As technology advances, so does the importance of content marketing. You may ask why that is the case.
As more and more people get access to digital screens, messages can be transmitted to them with greater ease and the information you are putting out is reaching a greater amount of people than ever before. Consequently, it has become crucial to optimize your content.
In this article, I will provide tips to improve content marketing for any business which wants to boost their online presence and expand its customer base. If you are one of the content managers for this kind of business, I hope you will have gained valuable insights by the time you get done with this article.
What is Content Marketing?
Content is the backbone of marketing. Concepts of content marketing compensate for sharing different types of content such as creatives, videos, images, audio, and e-books.
Content marketing involves sharing content online to generate interest in the products and services of a particular brand.
There are four forms of content:
- Written word
- Audio
- Video
- Images
Why Invest in Content Marketing?
Content marketing helps you understand who your potential customers are and increases your web presence.
Through engagement on various blog posts, videos and other content posted on social media helps you understand where you stand, how much customers value your products or services and helps understand the patterns of your potential customers.
How To Create Content Marketing Strategy
You surely need to design a strategy for your content marketing in order to achieve your goals. Below mentioned are some tips to design your content marketing strategy in detail.
- Create short-term and long-term goals.
- Find out the best platform to market.
- Define your audience.
- Identify and allocate resources.
- Decide your content type.
Other pro tips that you should follow for your content strategy includes:
1. On-site Article Directory
This tip is for entities willing to go the extra mile when it comes to content marketing. Maintaining an on-site article directory or displaying blog categories on your website can help boost your reach.
Informative content usually ranks higher than less informative or solely promotional content on search engine result pages. A higher ranking on these result pages in turn helps you gain the attention of a larger number of people. Alongside it engages readers, including potential customers, and gains their trust.
Imagine being a potential customer and reading the content of two companies: one’s content is solely promotional and the other has a significant chunk of useful information in it. Which company are you more likely to invest in?
If you are like most of the digital users on Earth, you would buy the products and/or services of the company with more informative content.
In short, making the content of a larger scope than a promotional call to action will help enlarge your online presence and, in turn, your customer base.
2. Focus On the Now
Writing content, topics most discussed on the internet currently will attract the most readers. The logic for that is simple.
For example, everyone either already has or will have to make decisions on the coronavirus vaccine soon. They first have to decide whether they want to get vaccinated at all by gaining information from the internet and weighing the pros and the cons.
In case they decide that they do want to get vaccinated, they then have to gain information about each vaccine authorized for use and weigh its pros and cons compared to the rest of the vaccines.
As everyone’s attention is on the vaccine, you will be able to write content attractive to everyone by relating the content to it.
All in all, it is important to write about trending topics so your content is read by as many people as possible. You can then either post it on or link it to your company’s website. As discussed later, linking quality content with your website makes your website prop up higher on search engine results pages.
3. Link Building
No article detailing tips to improve content marketing can go without recommending its readers to search engine optimization. Search engine optimization includes all of the efforts undertaken to make your content prop up higher on search engine results pages.
Gone are the days when you could link your website to as many cop-out websites as possible and elevate yourself in search engine rankings.
Search engine administrators like Google have now adapted their algorithms in such a way that your site’s ranking depends on not only the number of links established but also the quality of those links.
Thus, it is very important to reinvent your marketing strategy and link your site to content already published on reputable websites.
As soon as you start to perform link building with that type of content, you will see a rise in your search engine ranking. A rise in your ranking on the search engine results pages will then translate into a greater reach of your message and, in turn, more customers.
4. Keep Your Tone Human
Formal writing has its own benefits and I will be the first one to accept that. However, when it comes to reaching a greater audience, it is more important to display your human side than your formal side.
Want to know why? Because the people reading you are trying to impact are human too! If they can relate to the tone of your content at a human level, it will be easier for them to relate to the message being sent.
One way to play the ‘humanity card’ is by explaining what you would do or have done faced with a problem that your reader is currently facing.
Going back to the coronavirus vaccine example, it might be smart to include the factors you yourself prioritized or would prioritize when deciding which vaccine to get and how you came up with or would come up with a final decision.
5. Think Long Term
Although this advice applies in almost all walks of life as well as business, it applies even more significantly when it comes to content marketing. Here’s why.
Content marketing needs time to bore fruit. When you start to gain the attention of more readers/potential customers in higher quantities and for longer amounts of time, you need to give it a few days for these readers to get convinced by your pitch.
The worst thing you can do is lose confidence in yourself and replace the content which you have already worked so hard on and which was just about to bring positive results.
Indeed, it is best to focus a bit less on the return on investment produced by your efforts if you are one of those people who get discouraged by the dearth of immediate positive results. Instead, you can spend your thoughts on coming up with additional ways to engage customers.
6. Be Formal
You might be confused by the sub-heading of this paragraph because I, myself, stated that it is more important to show one’s human side than one’s formal side earlier in my article. I still stand by that claim.
However, once you have made your short casual asks, you should reinvent your marketing strategy by supplementing those messages with more formal messages such as white papers. This is especially the case when the product you are trying to sell or the cause you are trying to promote is rather complicated.
People are different. While many are convinced by more engaging content, there are still some who are convinced by thorough writing which is not only comprehensive in explaining the product or cause but also answers the readers’ potential concerns. It is best to target both types of people.
7. Give Videos A Chance
Variety should be displayed not only in your tone of writing but also in the mode of communication you have used.
Just like some people like a more formal tone while others prefer to see a human touch, some people like to gain information by watching videos while others prefer to read written content.
In fact, it has been proven that videos engage potential customers more than text. As a quality content marketer, you should provide information in both written and visual forms to make sure your message reaches as many people as possible.
You can make videos on a wide range of topics; while one may introduce a new product, another may introduce your team one by one and say something funny about each member.
8. Insert Keywords
Along with link building, the insertion of keywords is also an important technique to rank higher on search engine results pages. Make sure you do your research to find out keywords relating to your topic that are most commonly searched for by users.
Once you have identified those keywords, it is important to include them in important sections such as titles, sub-headings, and meta-descriptions. Alongside, you may try using them in alt texts of images.
Once you make all these efforts and build links with reputable websites as explained earlier in the passage, you will see an improvement in your search engine ranking which will then do wonders in terms of expanding your customer base.
One more thing: do not stuff your content with so many keywords that your customer gets annoyed.
9. Trend versatility
The world of the Internet is so rapid that with each new day there is a new trend trending over social media platforms. Change with the rapidly changing trends.
Make your creatives keeping in view the ongoing trends. Try to market your brand taking advantage of the trends that are going on. It is high time to spring cleans your content marketing strategy. It has become a now or never situation as the trends change so frequently.
Check if the strategy you are implementing works for you or not. Test your skills and strategies and if it makes you feel like it is not working, get rid of it and re-design your strategy. This pertains to your brand as well as what is going on in the world.
10. Create value for your Audience
Creating value for your potential customers includes faith in your brand and is a great tool in content marketing.
Now, when you have attracted traffic towards your profiles or landing pages, it is time to create an offer or something that is valuable for the person taking interest in your service or product.
Value creation is a major step to attract customers and clients. Create e-books, research papers, white papers, or video lessons and distribute them among your potential customers that are already in your email or friend list.
Content marketing is becoming the most powerful online marketing strategy. Content holds the power to get you to go viral and earn some handsome amount as well as helps your brand identity grow online.
Bottom line. Content is the new King!
Sarah’s has been professionally writing for digital marketing for years. The mutual interest in digital marketing and writing took her here, where she opts for writing as a profession. Her articles are not bound by any form but confide the latest trends and happenings on content marketing and the ways SEO is tackling it. To stay connected with what’s latest, her posts are a great help.
