This post on content marketing was originally written for my newsletter last year. I'm re-running some of that content in January to convince you to sign up to my list. Check out the growing list of benefits at the bottom of this post.

A classic authorial flub is beating your readers over the head with all that painstaking research you conducted while suffering from Level IX Procrastination. After going to the trouble of boning up on the mating habits of fruit flies – so your supposedly smart entomologist heroine doesn't say something truly dumb – there's a real danger of info dumping or otherwise sucking the drama out of any scene.

Like with so many other literary devices, these bloody things are like saffron: a pinch can transform a dish, but two pinches can ruin it. Meanwhile we authors are backing up the saffron truck and dumping it onto the reader's driveway…

But what if I told you there's another use for all these writerly offcuts? Let's talk about content marketing. *blows alpenhorn*

Content Marketing 101

This is the perfect palette cleanser if you are sick of the overwhelming focus on ads these days, because content marketing is on the other end of the spectrum. It's also way more natural to the average author and her typical skillset. Making and distributing content is what we do. And the big buzz word in content marketing right now is… wait for it… storytelling.

"I've heard of it," you might respond.

The actual practice of content marketing is quite old, even if the moniker is more modern in nature. And it has become particularly fashionable in the last few years as the focus switched from outbound marketing – where you go out there in the world and try to find customers, often through advertising – to inbound marketing. Which is basically like Field of Dreams: you build something – namely a Bunch O'Content – that organically and passively attracts customers to you instead.

You might think you're doing that already. And you are. All of you are probably content marketing in some shape or form, even if you don't slap that particular label on it.

For example, if you run a regular newsletter, you are engaging in content marketing, most likely. If you have more extensive information on your website beyond the usual basic info about you and your books – like if you have a blog or some other informational resource there – then you are probably committing some acts of content marketing even if that wasn't your explicit intention. Even using a permafree or having a reader magnet can be viewed as a form of content marketing; it only sounds a bit weird because our primary business is also selling content.

Either way, there's probably a lot more you could be doing with content marketing, especially if you approach it in a little more organized and structured way.

If you are a non-fiction author, content marketing should be a central part of your strategy. But there's valuable stuff here for fictionauts too. And if you are one of those authors grimacing at the focus these days on advertising, and all the associated costs and complexity, well then get ready to roll up your sleeves: because content marketing is mostly about sweat rather than seed money. And you already know how to do the hardest part: writing good content.

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