Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Firstly, Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. This approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell.
Also, Content marketing can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. A successful content marketing campaign should be manageable and sustainable. Take these steps to get started:
Identify your audience
To create content for a particular reader, you need to have a clear idea of their priorities, challenges, and preferences. If you have detailed descriptions of your various segments, choose 1 or 2 to write for. Otherwise, craft profiles of your audience members and prospects before starting.
Determine the right formats
The right format corresponds with what stage of the sales cycle you’re creating content for. Another important consideration includes what formats will best help you showcase value. For some, this will be a video; for others, a checklist.
An audience will judge your content on its quality, and they should. Identify the right resource, internal or external, to create this work. Regardless of who creates it, hire a professional proofreader to review anything before it goes out the door.
Determine how you’ll distribute
Will you post content on your site, email it to people, or print it for an event? Start with “where” you know your audience is likely to be, and choose formats that make sense. For example, an article makes sense to send via an email, a checklist or worksheet can be posted on social media, and a buyer’s guide is a good follow-up to a pitch.
Choose a sustainable schedule
Once you know who your target readers are and the best formats for every stage in the sales cycle, create a short-term (3-6 months) plan. It’s easy to develop a content marketing plan that’s overly ambitious. However, the plan you design should have content elements you can realistically make based on your budget and resources. Keep track of how long it takes you to create each piece of content so that you can build that time into your schedule.
Follow best practices
Compelling content is clearly written and doesn’t contain jargon that only you and your peers will know. It should also include detailed how-to advice. A short, relevant, actionable piece of content is best.
Content marketing and SEO
Content marketing makes it easy for good prospects to find your business. However, you can boost your efforts with search engine optimization (SEO). Here are a few important best practices: Keywords are the foundation of your SEO effort. These all-important words and phrases are the terms a prospect types into a search engine when they’re looking for a company, product, or service.
When you include the right keywords in your content, you’ll attract more traffic. The best keywords are:
Plain-language: language your audience uses to describe their pain points and needs.
Relevant: keywords that match the expertise, products, and services you provide.
Specific: a combination of your focus, industry expertise, prospect pain points, and other relevant details.
SEO has evolved so that search success depends in part on how well your content does what it says it’ll do. Search engines review content copy, assess its relevance, and determine whether it delivers on what the headline promises.
Because of the importance search engines place on copy, using keywords throughout your content is important. Use the following guidelines:
Focus on 1 to 2 keywords. Avoid “keyword stuffing” by writing about what matters to your prospects with a focus on just a few keyword phrases.
Use keywords in the title. Make what the article is about clear and explicit.
Use keywords throughout. Find a way of naturally incorporating your keywords into your content.
Stay on topic. Good-quality content that provides advice related to a headline will perform best.
Social media and content marketing
Once you have content, it’s time to get the word out about it. Social media; Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Medium, Instagram, and others is a proven and easy way to promote your content. You write a post and link to your content, and then voila! People are engaged.
You can do this through 3 steps:
Focus on high-potential channels. The best social media outlets for you are the ones frequented by your audience. Consider the big, popular channels, as well as smaller, industry-focused ones that are likely to connect you with good prospects. Ask your audience what channels they favor and build a manageable list based on their preferences.
Craft your copy to fit the channel. Each social media channel has a level of professionalism versus fun, an accepted voice, and other details all its own. Before you write posts for a channel, spend some time reviewing posts to familiarize yourself with these details. Then, give your posts some of your own company spirit.
Test and modify your approach. A winning social media promotion effort involves trial and error. Track responses from the various channels for quantity and quality. Fewer high-potential engagements may mean a channel is a good fit, as opposed to a slew of clicks that never turn into an audience.
To learn more about how S-Media can help with your social media strategy and how to create an effective social media calendar, check out the comparison of our free social media management tools versus others.
Why use content marketing?
For one thing, marketing today is impossible without great content.
Content should be integrated into your marketing process, not treated as something separate. Quality content is part of all forms of marketing, including:
Email marketing: Consistently great content trains your audience to anticipate, open and read emails from your brand.
Social media marketing: Content strategy comes before your social media strategy.
SEO: Search engines reward businesses that publish quality, consistent content.
PR: Successful PR strategies should address issues readers care about, not their business.
PPC: For PPC to work, you need great content behind it.
Inbound marketing: Content is critical to driving inbound traffic and leads.
Digital marketing: Content forms the foundation for an improved or rebooted integrated digital marketing strategy.
Content strategy: Content strategy (which determines how content is created and managed throughout an organization) must be considered.
One of the hottest questions these days revolves around the most effective role for AI in content marketing.
Put content to work for your business
Let your expertise and unique value shine through by creating content that attracts, engages, and sells. With some planning and systematic content marketing, you can reach the right people and drive brand loyalty.
S-Media can help you take your online content marketing strategy to the next level by allowing you to create optimized content for social media, your website, and your email marketing campaigns. Use our tools to make branded content, including landing pages and paid ads, that can inform your customers about your offerings and business. With your own brand style guide, you can begin to build a brand identity and let your business show customers its remarkable personality.
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