How to Source Quality Content Efficiently for Leads and Sales

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"Content Marketing is the ONLY Marketing left" ~Seth Godin

Learning how to source content is probably the most important marketing skill set any business owner can have nowadays.

Content can be:

• Created
• Curated
• Repurposed
• Shared/Liked

A Custom Content Council recent paper has found that:

• 61% of consumers feel better about a brand or company that delivers custom content consistently, and are as a consequence more likely to buy from that company.

• 35% of Chief Marketing Officers surveyed in 2011 believe that custom content marketing is the future of marketing v. 19% in 2006.

• 73% of consumers prefer to get information from a company in the form of a collection of articles over an advertisement.

Let me first say this:

I go back to your site not based on what you sell, but because of the way you sell it!

We are all big boys and girls who understand they realities of the marketplace, we do so as consumers and as marketers. So we know the sale is coming but we hope for an experience, a value hug, a tips and tricks handshake. We want to be swept off our feet ... that's what the right kind of content can do for your brand.

But before you start down the road of using content to share and engage with your peers you should have a way to filter and collect this content in an easy and efficient manner. This is the beginning of all your content marketing efforts.

Google reader allows you to do this. Even though vastly underutilized by most business owners, this application can save you hundreds of hours of needless search and browsing on topics of interest.

Here's a bit of an old but classic video that will make it all clear for you.

In addition to this intro video, here you can find recently updated and task specific tutorials on Google Reader.

You can also get over to SocialOomph open an account an set your self up with over 50 keyword driven alerts that can be delivered to your inbox every 12 hours. 

Social Oomph as well as Hootsuite, are social media clients/tools that allow you to aggregate all sorts of social media related tasks, including your ability to find relevant content to your particular industry.

Here are some of the features this tool offers:

• Track keyword specific tweets
• Track @replies
• Schedule autoposting on specific dates and times
• Manage unlimited accounts
• Automatically follow people that follow you
• Track multiple social media accounts via - Dashboard

Another terrific tool is Hootsuite and here's a comparison post between hootsuite and socialoomph. I use both by the way, because it allows me greater flexibility when filtering and curating content on the web.

So why are these tools valuable for lead generation and ultimately sales?

Because they allow you to deliver and sift through the great mountain of content crap and useless information that's on the web these days.

If you constantly put out content that helps people, you'll become an authority resource and everyone will want to subscribe to your updates and stay connected to your social media outposts.

... and when this happens you'll start to generate organic leads that will eventually turn into sales!

Is that Simple :-)