You hear a lot about content marketing these days from all quarters.

Savvy marketers have long espoused the value of blogging for a brand. PR professionals are wringing their hands over the demise of traditional media and wondering how their story-telling skills translate into the click-through economy. Media owners are jumping on the content marketing bandwagon by offering more flash-in-the-pan articles and sponsored content to drive clicks and ad revenue for their online assets.

Bottom line: content marketing, combined with a good PR strategy, can help you get to the top of organic search engine results like nothing else out there.

Why, you ask, is it so important to get to the top of search engines? Take Google as an example. There are approximately 100 billion searches on Google every month, which means 3 billion searches happen every day as consumers look for information on all kinds of topics — including product and services research in advance of a purchase.

Say for instance you are a personal trainer in Seattle, Washington. If I lived in Seattle and needed a trainer I might look up “Seattle Personal Training” to check out reviews of trainers and hopefully narrow down my search. Thing is, I’m a lot more likely to look closely at the trainers I see on the first page of results then glance at the top of the second page. If you’re on the third page you might as well be in Siberia, not Seattle. The average consumer is way too impatient to keep looking.

Translation: you really need to be on the first page of search results for certain relevant key words. Getting to the top three is priceless and probably yields 3x the number of clicks than any others on the list (according to my very unscientific estimation).

So how can you become a master of content marketing in order drive more qualified leads from search engines? After all, you’re not an SEO wizard or you wouldn’t be reading this.

Just like a personal trainer will tell you about getting your body into shape, it simply takes practice and consistency. If you don’t use your muscles, they atrophy. If you don’t practice content marketing, your digital brand atrophies. Neglecting to exercise your content marketing muscles at least several times per week will turn your brand into the equivalent of thunder thighs and double chins. When you’re getting the once-over by a prospective customer, don’t you want your brand to look its best and stand out from the crowd?

I’m not trying to fat shame any brands into action, just call their attention to a need to flex those content marketing muscles, especially if the goal for the upcoming year is to enjoy healthy, sustainable growth.

About Dave Manzer: Dave Manzer founded Manzer Communications, an Austin tech PR agency specializing in communications & strategic inbound marketing for startups and fast-growth businesses in 2009. If you have any PR or content marketing questions about your business, feel free to tweet him at @davemanzer or drop email him at dave(at)manzercommunications(dot)com.