What's A Resource Box? (And How Does It Benefit Your Content Marketing?)

If you look at the very end of this article, you'll notice an area where I provide some brief bio information and a couple of links you may find helpful - that's essentially my resource box (sometimes also called a 'bio box'), where I'm providing potentially useful 'resources' to people who read this article.

Depending on the site you're adding content to, you may be able to link a word or phrase to a site, rather than just a straight link or URL. This is known as 'keyword linking'.

So how does it apply to content marketing?

For most forms of content marketing, you get the benefit from the content by linking back to your website, or other web properties that benefit you in some way (for example, one of your social media presences through which readers of your content can connect with you and/or find out more about you).

For article marketing, you do this via the resource box. Article directories for example generally provide a specific field for your resource box, usually limiting the number of characters you can enter to something like 450. The format of such 'free reprint articles' consists of the title, the article body, and then the resource box at the end - just like the article you're reading here.

You'll find a very similar approach with guest posting. If you have an opportunity where another blog posts your content as a 'guest blog', you may benefit from links back to your site or related web properties from within the blog itself and/or a 'bio' or resource box section at the end of the post.

This often consists of a profile picture of the author, some brief information about them, and again links back to one or more of the author's web properties. Ideally, such links usually represent resources that would be of interest and potential benefit to someone who was interested enough in the content to read it.

Relevance is key in order to ensure your resource box benefits you in your content marketing activities. There's little point providing content about your love of ice hockey (which would attract readers similarly interested in the sport), but then in the resource box linking back to your site(s) relating to hosting providers. You'd be far better providing content that would be of interest to those looking for hosting providers - for example, key factors to be aware of.

The same principles apply to other aspects of content marketing.

For example, if you're creating a video for YouTube, to ensure it benefits your business you would ensure those watching are aware of how they can find your website (eg. providing your URL at the bottom of the screen, or perhaps at the start and end of the video), and then also provide a link to your site within the video's description. You'd also make it clear how visiting the site could benefit the watcher.

Again, you'd want to attract people specifically interested in your site, and so would make your content relevant to their interests.

As a business, to attract people interested in what you have to offer, your content has to be of interest to them and them alone. It will then benefit you for years to come. People will find the content for example via web searches. They will read it, find further resources that interest them, clicking through to your site where they'll have the opportunity to further their relationship with you. For a proportion of those clicking through, the relationship will result at some point in a sale for your business.