When you have a business that is solely based online, providing great creative content is usually a rule of thumb in your marketing plan.

Content marketing is creating something that intrigues end users and can give them something to profit from, or the sheer pleasure of reading. More importantly, content marketing can drive traffic to your website, provide leads, and attract customers, new and old.

Below are 10 tips that can help you in your content marketing:

1. Provide an email newsletter. Structure a newsletter that will benefit your customers. Include tips, news, events, and special offers related to your industry. Also, you may want to include things that belong to your own company. However, send out email newsletters on a scheduled basis, possibly once a month, so you don’t get tagged as spam and lose subscribers.
2. Develop a white paper. Research an issue occurring in your industry and address those issues in your white paper.
3. Publish a “how to” guide. Research ways to do things better related to your industry or niche and make a “how to” guide.
4. Provide educational posts on your blog. If you come across a topic related to your field that has a lot of information, develop several blog posts on the topic as an educational series. This can keep people coming back to your blog time and time again. Everyone enjoys learning, right?
5. Use Squidoo to create lenses. You can show your knowledge and expertise by making lenses on a subject of your choice. This will certainly send plenty of traffic to your site.
6. Make an ebook. Take an interesting topic, or topics, and turn it into a short eBook. If you’ve made an educational blog post in a series format, you can put those together and create an eBook as well.
7. Make a video. You don’t have to be a professional to make a short video. For example, the Windows Movie Maker would work great. Gather several photos and insert them into a movie making program, add some voiceovers with a sound recording tool, and bam! You have a video to post.
8. Podcast anyone? If you have the knowledge or tools to do this, they can be quite interesting and fun. These can include updates from the job bureau, interesting things about your hometown, or anything related to your industry. Providing interesting content is number one.
9. Public speaking. Participate in local marketing conventions or seminars that are held in your area. Volunteer to talk about your business and your strategies. Make sure you have a business card to hand out, and in turn, get email addresses of other people attending the conference.
10. Creative headlines. When writing articles or content for your website or blog, make sure that each article has a well-developed, short, and creative title to accompany it. Creative headlines grab people’s attention and make them want to read the article. Think of all the headlines you see going down the checkout aisle at your local supermarket. Use some of those for inspiration.

These tips are certainly a great help in getting the ideas incorporated into your marketing plan and definitely help drive traffic to your business website. There are many other things you can do as well, but this is a great start. Good luck!

What are some of your techniques for driving traffic?