With people online more than ever, content marketing allows you to build a relationship with current and potential customers through interesting and relevant content that they read, like and share.
There is no time like the present, then, to give your content marketing strategy a boost and here are 10 ways you can do it:
- Embrace the content
Far from being a few tweets here and there, content marketing should be a considered a vital part of your digital marketing strategy.
As such, it is well worth investing people, time and money: a survey this year found that 66% of respondents expected their 2022 content marketing budget to increase over their 2021 budget.
- Choose your fighter
Blogs, newsletters, memes, videos, listicles… there are so many types of content out here, each with its own unique kind of marketing magic.
Blogs, for example, will do wonders for your SEO, whereas videos are great if you want to catch your audience’s attention quickly.
Which type (or combination) of content is right for you will depend on your business, your audience and what you are trying to achieve.
- Change the channel
Where you market your content is just as important as the content itself, having a huge impact on who sees it and the responses you get.
With your options including your own website and blog, social media and email marketing, having an insight into where your customers are online will give you a big advantage when trying to find them. Which brings us to…
- Speak the language
Knowing your audience is a marketer’s superpower! Using this superpower, you can target channels you know your audience uses.
What’s more, having detailed knowledge of who your audience is and what makes them tick means that you can tailor your content and messaging to better engage with them.
- The power of influence
Nothing beats a word-of-mouth recommendation, which is what third-party content marketing is all about.
Engage with content creators in your sector, such as bloggers and social media influencers, and you could potentially generate content that is created and published by someone with credibility and clout.
- Plan ahead
Like all marketing activity, content marketing will give you more bang for your buck with proper planning.
A content plan will help you look ahead to spot opportunities for relevant, engaging content and what format this should take.
An editorial plan will allow you to assess which channels will you use to distribute your content, the best time to do it and the resources needed to make this happen.
- Prioritise the optimise
Creating content that search engines love is key to your audiences finding it.
Search engine spiders traditionally love websites and blogs, however social content is also now also indexed.
Indeed, social media platforms themselves now work as search engines in their own right; allowing users to search for the content they want, whilst also suggesting content that might be relevant to them.
The answer? Identify those keywords that most apply to you and build your content around them.
- Always be you
When it comes to branding, consistency matters, so all content you publish should be recognisably “yours”.
Establish guidelines for things like logos, brand colours, images, and fonts, styles, and sizes of text, to ensure of your content marketing reflects the look and tone of your brand, from website to Tweet.
- Get your metrics right
Like with all marketing activity, there are metrics you can use to track and measure the success of your content marketing strategy. These include:
- Website traffic
- Page views
- Search engine rankings
- Shares/likes/pins/retweets/comments
- Inbound links
- Email & blog subscriptions
- Form completion and downloads
- Conversation rates
- Call in the experts
Content marketing specialists can help you understand your target audience, what they are searching for and the best ways to engage with them.
Agencies like Stick Marketing are dab hands at researching current trends and know what it takes to achieve high search engine rankings, social engagement and website traffic.
Using this knowledge and expertise, we can produce engaging, relevant content to connect with your customers and clients.
Want to give your content marketing strategy some TLC?
Here at Stick Marketing we LOVE planning and creating content, so give us a call to see how we can help.