epic-content-marketing

<blockquote>Your customers don't care about you, your products, or your services.  They care about themselves.</blockquote>The stage is now set for the value of content marketing, which is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling.  The essence of this strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.

Content marketing is a long-term strategy to attract, convert and retain customers.  The six principles of epic content marketing are as follows:

~ Fill a need
~ Be consistent
~ Be human
~ Have a point of view
~ Avoid "sales speak"

The best example of epic content marketing offered was <strong><a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170829005320/en/Charmin%C2%AE-Introduces-New-and-Improved-SitOrSquat-Restroom-Finder-App" target="_blank">Charmin's SitOrSquat</a></strong> crowd-sourced mobile application that tells where the cleanest bathrooms are closest to your location.

A few of the book's more thoughtful takeaways:

~ On what topic can you be the leading informational expert in the world?
~ Don't bury testimonials on a separate "Testimonials" web page; spread them throughout the website.
~ Don't wait for big news; find reasons to send releases all the time.

A few opportunities for improvement:

~ This book started off as a series of blog posts and it read like it.
~ A company would need a small army of content creators to accomplish the large scale scope suggested.
~ The four-page Chief Content Officer job description is hilariously "epic."

<strong>Epic Content Marketing</strong> offers much useful content and many practical suggestions.  A few additional recommended books in this same general content marketing theme include <strong><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/337075227">Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/782020844">Contagious: Why Things Catch On</a>.</strong>

Access Gene Babon's reviews of books on <strong>Business Leadership</strong> and <strong>Business Strategy</strong> at <strong><a href="https://www.pinterest.com/webapprentices/" target="_blank">Pinterest</a>.</strong>