Ask the Vetrepreneur: How content marketing builds your business

Q: What is content marketing?
A: Content marketing is another opportunity for you as a small business owner to educate your customers and fans about your business, regardless of whether you deliver a product or a service. Your lead purpose is to attract and keep customers by providing some sort of value. Content marketing comes in many forms, including blogs, weekly columns, videos, quizzes, infographics and more.
It’s also a form of brand journalism that helps you build awareness outside traditional media outlets, and a way to communicate with prospects and customers without pitching or selling your product directly. By providing useful, educational, clever or entertaining content, you’re giving your fans another reason to appreciate your brand and share it with their friends, co-workers and families.
Q: How do I start?
A: The key is to choose a medium that best suits your brand and provides the best opportunity to reach your customers. Start by asking yourself, “What are my goals?” Do you want to raise awareness about your brand? Convert an audience to paying customers? Think about content creation and curation as a series of tests to help you determine what works and what doesn’t for your business.
A great place to start as you explore options is the Content Marketing Institute. It has a lot of great how-to’s and educational tools. I’m also a strong advocate of observing what other businesses are doing – whether they’re in the same industry or not. Their content can be a starting point as you begin to think about what you want to create. Find the things that inspire you, and take it from there.

Mark Rockefeller is an entrepreneur, attorney and veteran. He is the co-founder and CEO of StreetShares, an online marketplace where investors compete to provide shares of commercial loans to small businesses.
Follow Rockefeller on Twitter @markrockefeller or StreetShares @StreetShares
Have a question? Send it to him at questions@streetshares.com.