Priceless Content Marketing Tips and Strategies
1. Define Your Audiences
The first rule of content is to define who is your audience(s). This is the only way to know which topics you should cover to be relevant to different readerships.
Segment your audience into the various personas that are likely to become customers, and then rework your existing content to match those segments. In doing so, you can focus your blog posts toward different reader ‘groups’, maximizing the potential stream of traffic that visits your website from multiple niches.
If there are certain content pieces that are not bringing enough traffic to your site, remove them or rework them for a specific segment. Conversely, if you have particular content pieces or blogs that are working well, update and refresh them to drive even more interest and engagement.
2. Establish the Goal of the Content
Each content piece or content marketing campaign should have a well-defined goal. For example, a blog piece designed to capture certain keywords has the goal of improving search engine rankings for those keywords. A thought leadership blog post aims to build authority and conversation around a relevant issue, driving awareness of your brand.
Focus on long-tail keywords that are highly relevant to your niche, rather than investing resources in keywords that are out of reach. Research what your potential audiences are interested in reading about or watching, and build a content tree or calendar that addresses those topics. And make sure to set a clear goal or objective for each topic. Be specific. The more specific and data-focused your KPI, the clearer your path to achieving it will be.
Give Your Audience Reasons to Engage with Your Content
If you want to build a loyal audience, you must provide some kind of added value. There is so much content out there; unless you can keep it fresh and in touch with your readers’ mindsets, you won’t be able to engage their interest.
Not every blog post or content piece can be a groundbreaking masterpiece. But you can elevate your content both in terms of quality and search engine visibility by including elements such as:
- Infographics
- Videos and GIFs
- Product screenshots (if relevant)
- FAQs
- Charts & graphs
- Polls, quizzes, and other interactive features
- Gamification
…See what I mean?
3. Don’t ‘Sell’
The purpose of content is not to sell your brand or product. Leave that to the copywriters.
Content marketing is a demand generation strategy; great content should drive the audience to become more curious, more interested, and more engaged. That way, they begin to associate your brand with something positive, whether it be helpful information, good entertainment, or a different insight or point of view that enriches their own experience. Tell a good story. This is the key to building awareness and engagement and creating relationships with potential customers.
Expand your content offerings with value-added perspectives from guest bloggers and experts from within your company. This is a good way to get traction from social sharing and expand your reader base too.
4. Content Marketing Strategies: Native Advertising
Native advertising plays a critical role in a successful content marketing strategy, especially as consumers are becoming more wary of social media. Native ads seamlessly integrate your content with the form and function of the web page that it appears on. Online users find native ads less disruptive and intrusive than regular display or banner ads, so they are more likely to engage with them.
As a result, native advertising helps brands gain visibility, broaden their exposure, and drive higher click-through rates and conversions, ultimately helping to improve the ROI of your content marketing strategy.
