If you are an entrepreneur or start-up, it’s probably no secret that you are either learning a lot or have no idea where to begin when it comes to marketing yourself. There are so many opportunities right out there, but the biggest challenge is actually getting the right message to the right person. What does that look like? For me, it starts with a well-written blog post.

This little piece of digital real estate is the place where your idea is started in the first place. And frankly, if it’s not getting shared, then something is wrong with it. So it pays to find ways to turn these efforts into revenue.

According to the Digital Content Marketing Association, content marketing makes up 21 percent of the overall online business tool spend in the United States. So, what is it that differentiates this practice from those of the competing marketing methods? Besides creating content and having interesting pieces of content, it is the fact that everyone will see and learn more about your brand through it.

You’ll also earn yourself access to a wider audience by getting referrals from peers. Your website and blog posts will become so interesting that they’ll draw in more traffic.

An article on the Huffington Post describes how Facebook helped start four companies worth over $2 billion dollars. A team of writers who wanted to expand their writing portfolio or another business started sharing stories, and then they found that sharing only worked for half of them.

The good news for our business is that we can easily create and share stories through the right channel. Video is a very popular way to share content these days. It adds a real emotion to the story and adds visual energy and storytelling.

So what are the tricks that you need to master to become a content marketing champion?