Content marketing is the driving factor in your website’s traffic. The crown jewel. The keystone. By writing quality content and publishing consistently, you can slash your ad spending numbers and raise conversions.
If you aren’t effectively using content marketing – check out this graphic from Codefuel.com. Some studies suggest digital ad spending will soar to $242.80 billion by 2024.
Source: eMarketer
If you aren’t using content marketing, you’re behind the times and this is your sign to catch up!
If you are using content marketing already let’s get a little honesty going…
No one is perfect – and there are things to keep in mind when improving the content you’re putting out on your website.
Here’s a quick brush up on the basics from Ahrefs.com:
Quick Takeaways:
- If you aren’t using content marketing, it’s time to get with it
- Building an organic audience over time can be more efficient and better for your bottom dollar than 100% paid advertising
- Maintaining a consistent and quality content marketing schedule is crucial to your bottom line
We’ve thrown a list together of helpful tips for your brand to maximize the value of your content marketing efforts:
10 Content Marketing Tips for Brands
1. Know your audience
Any great piece of content starts with a firm understanding of what your audience needs from an article. Naturally, you’re trying to get them to your site to buy into your product or service, but the key part of that is getting them to your site.
This guiding star is especially beneficial for businesses that expect their prospects to seek education and information before they purchase. Creating context about why they need your item and leading them to the conclusion is key.
Imagine for example, you’re looking to sell grill aprons. Creating content focused around keywords like recipes or grills will bring your target demo (grillers) to your site. Things like “Top 10 Summer BBQ Recipes” or “Best Grills on the Market” will draw them into your site.
As they read, they’ll realize “wow, I DO need a grilling apron for all this meat I’m slinging.”
2. Use Good Sources
Good sources are important. Being able to show legitimacy in what you’re saying improves trust with the reader, making them more likely to convert. Think about it this way – using someone else’s credibility to prove your point is not just okay to do, it’s the smart thing to do.
The big sites to avoid? The same ones that your high school teachers used to yell at you for (We’re looking at you Wikipedia).
This also includes citing data.
ConvinceandConvert.com says:
Ground your content in facts: Data, research, and numbers are the foundation for any story. Your ideas and opinions and spin might be part of that story—or they might not be, depending on what you are trying to convey.
They’re right! Data drives your legitimacy and your points home to the reader.
3. Hire Great Writers
If your operation is expanding or you’re running out of time to properly handle your content marketing efforts, it might be time to hire some help!
There’s two options for this that yield similar results. You can either hire experienced content writers that have experience in SEO writing, or – hire a content marketing agency to do the research, writing, and publishing.
There’s benefits to both, but with a consultancy you often gain access to resources and experience you can’t always get with individual writers. Doing your research on both is important to finding what’s best for your business.
4. Optimize for SEO
Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords drive your content, because the higher you rank with keywords, the higher you are on Google’s search results. Be honest, when was the last time you clicked the seventh link down?
Source: FinancesOnline
There’re tons of automated SEO tools that can make your life much easier when optimizing your content.
5. Publish Consistently
This should be a no-brainer, but sometimes things slip through the cracks. But the reality of content marketing is that for your efforts to be successful you need quality content as close to daily as possible.
On average, it takes about 3-4 months of consistent, quality content to see larger yield. One article per week is a solid start, but getting into a daily rhythm of publishing will give you the quickest result over a shorter period of time.
6. Distribute on Social Media
Source: Invade Digital Media
How’s your social media presence? If your answer is we have none or not great, chances are your visibility is low. Being plugged into your target communities builds brand recognition and trust with prospects.
If you haven’t been already, you should be publishing your content across all of your social media channels in your brand voice to give your traffic that extra boost.
7. Distribute to Mail Lists
Who can forget services like MailChimp and Constant Contact? Creating subscriber lists out of customers and prospects that visit your site creates an easy line of communication. Sending out daily articles straight to their emails is a no-nonsense way of getting your information out there.
These sites also have built-in analytics pages to give you the best overview of your distribution efforts. Things like open rate, best time of day to send, and percentage of links being clicked.
8. Use Analytics
Analytics should drive your content. Using Google Analytics and other internal analytics tools from the resources you already use will give you insight into where your content does best.
Additionally, analytics tell you where your content could use some work. If certain pieces aren’t drawing many eyes or have the lowest conversion rates, it might be time to experiment with other types of content.
9. Optimize For Mobile
This seems like an obvious one, but when was the last time you opened your website on your phone? Mobile viewability is not only necessary but a must have when publishing content. More than half of all content is viewed on a phone.
If your website isn’t optimized for it, you’re only making yourself look bad! This is one of those things that is perfectly acceptable to hire contractors or consultancies for.
10. Repurpose Your Content
We didn’t forget about all that hard work you’ve already put in! Your best performing articles don’t need to sit on your website rotting to the webpages of time.
Articles that once brought in great traffic eventually fall out of touch with the ever changing world of search engine optimization. Not to mention, the actual content can become irrelevant to today’s world.
SocialMediaToday.com says:
Marketers can turn an article into a video, or an infographic – or the opposite in each case as well. They can reuse tips in an article by breaking them down into a series of posts or Stories frames, or they might post soundbites from a podcast direct to their social channels.
Having your writers restructure your content into different forms can be the gift that keeps on giving. Even a quick freshening up of an old article from a few years ago with modern information can be the makeover your content needs to be back on top of the page!
Wrap Up
Content marketing, while rewarding, can be difficult to keep up with and regularly maintain. By using some of the tips we’ve provided, you can get and stay on track to blow past your conversion goals for your content marketing efforts!
Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation.
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