Is content marketing the best way to grow a business online?  

Yes, it’s the BEST WAY!

Writing contents and distributing across the web is the best and most powerful weapon to reach your target audience, build responsive leads and generate staggering return on investments quickly.

Recently, Elance; an online job board for freelancers and job seekers conducted a research to determine the focus of small, mid-sized and multinational corporations in web marketing.

The Elance Global Online Employment Report for Q1 (first quarter) shows that content marketing is the key point.

In fact, the numbers have continued to climb up since then. I think this is great and good news for content writers.

Whatever business model you’re involved in, you need rich and quality contents to get results. Google and other search engines feed on fresh contents. Good contents are link-baits and magnets social traffic, for real!

The following three categories of people and companies are desperately looking for quality contents that can engage audience: Marketing, IT, and creative. According to Elance, in the first quarter (Q1) of 2011, here are the changes that are still going on:

In the creative (+32%) category, we have the artists, artisans, and organizations that create one form of product, service and the other. They need:

Web Design Development (+101%)

Creativity is the search for new ideas and ways of doing the same thing better. Research now shows that +101% of those who are creative (you and me) are looking for websites, and after a website, content marketing becomes the next in-line.

Creative people and organizations are looking for website designers and developers. As their businesses grow, getting online and reaching out to the right audience can be made possible with either a blog or a website. And both are powered by contents.

And don’t forget, a website needs contents – graphics wouldn’t cut in as much. So, as web designers and developers focus on the beautifying the pages, web contents would be outsourced to creative writers.

Yes, creative people look for creative designers and writers to handle their projects. If you’re a freelance writer, now is the best time to position yourself to profit and build your freelance business quickly.

And when the website is up and running it’ll need fresh, keyword-rich and people-optimized contents to rank well on search engines.

Any business that doesn’t consider Google as a viable source for generating leads; sales and web influence is making a big mistake.

Are you creative in any form? You need exclusive contents to grow your business.

You might decide to get a website first, which is good but, a website cannot yield profits if the right people are not reading it. You need quality, exclusive, helpful and valuable contents to entice the buyers.

Video Production (+68%)

This is amazing!

From the first quarter of 2011 till date, the demand for video production is at the increase.

I’m not really surprised at the rise of video marketing, because it’s the noise flying around. You can use a short video clip to convey a strong message about your product or service. A short video that you can upload to Youtube can transform your online business. Really!

Bloggers have been advised to complement ordinary contents like: articles, posts and press releases with video.

But you know what? Even at the increase of video production online, content marketing will never die.

Content marketing on the order hand is actually the platform at which videos rest. Without an ‘intro’ with contents, videos would be a waste of time and money.

Let me also remind you that video clips are a form of content. When we refer to content, we’re not just referring to articles, blog posts, press releases and reviews; we also meant podcasts, videos, webinars etc. They’re all contents delivered in their respective mediums.

Now that online entrepreneurs are shooting their first videos online, articles, blog posts and reviews that can house or inhabit these videos will increase as well.

You can’t promote a video without an article or written words. What bloggers usually do is to embed videos in the article body.

It shows that videos alone cannot produce results for you. Take the bold step today to create your first video if you haven’t and then focus on its distribution with content marketing.

Content Writing (+56%) 

Content writing is also at the increase from Q1 of 2011 through 2012.

Content writing deals with writing articles, press releases, review, commenting, ratings and so forth. It doesn’t cover marketing.

It shows that the people who are looking for contents in this category have platforms for distributing the articles, already.

They’ve the capability, tools, resources and creativity to market the content. All they want from you is to write, and they will do the rest.

The people who fall into this category are SEO companies, Social media marketers, social media examiners, freelance writers, copywriters, email marketers, content curators, authors, journalists and so forth.

The aforementioned creative people are good with words. They can write if truly they give time to it. So, why should they outsource writing gigs, since they can write?

It’s obvious, they don’t have time, zeal or the inclination to write at the moment.

They prefer to connect, build relationship with creative people, so that sharing and marketing their contents wouldn’t be a hassle.

So, they outsource to save time – and the more they save time, the more profit they generate.

Don’t Sit and Watch

Don’t sit at the fence and watch your competitors grab the bulk of your target audience. Step into content marketing today with open arms and begin to profit today.

From this post, you’ve seen the direction of content marketing and the high demand for quality and exceptional web contents.

If you’re yet to start leveraging on Google, via search engine optimization and blogging, now is the right time. You can make your small business a big one if you focus on content marketing. It’s 100% free, evergreen and produces results.

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Image Credit: imrcorp | ehow