I call myself “the marketer who doesn’t like advertising.” Advertising is intrusive, and no longer necessary. Content marketing existed even before the internet, but the internet makes it easier to do business and make money merely by making it easier for people to find the goods and services they are looking for.

The content marketer has various tools in her arsenal: including social networking, link-building, social media, optimizing content for search engine visibility, and of course, the relatively old-school tools, email and websites. The savvy online marketer today uses these tools for what’s increasingly called inbound marketing: a less disruptive, more organic and arguably more ethical form of marketing.

But what is sometimes overlooked by modern marketers getting distracted by all the shiny new tools is the content itself. While it is true that there is more noise than there ever was and it is becoming increasingly difficult to get one’s message heard, the value of good content hasn’t — and will never — dissipitate.

So really, here’s your basic guide to content marketing: Continue reading →