IF you own or work within a business and have an online presence, you will no doubt have heard of the term, ‘content marketing’ and understand how its popularity has seen a huge spike in recent years.
What is content marketing?
If you aren’t already aware, content marketing is a strategic type of marketing that involves the creation of a whole suite of different online materials to a clearly defined audience. This might include anything from video and blog content to infographics, guides, reviews, eBooks, tips, lists, case studies…and the list goes on.
The important difference between traditional marketing or advertising is that content marketing is specifically designed to attract and nurture leads, and eventually develop brand ambassadors who will uphold the reputation of your business to other peers.
A strategic content marketing plan also offers diversification of your business demand streams. Like any investment strategy, spreading the risk in a marketing strategy will allow you to better control your return on investment.
How is that achieved?
The answer lies in your content – as long as it is:
- Designed to specifically benefit the reader by offering some type of genuine value to the reader – no straight selling messages here please!
- Relevant
- Consistent
- Aimed at a clear demographic / group
Why not all businesses are getting it right
You might have heard that content is king when it comes to SEO optimisation. It therefore wouldn’t be a surprise for you to know content marketing, or what many think is content marketing is more common than ever.
This has subsequently meant that there has been a huge deluge of, (want for a better word), crap within the search engines. Many marketers are convinced that volume heavy is the game – which is true to some extent if the post is genuine and relevant – but not if it is a post that consists of nonsense.
Click bait (content which encourages visits to a specific link but for no reward) or poorly written, copy and pasted information is not helpful and is something that will start to put you at a disadvantage in the search engines, while generally annoying your audiences.
How to plan a good content marketing strategy
- Define your goal – what is the aim of this content? Attract a specific demographic? Make sales of a specific product? Increase brand awareness?
- Think about buyer persona – who is it that you want to target and what are they searching for at the moment?
- Conduct an audit – if you have already been producing content, figure out what works best and offer it up in a new or exciting way? E.g. a suite of blogs as an eBook.
- Brainstorm Ideas – multiple heads are better than one, especially if you’ve been producing content for a while.
- Define content types – can you write a blog post and repurpose it as an infographic or video? Can you partner with a third party to achieve greater credibility?
- Think about others – is there anyway you can distribute your content to third parties or have it published on a well respected website?
- Publish and share – once your content is created and on your website, how are you sharing it? This calls for a social media strategy and considerations for targeting other interested parties such as news websites or bloggers.
- Monitor – make sure monitor all content produced to give you an idea of what has worked better than others.
If you would like to find out more about the creation and implementation of a successful content marketing strategy, contact the team at Wired Studio on 01224 826664 or email info@wiredstudio.co.uk.