At its simplest, content marketing is creating content that relates to your brand/products and putting it on your website. That might be a guide to buying the perfect jeans, or how to install a dishwasher; it might be an opinion on an article on the solar technology of the future; or just really great product page copy.

Every piece of content you create should do at least one of these things (and usually all of them):

1)         Be something people will read and want to share

2)         Reflect your brand well

3)         Help sell the products by removing barriers to conversion

4)         Appeal to your target customers

What is content?

It can be infographics, guest blogging, videos, photos, pdfs, blog, FAQs, buying guides and customer reviews.

Most businesses have more content than they realise, so brainstorm with key people in the business to see what content you already have, and start to create a list of what could/should be created. Speak to the owner, buyers, marketing, customer services, merchandising, website team etc.

The chances are that from the brainstorm there won't be a vast number of stories; that's because people are simplifying it. Each story that's on the brainstorm can create several items of content.

For example:

Initial idea - photo shoot for summer season stories

• Footage of the shoot
• Competition about the shoot - location, models, style it, win the clothes used
• Guess the location
• General excitement piece
• What the models think of the range

Content

• Video of the shoot
• Backstage photos from the shoot
• Out-takes from the shoot
• Competitions on/for Facebook, Twitter, magazine, bloggers, stylists
• Interview with team prepping it
• Interview with models afterwards - on audio, video and written

Now you have an idea of the sort of content you are going to be creating, you need to decide what formats, and which platforms, you are going to be using.

For example, if you are also going to be creating video, audio, images, presentations etc, then to get the most from that you want to be putting it on popular websites as well as your own.

Now you should have a long list of story ideas, and a list of where you are going to be placing that content. So you're ready to get creating and publishing live. Don't think that you need to be able to do all of this in-house. There are great copy-writing services out there that will quickly learn your tone of voice and pull together your blog posts and other content for you. It's well worth investigating this.