Content marketing involves creating and sharing online material that does not explicitly promote your brand but stimulates interest in your products or services. Content marketing can take many forms, such as videos, blogs, infographics, and social media posts.

Having the right online content aligned with your target market can play a crucial role in getting you on Google’s first page to capture more traffic and sales. Even small investments in carefully crafted content and keywords can drive better ROI from scarce marketing funds. In general, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads.

The digital marketing landscape is complex and has many dimensions; it's a bewildering place where many brands spend time and money trying to navigate effectively. 

Digital marketing is defined as using the internet, mobile devices, social media, search engines, display advertising, and other channels to reach consumers. As a result, there is a tendency to view digital marketing by categories (social media marketing), channels (email), or platforms (Instagram).  

Parsing digital marketing into categories, channels, and platforms make it easier to set tactical goals. But the drawback is that it may be hard to intuitively interconnect each dimension of digital marketing in a cohesive and self-supporting way. 

When you adopt the perspective of content marketing, you can align your marketing efforts around a specific goal and set of objectives, which you work towards by creating and sharing particular material.

The emphasis on creation and distributing content is important; it lets you categorize content into owned media, earned media, and paid media. This distinction allows you to grasp what is being said, by whom, and if there's message alignment. Examples of each would include:

Owned media is your website or email list. 

Earned media is press coverage or organic user-generated content (UGC), which spotlights your brand.

Paid media is using influencers to advertise your content on social media.

The inherent focus on content lets brands use the essential content marketing building blocks to construct a path to their goal and makes it easier to determine what channels and platforms a brand relies on and to what extent.

Great content is a versatile building block: pieces can be combined into something larger or broken down into something smaller. To build great content marketing, you need pieces of different shapes and sizes. 

Blogs, infographics, videos, email newsletters, and podcasts are the five foundational building blocks of content marketing. 

Blogs, or articles, are the universal building blocks of web content. Blogs usually have authors, social sharing features, and comments. Topics covered may be timely or evergreen, which determines their longevity. 

Infographics are visual assets; they are easy to embed, easy to scan and easy to share. Infographics are tactical tools to boost traffic and acquire links.

Video stands alone as the most powerful and compelling content format; it’s power is in conversion. Video should be used to show expertise, build trust, and tell stories. 

Email newsletters are outbound content, and they should always link to blog posts. Contacting people by email requires more trust, enticement and careful handling. An emailed newsletter’s longevity can be days; they live longer than a social post but less than a blog.

Podcasts are content distilled into audio form. Typically they are more powerful than purely textual content but less powerful than video. 

Yes, I do digital and content marketing for companies, not in the tea industry. Because I focus on maximizing the value I create for my clients, I tend to position myself mainly for tea companies. 

However, I have and continue to work for companies outside of the tea industry. I have written blog content for IT companies, agencies, and software companies. 

My passion for tea, paired with my subject matter expertise, allows me to offer my clients a distinct advantage. Agencies charge more than I do, and while they may have people on their team who know about content marketing, it’s rare for them to have someone on staff who is deeply knowledgeable about both content marketing and tea. Knowing both enables me to add better value to tea companies.

For prospective clients looking for my writing portfolio, check out The Tea Tribe.