Content Marketing Tips
Content marketing is much more than a few blog posts and social media updates.
Your content
marketing needs to be consistent, focused and, most of all, engaging.
The main goal of content marketing is to connect with your customers outside of traditional selling tactics. Some marketers focus on dated and intrusive techniques, bombarding their customers with messages that tell them what to think and what to buy. Times have changed, and so has the consumer; they are more aware, information seeking and have access to more online resources than ever before. Content marketing strives to position your brand as an expert in its industry, and offers your customers something for interacting with your brand – relevant, engaging content.
Customers now spend more time consuming content, so providing that content is a smart way to connect with them and build trust for your brand. The idea is to win customers without directly pitching your brand: outlined below are five tips that will assist you in doing just that:
Know Your Market
You need to identify and define your target market: the last thing you want to do is write meaningless (and therefore unvaluable) content. You need to write content that offers value to the audience and that they will appreciate. To do this you must have an awareness of their values and the topics that interest them.
Keywords
Once you have decided on your topics, you can start to create your content, but be sure to include keywords. By producing a list of keywords that you will use constantly, you will be able to improve your organic searchability.
Create Lots of Content
It is important to have a large base of content so that you can spread content across your social networks. Whether you are creating a blog or an eNewsletter, it is vital that you ensure you have enough content to follow up. This isn’t “one and done”: you will need to consistently create new and engaging content for your audiences.
Content Structure
It is essential to know how to successfully write blogs or create other useful content in order to enhance search engine traffic. Using your keywords and effective #hashtags in every piece is vital. Consider creating categories for your blog posts so that readers can quickly find what they are looking for by searching the keywords in your headlines. Use of bulletpoints and lists in your subtitles are also useful in catching your readers’ attention. Most of my own posts, as well as the ones I write for my clients, are formatted in tips, bullets, steps and the like – all serving to maintain a level professionalism whilst breaking prose into succinct statements to maintain the reader’s attention. Remember, even when using such tactics; the information is the most important element.
Repurpose Content for eNewsletters
When creating content, try to develop eNewsletters that complement it. These newsletters should be delivered every 2 weeks to a database of email addresses, keeping already interested customers or prospects engaged on a regular basis. To quickly create quality content you can include a few of your blog posts.
Remember…
Content is the voice of your brand, and it is important to give it the respect, investment and focus that content marketing requires. Taking the time to make each post, article, tweet or newsletter interesting and worth reading will pay dividends when your customers start passing them along to friends or contacting you for more information.