What is the difference between content strategy and content marketing?

As more and more real estate agents are becoming familiar with content marketing and its benefits; a new term is creeping up and this post aims at shedding light on both and why they both complement each other.

This other term is content strategy. Although, it is easy to confuse both of them, they’re different. Content strategy is all-inclusive while content marketing refers to a single part of an overall content strategy.

What is Content Strategy?

According to Wikipedia, content strategy is defined as: “the planning, development, and management of content – written or in other media.”

What this means is that content strategy is your business’s blueprint that lays out exactly how you expect content to impact your business.

Content Strategy answers the following questions:

• Why, where and how should the content be published?
• What results am I expecting from my content?
• What happens after publishing it?
• What type of content are we publishing?
• Who is posting and maintaining your content?
• How often is content being published?
• How does your audience find and interact with your content?

Even though this list looks simple, the execution of this process requires time, research, thought, and strategic planning. By coming up with a great content strategy, you will know exactly what, why, and how your real estate business is planning on using content to accomplish your goals.

What is Content Marketing Strategy?

Content marketing is the creation and distribution of content to a tightly defined audience to attract, engage and retain them.

Basically, content marketing is a combination of sales techniques and organic marketing, all in one. Prospects don’t know they’re being sold to; instead they feel they’re being informed and as a result, they develop trust in your and start to see you as a real estate expert.

Components of Content Marketing are:

• Blog Posts
• Whitepapers or E-books
• Case Studies
• PR
• Social Media Marketing
• PPC, SEO and SEM

On a surface level, it is easy to say that both content marketing and content strategy are one and the same; well yes and no.

Two Sides of a Coin

A content marketing strategy is simply one half of your overall content strategy as it focuses solely on creating, measuring, and publishing content marketing components for specific audiences. It clearly identifies the “why” customers buy question.

On the other hand, a good content strategy helps you plan, strategize and basically set a strong foundation for your content marketing efforts. Without a content strategy, your content marketing efforts will most likely crumble.

Conclusion

Creating content just for the sake of it won’t generate a long lasting result. In order to be successful with content marketing, you need a content strategy as a foundation upon which you can build on.

Here at NetMedia, we take content strategy and content marketing seriously for our clients. If you need help with yours, contact us today.