[MUSIC] In the last lesson, I discussed three elements that your content needs to have or be able to do. One, move your audience. Two, earn your audience's attention. And three, it has to have a spark. The other side to all this spark and passion is that good effective content marketing does usually rely on some proven structures, having spark doesn't mean that you win. There are structures that have been shown to work better because they make your ideas easier to perceive, easier to understand and easier for the audience to share. For this session, is just a light overview. So I'm just going to leave you with a nutshell structure for effective content. Don't worry, we're going to dig a lot deeper into this in later sessions. We also have supplemental materials for you that are going to help you with anything you might need to really hone your skills as a marketer. For right now, I'm just going to outline the nutshell structure for you. The first thing that good effect of content marketing normally will have is a headline that instantly commands attention. This is actually one of the most important things you can do for your content. Because of human nature and more to the point because of the things that distract ability and information overwhelmed have done to our nature. You have to used that headline to capture the attention in a fraction of a second. We will talked more about that. And then, of course, after the headline, that first little bit of the content, the first few sentences need to pull the audience in. You need to hook the audience with a story, some humor, some fascinating fact. Something has to pull their attention in so that they engage. Most effective content also has useful information that solves a problem the audience cares about. If you think about the kind of content you read in magazines, you will be very close to the mark. It's the kind of thing people read, again, or watch or listen to, because they're interested in the subject and they want to know more about it. Effective content also will normally have a single focused point. If you will, it's a moral to the story that the content is trying to teach. Now, this might get to a specific objection to the purchase, it might be a motivation to purchase, it might be a belief the need to adapt before they can move forward as a customer. But there's something that every piece of content is trying to teach the audience. So they can move forward down the path to purchase. Most effective content marketing uses proven writing technique like stories. Metaphors, making things specific, concrete detail, and those could take the form of case studies or examples that illustrate a point. And the final thing that effective content marketing will tend to have is a very clear specific call to action that explains to the audience simple how to take the next step. Don't assume that the next step is going to be obvious for your audience. As a marketer, it's your responsibility to make sure that there is a well-crafted call to action in that content, that spells out what you want that person in the audience to do next to, again, continue down the path to purchase. So that's just my very high level overview of what content marketing is. It's not just something interesting to read on the web. It's not for example the kind of content you would see on the site like buzz feed. The people will read to pass a few minutes on a break, it can resemble that content but it has a different function. The function of content marketing is to pave the path to a purchase for an interested prospect, an interested lead. It can also be intended to pave the path to an additional purchase for an existing customer. Or to a referral from an existing customer. Or to sharing the content with the person who might become the eventually customer. Let's all that paving the path to a sale in a way that is just as interesting and compiling, and readable and sharable as their popular content on side like Buzz Feed. So that's our overview of what content marketing is. Up next, I'm going to do a very quick session for you just to explain how the course works, what you can expect. Then, we're going to talk quickly about who you are as a professional and how you're going to use this course to start marketing yourself as a content professional. And the way that the assignments in this course can help you do that. And then, we'll dive right into the nitty-gritty a content strategy, which is of course what you're here for. So that's it for today. Thank you so much for your time and attention. My name is Sonia Simone and I'm the Chief Content Officer of Copyblogger Media. Thanks so much.
