Content marketing is the process of creating content to increase your web traffic, getting new customers, making more sales, or simply increasing brand awareness. Take a moment and think about what the Internet offers people – it’s various types of content through different channels like websites, social networks, email, apps, forums, etc.
Content marketing makes this kind of communication more official. In other words, instead of just publishing content on the Web with no purpose, you create and distribute content for satisfying specific marketing objectives. To implement an efficient content marketing strategy and make the best use of it, be sure to read the article below.
Focus heavily on SEO
Content marketing is beautiful because it can combine Content (which can establish your expertise) with Social Media (which can help you exponentially spread your message) with Search (helping you be found via Google, Bing or other search engines to make your content SEO-friendly).
Some companies limit the “Search” part of the equation by not being knowledgeable about the basics of SEO, by using terms that people don’t use and by not posting enough keyword-rich textual content on their website or blog.
Quality matters most
Companies that focus on volume of content will lose out over companies that focus on quality. High-quality posts will get significantly more shares on social media, will get the attention of other industry stakeholders, and will position your company as more of a thought leader, expert or educator. In addition, there’s an overabundance of average to poor content out there. People will gravitate to, follow, and refer providers of quality knowledge. You need more than just clever content; you need a good presentation that pays attention to structure, format, SEO and the overall quality of the content
Post at a suitable time
You can write the best blog post of your life, but if it is posted on a site or social media platform your audience doesn’t use, or at a time when most of your audience is offline, it will likely disappear into the noise and information of the Internet.
Your social media manager should know, for instance, that most of your company’s Facebook fans are online Friday afternoons from 2-4 pm. If your company doesn’t have a dedicated social media manager or department, most website and social media analytics tools will have a feature where you can see the most and least popular times people visit your site and social media channels and where people are coming from to get your site.
Knowing your audience will also give you an idea as to what websites and industry/business blogs they regularly visit and what social media channels they utilise to engage with each other on.
Make use of visual content like infographics
Visual content is great for supporting your text, and can also help you attract backlinks and mentions and get shared on social media. This type of content is usually referred to as linkable assets. An excellent example of visual content that’s highly linkable is infographics.
Interact with audiences on social media
While it’s essential to post regularly on social media, it’s your relationship with customers that entices them to return to your business. You can’t have a relationship if one side is the only one doing the talking, so you need to listen to what your target market is saying instead of shouting into a void. Customers want you to respond to their posts, with 61% of consumers agreeing that it’s crucial to get a response from a brand after providing feedback on social media.
Social media listening tools help you track public opinion, spot emerging trends in your vertical, understand your customers so that you can generate the content that they want to consume. 54% of people will stop following you if they think your content isn’t relevant, and 34% will leave if it’s boring. Social media listening means you can think up more appropriate and engaging topics that grab your followers’ interest.
Make good use of video content
Video is the leading content type, with 68% of marketers saying that videos and other visual content is very important or crucial to their marketing strategy. Video consistently outperforms other content types, so it’s no surprise that marketers produce more video than any other content. The rise of TikTok alone, which is a pure video platform, emphasizes the demand. Only 14.5% of businesses don’t publish any video content, and it’s hard to believe the number could even be that high.
It’s clear that you need to include video in your content marketing strategy. There are many different formats, like Instagram and Facebook Stories, which use short video snippets to tell a story; live video on social media; and YouTube videos. Video content could be behind-the-scenes style, or informational how-to guides, and more.
Keep experimenting with different types of content
It is important to experiment and test which content gets you the most traffic and generates the most conversions. Regular analysis of your content will enable you to see the patterns in what content clicks with your audience. You can then use this as inspiration for additional content ideas. Then, when you see what works, you will also see the kind of content that doesn’t work.
If your content isn’t as effective as you’d like it to be, some revamping and revising of your content strategy may be in order. Knowing where your content is falling short will equip you to make the necessary improvements.
Stick to relevant topics
When you start publishing content on your website or blog, make sure that it is related to your niche and area of expertise. For many, this might be obvious, but some people still get it wrong. For example, if you are running a tech blog, you should not publish a post about cooking just because you like it. Nobody will punish you for doing so, but the chances of getting any benefits from that post are minimised. The best approach is to publish related content that is aligned with the overall goals of your website.
Create a user-friendly web design
Your website should communicate your brand proposition and present it in a cohesive manner so that consumers can connect with your brand. You are because of your customer. If your customer does not invest in you, soon you will be out of business. Therefore it is important that your website comes across as an organized, trustworthy and informed resource. Otherwise, your visitor will not feel confident.
Work efficiently
When it comes to content problems, almost everyone thinks the solution is to create more. But, generally, there is an oversupply of content, and we don’t want to add our content on top of the already massive heap. Plus, you probably have plenty of content created at this point, which means it’s time to remix and refresh our content before we even think about creating another new piece.
Repurpose or reuse content: Give content new life, by giving it a quick remix. That could include updating some still-relevant content with new information, turning an infographic into an animated video, or republishing content so it’s front and centre for users to see.
Curate content: Why reinvent the wheel when there’s plenty of great content out there already? Curate content from trusted sources, but be sure to give credit where credit’s due and include your perspective on the content piece, too.
Invite guest bloggers
If you find you don’t have the talent in the writing or creative department, you can always consider guest bloggers. Some guest bloggers will expect a payment, but others are happy to provide content to help build their reputation as an authority.
You can also expand your content to include common interests your audience might share. You can also make it a point to look for influencers using social media such as Instagram for matches that will work well with your content and philosophy.
Beware of your competitors
You should keep track of your competition. You should try to find keywords that your competitors rank for and that you don’t rank for. Create content around these keywords to rank for them, and launch a link building campaign to acquire backlinks pointing to your new content. New content creation, in combination with link building, can make a massive difference for your SEO and help you achieve more traffic online.
Content marketing can attract, convert, and retain loyal customers to power your business to increased revenue and higher profits. When you build a content marketing funnel that includes social listening, video content, SEO optimisation for your blog, and uses data to finetune your strategy, you’ll soon see results for your small business. Following the points mentioned above puts you on the path to attracting new clients and growing your business. To learn more about how to successfully communicate with your audience, visit us at https://www.koffeetech.com/digital/.