7 Key-Points to Know to Initiate and Skyrocket Content Marketing Success
Do you own a business?
If yes, then have you used content marketing yet?
No? Then, don’t waste any more time and start content marketing now to help your business flourish.
Today, content marketing is not just “some strategy you could try out”, it’s a necessity. If you want your business to earn recognition and gain a loyal consumer base, then content marketing is the way to go.
Do not dismiss content marketing as an overhyped strategy that is all talk with no results. Nowadays, it is a must-have part of any internet marketing strategy, and believe me when I tell you that by jumping on this particular bandwagon, you will be doing yourself and your business an immense favor.
Now that we know that content marketing is important, let’s now focus on those businesses that have already started doing it. If you are writing blog posts, or running a channel on YouTube, or maintaining an account on Instagram for your brand, then you are already in the content making business.
You are already familiar with what all you have to do to better utilize this strategy and get the most out of it. But there could be still some snags that need to be worked out to make this entire endeavor a smashing success.
Do you want to know, the extra bit that you could do to improve your existing content marketing plan and give your business the much-needed edge it needs?
Yes? Then you are in the right place. In this article I am going to be listing 7 major steps that you can incorporate in your content marketing strategy that will keep your approach up to date, strong and innovative.
No more waiting, let’s get right into it.
1. Have a Clear Content Marketing Goals
Creating content just for the sake of content creating won’t make any difference to your business whatsoever. Content is effective and can do its intended job only if it is relevant and valuable to your targeted consumer.
And to effectively create content that will add values to your consumer, you have to first identify your audience and what they want. Once you have that information on lock, then you are set to create contents for your brand.
Next goal should be to know what is it you want to achieve through your content. Most business owners will say increased sales but that is the ultimate prize, not the micro-goals that you need to achieve first and foremost before even thinking about sales.
Content marketing can help you achieve brand awareness, more traffic, and also aid in authority and trust-building, which all are the rungs of the ladder that you need to step on to reach increased sales. So, instead of setting up lofty goals from the get-go, have a plan to achieve the smaller ones that will ultimately add up to profits.
Some typical goals that you can think of while planning your strategy are:
- Increasing traffic
- Authority building
- Increasing brand awareness
- SEO success
- Reducing marketing costs
- Social media engagement
- Increasing sales
Know your goals better before planning to well shape your content marketing strategy and help your brand reach the pinnacle that was out of your reach before.
2. Go Beyond Blogging and Embrace Live Video Content Streaming
Video content consumption is at its highest right now with YouTube ranking as the second largest search engine in the world just after Google.
Ranking on YouTube is as important now to remain visible as through text content in Google. So, start creating quality video content and post them on your brand’s channel on YouTube to get the results you seek.
Videos can communicate more to your consumers while creating a deeper bond with them. Humans are mostly stimulated by visual, touch, and sound. And you get two out of these three elements under control when you are creating a video. It helps in creating an emotional bond with your viewers and make your brand more human-friendly and approachable.
Video content is thus more conversion-friendly with 10X more power to engage a consumer for a longer period of time than a blog post. And that reduces the bounce rate for you and this is what we all want, prolonged consumer attention.
Apart from that, videos are a great SEO boost for keywords that are hard to rank through text. Stats show that video content has 53 percent more chances of ranking in the first pages of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
A powerful video marketing strategy means producing videos that interest and engage consumers while adding real value to their lives. Analyze your target consumer, learn what they want and will be interested in and then create videos that best satisfy those needs.
Go beyond YouTube and post your videos on other video platforms like Facebook, Instagram as well.
3. Build A Robust Cross-Team Content Marketing Strategy
A collaboration of different individuals with varied talents all working towards a common goal is always more creative and productive than a one-man show.
Gather together individuals with expertise in different aspects of content marketing. You will have more input as to what to do next and how to do it while executing those ideas more efficiently.
Brainstorming with your team would be another win-win outcome in this scenario when it will produce quality ideas that would not have come to you otherwise.
So, divide up the key content marketing points among your team and monitor them to ensure effective progress and a smooth working environment.
If you are a small business with a low budget, you may not be able to afford a relatively larger team. Well, not to worry. Work with whatever you got.
There is no hard and fast rule that a bigger team means more success. It’s your well-thought-out strategy and your team’s, however small, hard work and dedication that will earn you success.
4. Utilize Influencers as Ad-Hoc Content Promotion Squad
Influencer marketing may not always be a necessity but can work wonders sometimes when you want to actively increase your brand exposure.
Influencers are popular and most followed individuals on the digital platforms in their niche. And the right influencers can be roped in to showcase your new product entering the market.
Influencers are more like endorsers who use and review your products and give them their stamp of approval, thus giving their followers an exposure to your brand and an incentive to buy and use it for themselves.
You can approach influencers like key YouTubers, authority bloggers, and popular Instagrammers for trying out your products and in turn, they will create content featuring your product online. So, not only are you getting more eyeballs on your product which increases brand awareness but also dedicated contents floating online all focused on your brand.
Content marketing through influencer outreach is an effective marketing strategy where you get the attention that you were looking for without doing anything yourself.
5. Dive in Creating Interactive, Data-Driven, Long-Form Content
It has been found that long-form content those having more than 2000+ words do better in terms of ranking on Google organic searches.
Why? Because nowadays consumers are looking for specific answers to specific questions. They want detailed solutions to their queries rather than fluff articles that just scratch the surface of the issue.
And to break down a particular issue into smaller points and going in-depth to provide a solution to consumers means more data which means more words. Consumers now prefer long-form articles rather than short 500 or 700 words’ posts that were in trend several years back.
Long-form articles stand out more in the crowd and generate business leads for a longer time span. Besides, they are your perfect ally to naturally attract a substantial amount of backlinks which are imperative and inevitable for better organic ranking.
Long-form contents are viewed more and add great value to consumers as they get detailed information and a proper solution all in one place. This helps in building authority and trust among your targeted consumers in your niche.
These longer contents are generally dubbed as evergreen contents that remain relevant for a long time and are a great source for creating more contents in the future by just repurposing them.
But do not go about creating just any generic content that is long. Create those that have value and relevance and are what your consumers want.
Here are a few examples of evergreen content to help you get started.
- How-to guides or beginner’s guides
- List of resources or tools
- Frequently asked questions
- Analysis of current trends
- Case studies
- Checklists
- Statistics
- Best practices
6. Focus on Content Optimization and Voice SEO
Content creation should always go hand in hand with search engine optimization. However great your content maybe it won’t serve any of your purposes if it’s not visible to consumers.
So, always optimize your content according to Google guidelines to rank on search engines at all times. Target relevant keywords people are searching for the most and create your content around it.
SEO is an important and necessary part of content marketing and is your ticket to marketing success if done right.
After content optimization, let’s talk about voice search optimization. It’s the future and to gain an edge in the competitive world of internet marketing, you need to work on it from right now.
It has been predicted that by 2020, almost 30 percent of all online interactions will be conducted sans screen. It sounds too sci-fi but it’s already a reality.
We have already encountered such technology through Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google assistant. There are still glitches that industry giants like Google, Amazon, and Apple are working on tirelessly to get rid of and will be the ‘in’ way to browse in the coming years.
Studies show that Amazon alone generated $1.8 Billion in voice search e-commerce. According to PRNewswire, this figure is going to jump to a cool $40 billion in 2022.
So, make voice search optimization a priority from now on. Here are some basic guidelines to kick-start your voice SEO journey.
- Make sure that your website loads quickly. Use compressed files and optimized images. Also, try decreasing our server response time to make your website more responsive and snappy.
- Write your contents as you speak. Use conversational long-tail keywords for better SEO rankings.
- Base your contents focused on questions that people may ask or are already looking for.
- Focus on local searches. Try phrases like “near me”.
7. Know How to Analyze and Measure Content Marketing Success
Last but not least, a significant part of content marketing strategy is keeping track of the success of your content marketing efforts.
You have set goals, done the work but it’s still not gaining you the results that you were hoping for. This is because you forgot to measure your success concerning each goal you have set along the way.
Various content marketing metrics help you monitor the performance of your content and a way to know if you are achieving your goals.
There are 4 types of essential content metrics according to Jay Baer and those are:
- Content consumption metrics
- Content sharing metrics
- Lead generation metrics
- Sales metrics
So along with a viable content marketing plan, you should also have a clear list of metrics that you are going to track to help you in your venture.
Internet marketing tools like Google Analytics are available online that will help you track your progress in terms of traffic to the website, user engagements, goal conversions, etc. For social sharing, you can use Buzzsumo, for conversion metrics, you can use OptinMonster’s Conversion Analytics. You can further use Google Alerts and Mention to track and monitor your brand’s online presence and references.
Use these metrics and their results to help you tweak your content marketing plan and execution to achieve more. It will let you know if your efforts are working or not, and especially which efforts are working better and which are faring poorly. Use data as a guide to restructure your content marketing strategy when and where you need the most.
Conclusion
Running a business and marketing it has always been exciting and challenging. But in this digital world, there are a plethora of ways to make your work easier and manageable while still guaranteeing success.
So, why not take more advantage of them and take your business to the pinnacle that it deserves. Content marketing is a tried and tested method that has worked wonders for the majority of businesses adopting it and your business could be one of them.
Do you have any other ways that you have used to strengthen your content marketing plan? We would love to know more. Please comment down below.
Adios, amigos!
An advanced All-in-One Digital Marketing Course.
Mentored by Mr. Soumya Roy, the Founder, CEO of PromozSEO Web Marketing Academy.
Being an entrepreneur and digital marketer, he loves to share his knowledge and experience in topics related to internet marketing, SEO, SEM, social media, content marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, and many more.
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