A growing number of brands are taking a stab at content marketing, confident that it’s a flourishing strategy modelled after successful ventures of major companies, but with nearly every brand gunning for more readers, standing out isn’t always easy.
Yet equally so, creating amazing content is often viewed as a mere trope, while companies struggle to find a viable content strategy in this absolute rat race of a business world. Look close enough and you’ll see the bigger picture: emphasis on virality over utility. Companies need to understand that a smart content marketing strategy doesn’t just drive traffic, it also drives customer success.
Understanding The Basics Of Content Marketing
No matter where you are in your strategy creation or refinement process, it never hurts to rethink your approach and come up with new ways to create and share the content your audiences will value. Read on for a bird’s eye view of content marketing, types of content marketing and some of the best tips on how to create great content!
What Exactly Is Content Marketing?
Essentially, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach centred on creating and distributing relevant, valuable and consistent content to retain and attract a targeted audience — ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Why Invest In Content Marketing?
A well-created piece of content builds your brand’s equity, which means that your brand becomes increasingly valuable over time. The more you help your audience, the more your brand will gain a reputation for being a leader in your area of expertise. This creates a flywheel effect where you start gaining momentum until you become an industry leader.
What Is The Purpose Of A Content Strategy?
With a well-designed “content strategy”, you will be able to produce cohesive, engaging, meaningful and sustainable content that builds authority and attracts your target audience. It has the power to not only make your brand be seen but to create a unique personality through the right text, image, and video.
Most Effective Types Of Content Marketing
- Infographic Content Marketing
Infographics are visual representations of text or information. No matter what the topic, whether it’s a step-by-step guide on how to make an online course or about the history of television, an infographic can help you convey that information in the form of an interesting visual.
Infographics often combine text and graphic elements creatively to achieve various goals, like breaking down a complex concept, summarising information and making boring data and numbers look good. For marketers who want to incorporate meaningful design into their visual content marketing strategy, infographics are largely a godsend.
- Blog Content Marketing
The goal of business blogging is to get your business more online visibility. Just like social media, direct mail, email marketing and other marketing channels – these blogs support business growth. The approach addresses potential customers directly and individually, thus achieving customer loyalty to promote their own brand.
- Video Content Marketing
A video is no longer just one piece of your marketing strategy. It’s vital to your outreach and campaign efforts – especially your social strategy. Video marketing involves using videos to market your products or service, increase engagement on your digital and social channels, educate your consumers and customers, and utilise a new medium to reach them.
- Social Media Content Marketing
The social media marketing industry is constantly evolving with new features and platforms emerging every day. The purpose of social media marketing is to market your products and/or services by creating content for social media platforms. By doing so, you connect with your target audience and drive traffic to your website.
7 Tips on Creating Quality Content
This is the million-dollar question since quality content helps you get more visitors, lower bounce rates, and increase conversions. Yet who determines the quality of your content? The easy answer is your users, which also makes creating the right content more difficult since every user is different.
However, there are steps you can take to ensure you create well-thought-out, readable, and attractive content, although the quality of your content ultimately comes down to your users. This makes your content more likely to be seen as high-quality by your users and search engines. Here are 07 proven ways to deliver high-quality content.
- Write For Your Readers
Your reader is the primary reason you’re creating content. Whether you’re aiming for conversions, brand awareness, or thought leadership, whatever the case may be, your content has to be engaging and persuasive enough to make your readers stop scrolling and start reading. Engagement comes from content that offers readers something of value – whether it’s actionable advice or information they think is worth sharing with others – because it keeps readers coming back for more.
- Invest Time In Content Structure
Writing for search engines and users has less to do with writing but more to do with users and search engines since it allows them to discover your quality content. A solid SEO strategy includes a comprehensive site structure that organises your site’s content. Google uses it to determine which pages are related and the importance of your individual pages.
If you structure your site well, search engines will index your URLs better and users will find their way more easily — not only helping them find your content in search results but also when they are already on your site. It’s because of this that you can gain a great deal from reviewing your site structure.
- Content That Delights
Online readers don’t lend themselves well to slogging through mountains of text. Therefore, visuals that break up heavy text help them skim and stay engaged. It’s not just about sprinkling in a few random stock photos. It takes the right visuals, such as photos, illustrations, or infographics, to help get your message across to the reader. You may create an image in your readers’ minds using an abstract idea or an example from your text that plays off your subheading.
For displaying tons of statistics or facts, infographics are a more memorable and fun format. Research indicates that you are more likely to get 94% more views with content that includes relevant imagery than with content with no visuals. However, you need more than images to keep your readers engaged. It’s that strong brand voice and other tidbits that will capture the readers’ interest and encourage them to share the content with others.
- Develop A Strong Brand Voice
Use your brand knowledge to give your content a distinct voice that won’t be confused with a competitor’s. To demonstrate your expertise, use a confident, authoritative tone and back your statements up with current studies and your own research. If your brand is more laidback and approachable but still informative, reflect that tone with casual vocabulary combined with insider tips that aren’t repetitive.
- Be Mindful Of “Search Intent” At All Times
Whenever you’re writing content for a particular page, you should bear search intent in mind. An individual’s search intent is the reason for conducting a specific search. Are they seeking information to answer a specific question? Do they wish to purchase something online? How someone views the quality of your content is determined by their search intent. Does your content meet their immediate needs? Does your content make them more likely to stay on your page? For instance, if they land on a page that only tries to sell them products, they’ll be gone before you know it.
- Be Trustworthy
Trust is essential when people land on your page. You need to prove your credibility, especially when they aren’t that familiar with your site. You can lay the foundation for effective writing with clear, user-friendly language, but there is more you can do. Avoid using stock photos – instead, use genuine photos to establish trust and give your site a more personal feel.
- Keep Your Content Up To Date
Another key aspect of quality content is making sure it’s always current and relevant. This means that posting a well-written page or blog post isn’t the final step. Make sure your content is updated from time to time so people can find the right information. This is very beneficial to your users since it shows them you keep up with current events and can always provide accurate information. In turn, this builds trust and encourages them to return to your site. Creating new content is also helpful for SEO since it shows Google that your site is active and relevant.
To Conclude
As with every content marketer, you may wish for your content to resonate with your target audience – and that isn’t impossible altogether. However, content doesn’t magically spring to life on its own. It requires an army of creatives to make sure that everything goes off without a hitch. Therefore, it is only necessary to make sure your readers find your content valuable. There is no secret formula to this, no complicated mystical process. Everything boils down to a single concept: value.
Now, here’s the catch. There is no reason to argue against offering something of value. Creating value itself is difficult despite its great rewards. If you don’t have a plan and a means to gauge your potential customers’ feedback, you will lose a great deal of time. Putting this into perspective will help you better ride the wild tides of the internet for years to come.
Related Reads:
Topical vs Evergreen Content: The Art Of Balancing In SEO.
5 Effective Ways to Improve your Content Marketing Strategy
Got questions? Reach out to us.
