Content marketing is an essential business strategy that can help establish your brand as a leader in your field. With the right approach, you can use content to build relationships with customers, increase brand awareness, and generate more leads and sales. We share some key content marketing strategies to help getting you started with your content marketing efforts.
“B2B marketers have data that says content marketing is a successful tool for nurturing leads (60%), generating revenue (51%), and building an audience of subscribers (47%).”
– Hubspot Ultimate Guide to Content Creation written by Christina Perricone
Create an Adaptive Digital Content Marketing Plan
Creating an effective content marketing plan is the first step to reaching your goals. This involves developing a long-term strategy for creating and distributing content that aligns with your business objectives. Your plan should include objectives, a target audience, content ideas, and distribution channels. It should also factor in SEO best practices and incorporate analytics tools to track performance metrics. Also, make sure you create an adaptive content marketing plan that can change as needed to reflect new trends and customer needs.
- Understanding the needs and interests of your target audience. This will help you create content that resonates with them.
- Research the topics that are important to this group. And then, develop social media posts, blog posts, website pages, infographics and videos around these topics.
- Additionally, be sure to use appropriate keywords in your titles, body text and meta descriptions. Consequently, search engines can more easily find and index your content.
- Finally, keep up-to-date on changes in digital marketing practices so that you can quickly adjust your content plan if necessary.
Focus on quality, not quantity in your content marketing strategy
It is important to focus on creating quality content – both in terms of the writing and visuals used. Quality content provides substance, is valuable and useful to your audience, and generally takes longer than quantity-driven content. Even if you do not have a lot of time or resources available, it is essential that you stay focused on creating content that resonates with your target audience. This way, you can build trust and drive more conversions over time.
Quality content also gives your audience something to look forward to when they visit your website or social accounts. It can help you stand out from competitors who may be taking a “spray and pray” approach when it comes to content creation. In addition, crafting valuable and educational content will help build relationships with existing clients. Moreover, it can entice potential customers who do not yet know anything about your brand.
When considering content production, it’s important to create content that is both interesting and informative. One helpful way to do this is to incorporate the work of influencers or thought leaders in your industry into your content marketing strategy. Not only will this give you access to their social media followers and increase any SEO benefits associated with them, but reposting their titles, quotes, and interviews can also lend more credibility and expertise to your longer-form posts. Quality always trumps quantity in content marketing: It’s far better to have six thoughtful blog posts than twelve rushed pieces of filler.
Utilize visual elements to your posts
Visuals are an incredibly important element of content creation. They help draw attention to your message and improve your content’s engagement. Visuals also help break up long pieces of text and make your content more shareable. Consider using images, GIFs, videos and infographics to add depth and visual interest to your posts. In addition, you can use visuals to existing pieces of content or create new ones from the same source material. Data suggests that visuals lead to higher click through rates for blog posts. In fact, this is true even for mediums beyond social media such as email newsletters.
Adding visuals to your content can help drive greater loyalty, support and engagement from your viewers. Visuals create a more immersive overall experience for your readers and result in better engagement. Plus, you’ll be able to reach a larger audience than text alone. This is because images are often easier for people to share across multiple channels such as Twitter and Instagram. Using relevant visuals will also help you stand out in an increasingly competitive content marketing landscape. Investing in visuals for your content is great way to keep users engaged and position yourself as an authority in the world of digital media.
Aim for long-tail keywords and SEO optimized content
People are always searching for helpful information. So, if you want your content to be found, you need to be aware of the current keywords people are using. To make sure your content is SEO optimized, include long-tail keywords throughout the copy. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific phrases that will target an audience more precisely. Use keyword research tools like Google Trends or Moz’s Keyword Explorer to find popular topics and relevant search terms. Once these have been identified, incorporate them into your content in a natural manner and ensure they are still in line with your business’s message.
In fact, Neil Patel, world famous SEO expert (Blog: Longtail Keywords: How-To, Strategies, Tips ), believes every marketer should have two goals from their content marketing:
“The first thing is probably traffic, and after that, you want conversions. Longtail keywords can make a massive difference to your business in both of these areas.”
Additionally, strive to produce content that is user-friendly and well-organized. When it comes to SEO optimization, an easy-to-scan webpage increases the chances of your content being found and read by a potential customer. Break up your content into sections with clear headlines and subheadings, use bullet points or lists where possible, start with a short summary at the beginning of each article or post and make sure all links work – these will help you rank higher on search engine result pages as they make it easier for people to find and engage with your content.
Maximize the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy:
- Make sure you conduct keyword research beforehand to identify longer-tail keywords that are less competitive.
- Long-tail keywords are more specific phrases that target an audience likely to be interested in what you offer. For example, try targeting “vegan cooking recipes” instead of focusing on “cooking”. Such an approach helps reduce competition and allows for a greater chance of someone finding your post through relevant searches than if you were to focus on broader top-level keyword phrases.
- Utilizing SEO optimization techniques like providing internal and external links or including meta data will further boost the chances of obtaining a higher rank in search engine results.
Ensure a call-to-action in all your posts as part of your overall content marketing strategy
A call-to-action (CTA) helps you guide your readers to do something on your site, like sharing a post or purchasing a product. Incorporate CTAs into all of your content so that readers don’t just “aspire” – they take action. Think about how the CTA you use supports the articles purpose and show relevance between the two. For example, if you’re feeling stuck when it comes to crafting CTAs for blog posts, try listing out what the reader will learn or benefit from the information in a way that is informative and persuasive.
CTAs help make sure the content you’re producing is optimized to convert, regardless of where readers are in their journey. Create CTAs tailored to each reader, whether they have just arrived or they have read every post on your site. In addition, CTAs also shows what each of your customer touchpoints has to offer. Apart from showing how they support one another within the context of a journey, that is. Using calls-to-action within your content will help you ensure that all the time you spend creating content is worthwhile – leading more people through the funnel towards a successful conversion.
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