Stop thinking of content marketing as an optional part of your marketing strategy. This essential marketing tool could make the difference in your efforts to connect with your target market and engage your customer. As more businesses use digital marketing to build their brand, it becomes increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd. Reliable, relevant and fresh content will give you the edge you need to keep your audience engaged while increasing traffic and conversions.
The prospect of creating content can be daunting but following these do’s and don’ts of content marketing will help you get started while avoiding some of the common pitfalls.
“Reliable, relevant and fresh content will give you the edge you need to keep your audience engaged while increasing traffic and conversions.”
Don’t Blindly Follow the Trends: It can be tempting to use popular trending topics to farm for content ideas but sometimes just following the trends can cause you to miss your mark.
Do Chose Trending Topics that Appeal to Your Target Audience: The most important rule of content marketing is, know your audience. Following trendy topics can increase visibility but you want to make sure you are delivering content with value to your audience base to keep them engaged. Choose trending topics carefully and select those that can be linked to information that is important to your brand and your target market
Don’t Limit the Ability of Your Content: Make your content multi-task instead of focusing on one purpose.
Do Capitalize on Your Content Marketing Effort: Add links back to previous content or other pages on your website to increase traffic and keep your audience engaged longer. Keywords are your friend! Use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find out what keywords your target audience is searching for this month and use them in your content to improve your SEO.
“The most important rule of content marketing is, know your audience.”
Don’t Forget to Grow with Your Audience: Your audience base is constantly evolving and your content should be too.
Do Plan Your Content Based on the Customer Journey Funnel to Stay with Your Audience Every Step of the Way: Blogging is a great way to reach your audience but it shouldn’t be the only tool in your shed. You can knock your content marketing efforts out of the park by varying your content strategy through each stage of the Customer Journey.
Awareness: In this first stage you want to acknowledge your audience’s need. Blog posts and infographics with keywords relevant to those needs are a perfect way to capture your audience’s budding interest.
Evaluation: Your audience is considering how to take action during this stage so it’s time to get specific. Consider building webinars and video demonstrations to offer clear-cut information your audience needs to help them make their decision.
Purchasing: Use your content marketing strategy to show what sets you apart from competitors in this stage. Get personal with tutorials or how-to videos that showcase the best of your product or service.
Post-Purchasing: Now that you have fully engaged your audience, use your content to keep them focused in this stage. Utilize newsletters, email content marketing, and blogs to provide information on how to get the most out of your product or service and to answer post-purchase questions. Smart content should encourage your audience to leave reviews and share your information for valuable word-of-mouth marketing.