Content marketing is an umbrella term for anything a business might produce in the way of text, video, audio or visuals, to give away online so that it is engaging and is shared widely.

I think of it as “fodder,” which is defined as: “readily available material used to supply a heavy demand.” Think articles, white papers, webcasts, podcasts, apps, a research study, infographics, even branded entertainment, like a custom game or virtual event.

Places where this type of fodder could appear include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, article sites, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters or relevant websites.

You might want to be a generous supplier of proprietary content by giving wide permission to re-publish your material as long as the source is referenced and the re-publisher provides a link back to your website.

This would result in a number of backlinks to your website, which makes Google stand up and take notice, and thereafter likely rank your website higher in the search-engine results pages.

And people would be driven back to your website in addition to Google’s robots – which could increase your visits and potentially your conversion rates (people