As a website owner, you must keep yourself up on a wide array of topics, trends, and techniques. It is no easy task, but it is one that is well worth the effort. This is especially true when it comes to content marketing. This is the process in which you share highly-informative, high-quality content that holds a high level of relevancy to those within your target audience. It must be engaging, intriguing, and highly useful. Once your content is written, you must market it in order to make it seen and get it read. In this brief guide, we will help provide you with a little direction on this task.
Focus on Value
Before you do anything else – in terms of content marketing – you must commit to placing a special focus on value. We are not referring to how YOU will experience value, but how your target audience will be provided with value.
Your marketing strategy simply utilizes the content that has been produced in order to create that “value” that your audience is seeking.
You must establish your business as a leader of thought within your given industry or niche. Then, you must utilize a wide assortment of tools – such as emails, texts, social media platforms, videos, and blogs – to offer the content to those that you want to read that content.
Don’t Be Random
Random tangents…yes, they can be interesting and engaging, but you have to be focused when trying to get your content in front of your target audience.
That focus must be on your industry, that which you have to offer, and the needs of your audience. All the content pieces that you have composed should have accomplished two main goals.
First, it should provide quality information to your readers.
Second, it should help in solving a problem that those readers have in their lives.
A random little post – on occasion – will keep it real with your readers and will help establish some personality behind your brand, but remember – consistent focus is best.
Avoid Unnecessary Posts
In today’s world, there is a lot of pressure to post, post, post. Many companies do it just for the sake to keep things active. Just don’t. Short of becoming an annoyance to your target audience, consistent posts could run off those individuals that would engage with you on a regular basis.
The focus on quantity is dead. Your focus should be on quality.
If you are posting for the sake of posting and in a random manner – just stop. It is only doing more damage than is necessary. The same holds true for constantly throwing a link to an article in front of your target audience. Remember, quality over quantity.
Seek Out Active Searches
Your content should create equity in your brand. In essence, this means that as you work to create more content, your brand actually increases in value.
The more help that your audience receives from your content, the stronger reputation you will develop. In fact, this will actually help you become a leader within your industry!
To develop value, you need organic traffic. That is, active searches done by internet users that are actually looking for YOU! By buying advertising space on platforms, you are putting yourself in front of your target audience. If you have active searches, they are coming to YOU – which means you will have higher levels of success.
If you engage in any content marketing purchases, you should focus on those that help in increasing your organic traffic. This type of traffic includes those in your target audience that have some type of problem, are aware that they have an issue, and have a strong desire to solve that problem.
These are all highly critical components to establishing online sales and ensuring that your content is working for you and growing your business. By going for organic traffic through strategies such as search engine optimization and keyword placement, you will find that your target audience finds YOU!
Borrow Audiences
Did you know that – sometimes – it is best to borrow the audiences of others instead of focusing all of your energy on establishing your own audience? This holds true – at least – at first.
There are two main ways you can achieve this. First, you may have an influencer in your industry that has a large following share your content. Second, you may publish a guest blog post. One of the best parts to borrowing audiences is that it is typically COMPLETELY free and it allows for a major level of distribution for the content that you have created.
You can’t pick just anyone, though. You have to select influencers and blog sites for guest posting that have the same type of target audience that you are looking to attract.
Constant Content
It is really not enough to create one article here or there. You should constantly post content on your website – through web pages or through a blog. You have to become the thought leader within your industry.
Become the “expert” in your niche and provide your target audience with regular, relevant information.
The information that you share on a regular basis should be a means of earning an audience and cultivating relationships with the members of that audience. It should be a way to market and grow the amount of information that you share. One of the best ways to succeed in all of this is to integrate a blog into your website. Then, you should focus on putting up at least one post weekly – or more!
Watch the Keywords
Now, as a website owner, you know about content creation, search engine optimization, and the importance of utilizing keywords – but do not go crazy with those keywords.
Many mistakenly believe that keywords can “make” you. It actually goes much deeper than that and when used inappropriately, those keywords can prove to be the driving force that actually “breaks” you! Keywords should not be used too much or in a way that has a negative effect on the reading and comprehension experience of your readers.
Do not misuse keywords, improperly place them, or stuff them throughout your content. You must ensure that you focus on keywords that are high in demand and low in supply and actually increase the value of the content that you share. Then, you must creatively utilize those keywords in your content marketing strategy. Keywords will help optimize those active searches we mentioned earlier. This is because keywords provide a boost to the level of organic traffic that you experience.
Spruce Up Your Content
Once you have the content for your website written, you should make an effort to spruce it up a little. There are many creative ways to do this. For example, you may include images, videos, music, sound effects, infographics, case studies, free informational products such as eBooks, white papers, interviews, podcasts, and other forms of media that are similar in nature. You can even create memes for social media platforms and text marketing for your target audience! The sky really is the limit when it comes to sprucing up the content that you create and elect to market.
Avoid “Selling”
When you market the content that you have created, remember, to avoid getting in the mindset that you are “selling” to those within your target audience. Instead, you must gain the mindset that you are offering highly-valuable content that is designed to help those in your target audience.
You must put yourself inside the mind of your readers. What is it that they struggle with? What do they want to learn? What types of problems need to be solved?
By marketing in these ways, you will find that you get a larger following. Your readers will come back – time and time again. In the end, the content will produce sales, but you should never attempt to force sell anyone, ever – on any platform, whatsoever.
Would You Want to Consume the Content?
When you create the content that you will distribute, you must ensure that it is that which you – yourself – would want to consume. In keeping this mindset, not only will you instantly create more valuable content, but your marketing efforts will render high levels of success.
Once the content is created, you should consider where you would want to find that content. Make note of all of the distribution strategies that you would be willing to engage in your content and focus your marketing efforts on those particular distribution locations.
The Basis of Optimization
We are sure that you have heard the expression that you should not optimize your content for search engines, but for people. This is actually true – to an extent. In all actuality, all content that is written and marketed should be optimized for both search engines AND readers.
The good news is most search engines today rank content that is marketed by many factors that are similar to that of potential readers. Yes, keywords are essential – but readers type or say certain phrases to find your content. Yes, readability and quality are essential to search engines, but also to readers. Focus on optimization efforts in both the composition of your content AND the promotion of it and “…they will come”.
Leverage is Key
All of the content that you create – be it articles, blog posts, snippets, videos, podcasts, and infographics – should be leveraged among ALL of the marketing channels that your business elects to utilize.
For example, post an article on your website. Then, create an infographic that may be shared on Pinterest. From there, create a video that may be posted on YouTube. Then, create a social media post to share on Facebook. Take all of those links and connect them to one another.
By leveraging all your content among all distribution channels, you will instantly discover that all of your marketing efforts are highly successful!
Marketing Professionals
If you want to experience even higher levels of success in your content marketing strategies, you should consider enlisting the assistance of professionals that specialize in marketing. The good news is, most of these companies also offer website construction, blog production, professionally written, highly-optimized articles for your website, and similar services. This will instantly take the frustration and effort out of the job and will help in ensuring that your content is completely optimized and successfully distributed when it is ready to be placed in front of your target audience.
Connect with us Now
We here at Brick Road Media offer a variety of services for businesses that want to establish an online presence. If you have an interest in achieving all that was outlined in this post, we encourage you to contact us now by calling the following number: 765-439-4029