Content is king. You read that a lot if you’ve spent any time looking at growing your business online.
But what does that truly mean?
Sometimes it can be difficult to understand how content truly works, especially if you’ve been writing for a while with little to show for it.
When you’re online, it’s important to create a digital marketing strategy. And at the heart of every online strategy is content marketing. You need high quality content to drive traffic to your site, and retain their attention once they get there.
This isn’t something you can throw up a few posts based on what’s happening today and call it quits. It takes determination to find out what your audience truly wants, and provide it for them over and over again.
Want to create a content marketing strategy of your own? Here’s how.
Define your content marketing strategy
The first step in any strategy is defining it clearly. Think of it as your road map to the future.
In order to promote great content, you have to determine what content to create. Ask yourself a few questions to get your plan started.
- What is my area of expertise? What information can I provide that will have value to my community?
- What makes me different from my competition?
- Who am I trying to reach with every piece of content I create?
The clearer you see them, the more thorough your content will be. And that’ ultimately what will lead to you creating the very best content your audience demands.
Seeing your niche
One of the biggest problems marketers have is seeing their audience too broadly. If you’ve ever said, “everyone who breathes,” it’s time to narrow your perspective.
As you narrow down your niche, it’s also important to determine how they interact with content, and what they demand.
Too many marketers pump out content all the time, assuming it’s the only to reach their audience.
Do you know how much content they read to move forward? Do you know what questions they have as they move through the process? Do you know what they are truly looking for as they move down the path towards purchasing your product or service?
There are so many ways to repurpose content and give your audience what it demands. But your first step is defining who they are and the questions they really have.
How SEO fits in
Before you create your first piece of content, it’s important to define your audience. From there, it’s equally important to understand the way they are searching for it.
While every piece of content you create should be for readability, it’s equally important to ensure that you build good SEO practices into it as well. With the right keywords strategy, it will ensure your content comes to the surface of the keywords searches your prospects are using the most.
People won’t find your content just by accident, but instead will be lead to it by a carefully crafted plan. This puts your content in the right places, for the words that are in high demand.
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Building authority
The more people find you, the more they will talk about you. And that means your content will be shared with others even more.
Authority comes from proving your expertise. If you create your content the right way, it will give your readers and viewers just enough, so they want even more. You’ll become the go-to person any time they think of your niche.
It also starts with building a solid structure for ways to display your content. Think of it as a house, with your content existing at the base – your website. Too many people rely on free resources such as Facebook or Instagram, then lose everything when that “free” resource changes directions or shuts them down.
Instead, build your authority by creating a solid base for your content to sit on. When it’s deep in structure and offers a wealth of content, it’ll keep people coming back.
Repurpose your content
We’ve mentioned it before, but the best way to give people what they want is to create it once, then repurpose it for use in other ways.
Let’s take a blog post, for example. You can create a high quality post that defines something unique to you, your company, or your products.
Then approach it from another angle with another post. Link the two together for a more in-depth look at what you have to offer.
You can use that content to grow your social media circles. You can use that same content to build a solid email campaign.
From there, you can continue to grow it until you have a valuable resource. Create a pillar page you can promote. Or create a lead magnet to gain more followers.
For some, they’ve turned this wealth of content into something even more. How about creating a book you can sell on Amazon? Or make a documentary about your niche or service?
Now, we’re not saying you have to use all of these ideas in your content marketing strategy. Just know the possibilities are there. And keep your mind open to how your viewers and readers want to learn more about what you do.
Auditing your content
With traditional marketing, once the asset is out there, it has a short shelf life.
With digital marketing, it can last for years. Write a piece of content today, and the page will still exist years into the future.
While that’s good for your content marketing strategy, you should also be aware that as your business morphs and changes, you can go back and audit and update existing content to make it more relevant for who you are today.
Maybe you’re no longer offering a service you once promoted. Or maybe the rules have changed – what if you’re promoting something that’s no longer valid?
What’s good about updating content is it also allows you to breathe new life into your work. It gives you a chance to expand and add, and maybe reconnect to other areas of your work.
Or even give you fresh new ideas for things to create.
And that’s the point. This isn’t a do-it-once strategy. Instead, content marketing is all about performing it regularly for the life of your business.
Have questions about how to do it the right way? We can help. Give us a call today.
