Doing Content Marketing Right Way [The Art & Science]
Since the birth of the internet, content has been there. Similarly we cannot deny the birth of search engines that happen to organize the information and serve the most appropriate content when users request.
Slowly as the system becomes sophisticated with the advancing algorithm, content becomes more important. To make them appear in front of right eye balls more is required.
So whosoever it is intended to, content marketing continues to flourish as an important part of marketing, Only the quantity has increased enormously in these years. And it continues to grow.
Many B2B and B2C content marketers plan to boost their content marketing spend within the coming year. The content marketing spend in the past year globally was approximately $32 billion. Content marketing is to become a $300 billion industry by 2019, according to Marketing Mag.
In a world where consumers are savvier, more empowered, and more demanding than ever, businesses and brands need to up their content marketing efforts to engage, inspire and then finally convert.
But with 90% of companies harnessing the power of content marketing in 2018, with even more planning to up their efforts in the coming years, there is a huge amount of competition in this domain.
In some cases, marketers can find it challenging to consistently create relevant and fresh content that provides real value to their customers, audience and prospects. Because of this, many marketers end up regurgitating other people’s content.
And in doing so, they are propelling their business in the wrong direction.
If you’re intrigued and ready to learn more, we’ll show you some popular ways on how to do it the right way.
- Go beyond just blogging
If you use your blog just to post company updates, snippets of industry events, or brief thoughts, then you aren’t taking full advantage of content marketing.
Sharing company updates might be helpful internally but you should think of your blog to be a medium to speak to a broader audience, and hyper specific news isn’t that helpful to solve the problems of your readers.
In order to entice and engage your target audience, your blog needs to address pain points, questions and serve as a tremendous informative and educational resource for your readers.
Your posts should include how-to’s and tutorials, list posts, resources or link lists, cheat sheets, reviews, controversial content, infographics, podcast show notes, videos, interviews etc.
Do not write for the sake of writing and remember to provide value to your audience.
Brian Dean’s Skycraper Technique can help you choose the most engaging topics to create successful content.
- Envision your road map and vehicles
How will you use your content to achieve your objectives as well as that of your audience?
What topics will you choose?
It’s clearly the time to build strategies in order to get to the landmarks you’ve envisioned.
Think through your content themes and story ideas, the formats through which you’ll tell your stories (eg writing, infographics, videos, photos), and how much success each will receive.
It’s extremely essential to distill your content strategy into clean visuals that will crystallize the direction for your content team.
- Find the right platform and influencers
After having gone through the hardships of creating content, it’s time to post. Choosing the right platform and influencers is extremely important as it decides who interacts with your content.
There are some critical factors people research before they start doing business with you. They want to know who endorses you, who trusts you, and who is ready to promote you.
Do some homework to find the right platforms and influencers. The next task is to reach out to them.
According to Julia Anghel of WallSt.io, you’ve to take the time to engage with the influencer or the blog. Understand their writing style and the topics they like. Get on their mailing list.
Then write to find out if they are really a good fit for you and your target audience. Engage with their stuff and share across your social channels. Leave insightful comments on their posts and start facilitating a rapport with them to get your voice heard.
Finally, share your posts with them or request to write a guest post on their blog.
- Track your efforts
Being able to measure the success of your content marketing strategy should be a top priority for every marketer. Some of the metrics you need to pay close attention to are as follows:
- Social shares
- Engaged time
- Total lead attribution
- CTA click-through rates
- Direct post engagement
- Content traffic
- Retention metrics
- Referral links and natural inbound links
- Cost metrics
- Ramp up time and longevity
You may like to check out this comprehensive content marketing strategy guide.
These few points are only the tip of the iceberg. But at the end of the day, those who focus their attention on telling great stories, will win in the long run.
What are the other strategies you’ve used to gain success with content marketing?
Leave a Reply