the internet and pick out the most appropriate fit from a keyword search perspective. Content marketing's ultimate objective is to create as much organic traffic as possible through strategic keyword use and positioning. This leads to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and matched with an appropriate social media strategy, can result in Social Media Optimization (SMO). These are the key drivers in successful content marketing.

Content platforms have become the favorite intermediaries for posting content because of the sheer number of their overall users that can reach into the many millions. By accepting content from individual websites, they provide a certain trust and authenticity for the site. This increases the level of domain authority and page authority and acts as a digital bookmark for smart search engine algorithms.

Search engines are programmed to find the best content and relevance to provide the most suitable, instantaneous fit for any specific internet inquiry, and they keep upgrading their algorithms to fulfill this objective. There are a number of factors involved in achieving content relevance. If you're hoping to get a site listed in the top-10 search engine ranking for a particular product or service, the content must be totally relevant to it. Also, any links on the site should enhance the visitors' information on the topic.

Many websites often generate volumes of low-quality content. But quantity vs quality is readily identified by the new algorithms connected to machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is a very wasteful and misleading practice, which does not achieve the intended goal of search engine optimization. The search engines' algorithms recognize junk and discard it.

There is a need for every content provider to clearly define the connection of their content to the other marketing messages on their websites and blogs. This has to be very clear to loyal and potential new visitors. It all starts with an appropriate title. If this appears to be off-theme then it will not be clicked on and followed. Generating more traffic and sales conversions is ultimately defeated by disconnected titles and off-message content.

In 2006 Google purchased YouTube and turned it into one of the most potent promotional vehicles in human history. Using a recent example: in 2015 Adele's song “Hello” received 50 million views in just forty-eight hours, which resulted in the sales of more than 3 million copies of her album in the first week after the YouTube appearance.

All of these landmarks were historical firsts.

Your content may not have the same name and brand recognition as Adele, but the beauty of YouTube is that it is free for anyone who can produce a video. This offers immense opportunities for those who can muster together interesting content and match it with a high standard of production. It is not always the big advertising agencies that score big on YouTube. Many homemade entries have had great success. However, it does help to have a good working knowledge of the factors that drive up viewing numbers and sales conversions.

Content marketing using videos is certainly not a brand-new marketing concept. Video marketing has a long history of success, but the YouTube platform has given it huge global exposure, and followers that number in the billions. This creates opportunities of market reach and potential volume that far exceeds anything we have seen in the past. For the new millennials generation, YouTube has become the go-to medium for information and entertainment. Knowing how to utilize the power of YouTube has become, without question, a much-utilized strategy for marketing a dizzying array of products and services.

To find YouTube success it is essential to learn more about how the world wide web functions, and what it takes to design and position your videos so that they can find the widest audience. It certainly is more demanding than simply producing a video with a smartphone or camera without prior planning and some knowledge of proper production techniques. Dreams of instant website traffic have to be matched with certain required skills and understanding of what works and what doesn't. There are certain guidelines that can be readily adopted to turn your video into a successful vehicle to promote your products and services.

The millisecond clock - With so much content to compete against, your first objective is to make your video stand out, and instantly motivate people to allocate some time to it. Clicking on video choices, and deciding whether they are worth watching is made in a matter of milliseconds. Your content has to make an immediate impression or it will be clicked out of view.

YouTube is search engine driven - Your video is subjected to the same search engine process as any website or blog, and is driven by keyword ranking. YouTube is owned by Google and they have devised the same type of algorithms to control ranking. In order to become visible your video must climb to the top of the ranking to have any commercial value or impact. Search engine optimization holds true for videos just as much as it does for your websites, blog posts, or online advertisements.

The “wow” factor - Develop a video clip that will produce an immediate “wow” reaction. This is accomplished by using unique and appealing backgrounds and foregrounds, exciting animation, memorable characters, captivating audio, and humor, where appropriate. Put yourself in the place of the viewer and preview the video objectively to make sure that your viewers can really be instantly impressed before they click away from the video. The idea is to generate a fun and entertaining video that will directly or indirectly get attention for your business.

Avoid the commercial look – Nobody wants to watch content that obviously looks like a commercial and openly flogs products or services. This is anathema for just about any demographic. Videos should provide interesting information or entertainment that appeals to the targeted visitors. References to products and services have to be subtle and subliminal, more background than foreground. Association to good causes like ecology and social concerns is a much better way to position the content.

Trial and error - All content shoud be submitted to a trial-and-error process to define which presentation has the greatest effect on the audience. One way of doing this on YouTube is to alter the various inputs, and obtain feedback from viewer statistics, recorded by YouTube, on what works for you. Use this process to fine tune the targeting of visitors that best fit your content.

Keywords are the key – Provide a title for the video that utilizes the important keywords that are featured on your website. Controlling keywords is the path to search engine optimization. It starts with the title of the video, so choose carefully. Utilize the precise words you use on your web site and blogs. Repeat these keywords in the body of the video and audio. This will ensure that algorithms, which drive the search engines will readily locate your particular video.

YouTube is a source of free promotion – Once you sign in to YouTube you will not be charged any fees to upload or download videos. They make their money on advertising content. But the biggest reason for using it as a priority medium is the sheer power of overwhelming traffic that it potentially can bring. Billions of videos are viewed every month. Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded every day. No other media can claim this kind of volume. Just getting the attention of a small percentage of these viewers can make a huge difference to commercial success.

Video content boosts sales – The number of internet users continues to accelerate globally at an astonishing rate. The concept that a picture is worth a thousand word is particularly true for videos. Tied to a platform like YouTube, or others, it has a very lucrative potential for just about anything that fulfils a certain need. Because the audience is so broad based just about any creative content can find a niche. With a little chutzpah you too can be a content producer.