No matter what your business platform is, you need content marketing to spread the word and bring more online attention to your brand. According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, 86 percent of highly effective organizations have a solid content marketing strategy.
There are many forms of content marketing and different strategies, and it can be tough to figure out what to do. If you’re feeling stuck, start with the following ideas:
1. Provide Value
Work on providing value for your customers. As an expert in your industry, providing value in your content means that customers can use it to solve a common problem. You might also provide value through entertainment, whether comedic or emotional. Overall, when customers see value in your content, they’re much more willing to share it.
2. Follow Top Content Marketing Blogs
Coming up with ideas is much easier if you’re getting inspiration from experts. Subscribe to some of the top content marketing blogs and read the content that they send you daily. Some of the highest rated blogs include Content Marketing Institute, Marketing Profs, Convince and Convert, Neil Patel, and QuickSprout.
3. Use the Right Sharing Platforms
The bulk of your content will be shared on social media. But not all social media is created equal. Choosing the right social media platform depends on things like your style of business and your customer base. For example, B2B businesses tend to find LinkedIn very helpful for content generation, but Twitter and Instagram don’t provide a lot of help.
On the other hand, bloggers and boutique shops tend to see more engagement from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, but professional platforms like LinkedIn and Google Plus don’t do much for their businesses.
4. Appropriately Use Online Advertising
Online advertising can be used for the promotion of your business, particularly if you have a well-designed advertisement that can garner valuable attention from ideal placement.
Social ads are perfect made for your content marketing campaign, and they can bring a lot of good publicity to your business. Facebook and Twitter ads are usually fairly cheap and can be geo-targeted to attract attention from the right readers.
5. Create Quality Media
Blog posts are one of the most popular forms of content marketing, but images, infographics, charts, videos, and other forms of multimedia tend to perform very well in content marketing campaigns. Focus on creating media that’s high quality and shareable.
This may require using extra tools to improve the quality of your content. For example, Canva is an excellent online platform for building infographics and memes. If you’re looking for great video creation tools, try GoAnimate or Camtasia.
6. Follow a Calendar
Every content marketing team should have a calendar that documents their strategies and outlines editorials. Putting together such a calendar isn’t difficult, as long as you set aside an appropriate amount of time at the beginning of the month to brainstorm and strategize your content’s purpose. It saves a lot of time, which is what 61 percent of marketers say is their biggest difficulty when it comes to publishing content.
7. Make Content That’s Shareable
Engagement occurs best when your content is relatable enough that consumers post it to their social pages. Making content shareable can be a bit of a guessing game, but there are some metrics that prove more fruitful than others.
For starters, it should be relatable. Consumers often share content because they agree with it, so content that perfectly sums up their opinion on a matter is very attractive. Shareable content is typically highly visual with images, videos, and other graphics that make it easier for the brain to comprehend the message.
Your web content is only as good as your strategy to put it out there. With the help of these content marketing strategies, you can learn why companies with well-developed content marketing plans experience 7.8 times more traffic on their sites than those without.
