In chess, the King is the most important piece of the game. In modern marketing, content has become a critical strategic piece for creating trust, authority, and loyalty. Create good content – check. Create great content – checkmate. Game over for your competition.

What differentiates good content from great content? A strategic Content Marketing plan focuses on developing and distributing consistent, relevant, and valuable content that seeks to educate, entertain and, inform your audiences. Content Marketing is about creating a genuine relationship with your audience, talking with them – not at them. Great content strategy drives brand awareness, online visibility, prospective and current customer engagement, and ultimately increases leads and conversions.

Content marketing serves two masters in modern-day business – customers and search engines. Providing unique, helpful content to your target audiences helps to build brand awareness, audience engagement, retention, and loyalty. Creating, publishing, and distributing valuable content can be a strong differentiator in the eyes of your customers, and they’re not the only ones watching. Search engine optimization is heavily influenced by content and increases the visibility of your business online by ensuring your content is found.

We know the role of individual content is worthy of a crown, but in terms of reigning supreme – how far does content marketing extend? NewsCred suggests that Content reaches far beyond the marketing department and that every department can benefit. Perhaps we should drop the ‘marketing’ all together and think more as one overarching Content Strategy. Sales, Customer Service, HR, and Internal Communication should all live under a unified company voice, brand, and vision, emulated through its content. A new standard has been set and to echo the words of Lee Oden, “Content isn’t King. It’s the Kingdom.”

Not sure of your first move? Here are 5 Moves You Need in Your Content Kingdom.