I work at Salesforce.com as the inbound marketing manager and it’s an amazing time to be in this space. With more and more businesses paying attention to what’s being said on social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, comments on blogs (just like this one) and more the power has shifted away from companies to consumers who tell their friends what they really think about a company or product or brand.

You might be wondering, what’s that got to do with content marketing?

Well, a lot actually.

Valuable content is something that others will want to share with their network. By doing so, the sharer of content is able to build a profile for themselves as having knowledge on a particular topic. If they are creating content and sharing it, then they can build a reputation as a thought leader.

Once content is created and shared, it can be picked up by others and re-shared. Ultimately, the content can attract a significant amount of traffic back to your website and help with brand awareness.

I feel Australia is just about to enter a content marketing explosion. Here is an excellent article written earlier this month by Adam Barber from @castlefordmedia titled: 3 Reasons to Put Australia on Your Content Marketing Radar in 2013.  He states the following: “Recent signals from the government, consumers, and the business community all suggest a really positive outlook for digital content.”

 

To sum up his 3 main reasons they are:

1. Newer, Quicker Infrastructure

The National Broadband Network (NBN) is rolling out bringing high speed internet to 93% of Australia. This is going to radically change the business landscape. Also the improved mobile networks such as 4G are only going to get better.

 

2. Spending More Time and Money Online

“Australians are among the world’s heaviest users of Facebook, when it comes to monthly dwell time,” as stated in Adam’s post. It’s not only consumers online, but businesses too. In the recent Sensis eBusiness Survey (refer to my post Are Aussie SMEs using Social Media?) the infographic has an interesting stat: “51% of Facebook Users surveyed would prefer to purchase from brand that interact with on Social Media platforms”.

 

3. Australia versus the rest of the world

“According to recent figures, 75 percent of Aussies who shop online use foreign websites and 45 percent of total online spending goes overseas (PwC / Frost & Sullivan), which suggests local businesses have some catching up to do.” The key point here is unique, quality content is what will help an Aussie brand be discoverable offshore.

 A version of this post was first published on the Salesforce.com/au blog and was written by Mark Vozzo, APAC inbound marketing manager at Salesforce.com. It is part of the Future of Work series sponsored by Salesforce.com.