You may be one of the 42% of content marketers who document their content marketing strategy before actually getting into it. Well, you may be having a piece of content, a specific audience, and a list of channels to promote on.
But the question is if it is enough?
Well, it isn’t.
No matter you are starting with the fresh content marketing strategy or using the same old one, it is always useful to deem over the ongoing marketing technique and look if you are heading in the desired direction. Creating a perfect content strategy for your new blog has always been an important task. In fact, this works extraordinarily well to create the first impression. When you do it, you simply get to know if your advertising system is innovative, latest, and strong. Maybe you want to switch up parts of your blog to see if that will bring in additional traffic, for instance, people may want to add in videos to create a more personal feel that can connect with audiences. If this was an option, then the use of royalty-free music, videos, pictures, etc. may be used to add more to the content, helping it be noticed.
So, you have got a website and you wish to get traffic, you want people to get addicted to your platform and you want to be the renowned name in the internet world, however, the first step to getting the leg up on the competition is by having a perfect content marketing plan in place. So, if you are facing any trouble with this year’s marketing plan or you seek some new ideas to include in the content advertising strategy, read on.
Writing content is a simple thing, but writing valuable content is what defines the actual difference.
So, what is Value-Added Content?
Technically content with value is the secret weapon in two ways:
- Initially, it assists to display your expertise and build the trust factor.
- Secondly, it offers the stock of fit-for-sale products that work as lead magnets to fetch the customers.
So whatever your aim is, content quality is an essential asset as poor quality content may affect your product adversely and the entire reputation of your brand goes at stake.
Here is an instance that shows how effective content does the pure form of marketing.
Rolex is one such brand that can go for centuries without changing its content because it has a reputation built on quality and reliability. So, here comes the challenge how you can have a fresh and latest content marketing strategy for a brand which is old-fashioned or is in vogue for years.
Well, designing beautiful product images can be a great way, but it may not have any meaning until it is accompanied by the perfect caption and the product description. So, the content that Rolex posts has the perfect feel. The editorials, videos, photography speak of the sophisticated style that may not relate if Rolex had been using same old contents. The brand has actually been successful in offering such an exclusive quality to its consumers. Because the brand believes in quality over quantity which is really hard to achieve in the social media world where a company has to produce a stable stream of content so as to stay up to the expectations of the consumers and stick to it.
Now that you know how value-added content is important, it is essential to have a detailed overview of the content strategy:
Content strategy is simply a layout of the marketing plan that accounts to the management of the specific media that you own and create: be it visual, written, downloadable or you can simply get its picture anywhere.
You might have heard how important content creation is but before that, it is important to know the strategy of having a well-planned content copy. When you design a content strategy there are certain things that you need to consider:
- The target audience
- The issue you’re article will resolve
- How it can be exclusive
- The article structure
- The platforms where it will be published
- Scheduling the creation and publication
You must have wondered how content marketing works well for one business and fails to do the same for another. Well, it’s the content advertising plan that makes the difference. Content is simply the king. Be it funny, serious, informational, educational or any, content all by itself has the power to turn the tables. Though it is powerful but it will not transform your business or bring the desired results until you add one thing to it The Value!
So, what is it that makes content marketing work?
It’s the better understanding of marketing and business goals that make content work in the desired way. Once you are clear about these two aspects you are on the track and your content offers something really useful than just a time pass material.
Now that you are clear with how content marketing works, the next task is to find out your goal. You might want to use explainer video productions and post them on your social media channels, for example. This advertising can be to build a brand name, to win the trust of your audience, to feature your product, portray the benefits, attract the strategic partners and so on. However here are a few content goals that make your content marketing plan a perfect scheme.
For each piece of unique content, you are investing your efforts and time in, there is need to know how it can support your content marketing strategy. At every point, you should be clear about the goal, why you are choosing a particular topic and what are the results that you expect from it.
So here is how you need to choose the topics and set specific goals for them:
The foremost goal while framing content is to have the most relevant and unique title for your piece. It can be a bit slow and painful but this can be made easier if you follow the mentioned tricks.
- Know who your audience is
- Make relevancy your chief guide
- Relevancy can be audience focused
- Based on Niche
- Focused on the present time
- Focused on the solutions to the problems
- Then find a blog to refer from
- Leverage the assisting content tools like Quora, Feedly, inbound.org, Trapit, Reddit, etc.
With this comes the question which is the best marketing tool out there? Well, ever since digital marketing has become an important part of the businesses, there is no end to the number of tools used for marketing your business via content. In fact, use of worthy SEO tools can really work well to double the blog’s search traffic, get shared across various social channels and add to lead generation while pairing with the valuable content and good stories. As a result, it has been observed that content marketers are investing big amounts in the content advertising campaigns but here it is also important to make sure that you are getting the best returns over your investments.
Here it is also important to keep yourself out of the social myths. One of the biggest myths is this that use of SEO tools may penalize your website. This is not the truth, however. Google penalizes the site owners when they try to play the game while using excessively optimized keywords in the content advertising scheme and not because of the use of any particular tool.
In fact, when you have the best content marketing tool, you are free to dominate the search engine space. You just need to be clear about your goals, see if it is generating sales for the small business and perking up the marketing efforts or not.
So, you must be curious to know about a few best content marketing tools that can work really well to bring the required results. Here is the list:
Ubersuggest:
This tool work exclusively on free basis. It gathers suggestions from Google searches. For instance: When we type “digital” in Google, it offers suggestions like digital marketing, social media marketing, Search engine analysis, network marketing, and the relevant keywords. Ubersuggest will offer every possible variation as per the alphabet of each word that you type in. It assemble this information for the text searches performed in Google.com and for the searches related to images, shopping, news, recipes, videos and simply everything that offer results in approximately 40 different languages.
This tool does not allow you to save the keyword research projects but it definitely allow you to copy the keyword search results in the spreadsheet and save those keywords offline. To have proper experience of this tool and make your content marketing experience flawless, use: https://ubersuggest.io/
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a powerful tool that offers its users an opportunity to find out what content is popular by topic or any web platform.
Buzzsumo works while offering the insights into the renowned content online and the people sharing it. This is actually the type of tool that assists its marketers find out the highly shared content together with the influencers in the particular areas. While there are so many tools to find out the influencers on Twitter and other popular networks, Buzzsumo stands out for its exclusive features which enable you to find not only the people but the placement opportunities and content promotion easily. To use this tool visit here: http://buzzsumo.com/
BuzzStream
Buzzstream is another popular tool used for content promotion. This tool helps you to win attention for the content through earned media. This tool actually helps in building the lists and pitches the influencers so that you can get the actual distribution for the content. To have the best information about this content marketing tool refer to this link: http://www.buzzstream.com/
Apart from content marketing tools, there are a lot of SEO tools that complete the entire content marketing strategy and make it a perfect affair to carry on with. Refer to the list below to have detailed information of the SEO tools:
Google Webmaster Tools
Another SEO tool is the Google Webmaster. This tool works really well to diagnose the site health, optimize your website for SERPs, check the indexing status and so on. It is actually free and very much easy to use. A user simply needs to sign in and connect to the website for its usage.
SEO Powersuite
SEO Powersuite is again a powerful tool which is considered as the comprehensive pack of the 4 SEO tools. Each pack deals with the website traffic, search engine ranking and boost the sales. To know more about and have a step by step guide of the SEO Powersuite visit the official website of SEO Powersuite: https://www.seopowersuite.com/
SEO Profiler
SEO profiler gets you the higher rankings on search engines which may be difficult otherwise. SEO profiler actually makes it easier to get all the tools at a single place which works best to save time and money both. Here is the link to it: https://www.seoprofiler.com/. You can bring this outstanding tool in use and make your Search engine optimization experience even better.
Google Analytics
Then we have Google Analytics (https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/), one of the widely used and most reliable tools to use. With Google Analytics you get detailed website traffic statistics, measure the conversion rates, set goals, and get an access to the audience insights, track data and more.
The list of SEO tools has no end and every tool has its own specifications and benefits. So, when you make these tools a part of your content marketing strategy, the results are doubled.
With this, it is important to determine which types of content you want to create like blog posts, Ebooks, press release or what. And once you have a clear idea of the type of content you are going to create, the choice of tools and formats depend on that only. Below are some of the most popular content formats to make your audience incline towards the quality words and reflect on your thoughts.
SEM Rush
SEMrush is an SEO tool that tracks the keyword, help in keyword research used by the competitor websites. It actually runs an SEO audit for the blogs, look for the opportunities for backlinking opportunities and a lot more. SEMrush is the most trusted SEO tool used by the internet marketers across the globe. To have proficient experience of SEO marketing visit this platform: https://www.semrush.com/
Blog Posts
Blog posts live on a website and should be published regularly so as to attract new visitors. Posts should offer valuable content to the audience which is actually worth sharing across the social media channels and across the websites. It is recommended that blog posts should be between 1000 to 2000 words so that it could carry all the required information. Additionally, there is a requirement to check if your readers prefer reading short or the longer posts.
One of the best websites where you can refer for the perfect example of blog posts is https://neilpatel.com/blog/
Video Content Marketing
Videos nowadays are the highly engaging content source. These are shared across social media and other channels in a great ratio if compared to any other kind of sharing. No doubt that videos consume more time and resources than the written content, but with an increase in the visual marketing preferences, it has 40 times more chances of getting viral on the prominent channels.
As per recent research, the amount of video content uploaded on the internet in a month is more than the video content a television network has produced in last three decades. It’s a big number indeed!
The search engine optimization and content marketing world may be complex and frequently developing, but one thing is sure: videos are big traffic drivers for the platform. So, how can you miss on video content if you want to strengthen your content marketing plan? It is a must-have in the entire strategy.
Ebooks
Ebooks are another best form of content marketing. When you wish to offer plenty of informational content, there is nothing better than an Ebook. The best part about Ebooks is this that these work as the lead generation tools. When your potential consumers wish to read this Ebook, first of all, they need to enter their personal details like email id, contact number and so on, only then this book can be downloaded. Ebooks are the next ladder in inbound marketing. If you think you need to publish it as frequently as blogs, please excuse yourself. Ebooks are uncommon and need not be published frequently which work to attract the attention of the visitors to a web platform. If you have offered valuable content in your Ebook, your readers may want to read more content for which they won’t mind submitting their ideas and more. These actually bring business and keep your consumers in touch with your brand.
Infographics
Infographics are another wonderful source of communication. These can help organize and visualize the data in the most compelling way then words can do alone. This is actually the great content format to use in case you are trying to share a lot of information where it is clear and understandable. So if you are ready to start with this, get the wonderful templates for creating beautiful infographics in less than an hour. Pay a glance at this URL https://www.hubspot.com/infographic-templates to have a perfect idea of what exactly an inforgraphic is supposed to be
Social Media Content
Social media content is such a thing where social media content and the business platforms meet to market the businesses. With connected consumer and social B2B buying journey, the consumer attention is increasing. However, it is not about business, newsroom techniques, collaboration or principles only but it is overall about content marketing.
The content strategy offers a structure for content generation and a framework that present the results moving forward. It also offers an audience-centric output. The content strategy attempt needs to be found on extensively researching around your targeted audience. So you just need to figure out who your audience is and what they actually expect.
It is very important that you impose a strong content strategy from the outset else you may end up wasting time while trying to push all the pieces of a variety of puzzles together at the end.
Rather than getting confused at why all the pieces do not slot together, ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal. This is the only way you will be able to handle all the confusions and answer the dilemmas.
However to make this happen, here are a few tips that suggest a clear picture of implementing the content strategy effectively.
Recognize your Audience Personas
One of the best methods to know your targeted audience is by framing personas. While creating generalized and the fictionalized representations of your ideal consumers, it becomes really easy to present your content to the audience as it throws light on the chief topics and solve the tangible targets.
Personas offer a clear insight into the needs, behaviors and the expectations of your audience. It offers you to do things specifically for them. Once you make a place in your reader’s mindset, you are on the right track to tap into their expectations and ensure that your content caters to this.
Keep in mind insights at each stage of the customer journey
Another important thing to market your content properly is by having a proper insight into the consumer’s journey. This needs to be taken care of at every step. In case you feel confused at this, just put yourself in the reader’s shoe and observe what you would expect in that piece of writing. It makes easier to include the required stuff in your content copy. Here you simply need to be your own criticizer and develop content accordingly. This is what brings the actual output.
Choose your Channels of Promotion
The next thing that you need to be careful about is your channels of promotion. Before you develop a content strategy, make out where are you going to publish your content? It can be YouTube, blog sites or can be audio platforms as well, such as podcast where you can get great advice on building a successful podcast from companies like Lower Street. Depending on the choice of advertising channels, you will decide the format of your content. For example, if you want to promote your product or service on digital billboards outside a mall or office, the content can be in the form of text, images, or video. Surprisingly, digital signage has a 47.7 percent effectiveness rate in terms of brand awareness. Digital displays receive 400% more views than static displays. If interested, you can look for a reputable signage provider in your area (houston sign company or others you might be familiar with) to get your brand or product promoted cost-effectively.
Content distribution strategy may vary across different CMPs. While some CMPs offer you to dispense to your blog, social channels, email, website, paid ads, native ads, and others.
Do not forget the Goals at any Step
Since it is a long journey, here it is important to keep the goals in mind. When you began with the content marketing plan, developed a strategy and started implementing it, you had a plan in your mind. You had a clear idea of what your destination will be after the entire journey. So, keep that destination in your mind no matter where you are in between the way. Going astray from the goal may ruin every effort. Hence stay focused on your aim and hit the target without misleading.
Be Flexible, do Experiments
Flexibility is the key to stay updated. And when it comes to digital marketing, changes happen overnight. Now where such rapid changes are taking place, how can you think of sticking to a definite structure? There’s definitely a need to change with the trends. So, one of the important things to keep in mind is to be flexible with the content marketing structure, keep experimenting and bring in execution the ideas and the plans that work best in the direction and bring efficient outputs.
Collect data to improve your content
Last but not the least, once you have a clear strategy and marketing plan with you, you can start with the creation of content. And to do that: foremost thing that you need is the proper data. You need to have a vast collection of the data which is relevant and makes sense. This may include factual information like statistics and the news part. Additionally content creation seeks instances which means you are putting in efforts to make your point clear to the audience or your readers. Then the most important thing is structuring that collected data in a proper sequence. It may include storyline, the punches, quotes and other elements, however eventually the result should be a perfect piece which is hard to skip until the reader reaches the last word.
Conclusion
In the end, it won’t be wrong to conclude that in order to gain contact and have an efficient conversation with those contacts you need content. There is literally no point of posting the content just for the sake of it. It needs to be engaging, helpful in catching the attention of your targeted audience. And to offer the content that retains the interest of readers, you need to add value to that content in a lot of ways. Lastly content can entertain your audience until it is related in some way to your business and not a funny piece perhaps.
With this you need not be worried about the dwindling readership or about the shared content that no one is biting. These tips are enough to get you on the track and promote content that fetches a good amount of readership.