Guide To A Killer Content Marketing Strategy

Are you Looking For A Killer Content Marketing Strategy For Your Blog?

Have you ever felt that your content sucks? Or worked hard on some content only to have it under-perform or not get the online reach and impact that you wanted?

Well, don't worry, this post is for you!

We will show you how to plan a killer content marketing strategy!

Stop the guesswork and chart out a finely tuned and content marketing strategy that is tailor made your audience. If you plan to develop or even give a make over to you existing content strategy, then this guide is for you

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the new market formula for online advertising.
It gives businesses a whole lot of new opportunities in addition to the wide online reach that it provides.
It allows to businesses to penetrate their market objective faster and easier.
Unlike conventional advertising, it gives businesses a faster and more personal connection to its consumers.
It is faster, cheaper and lot less cumbersome compared to conventional advertising.
To sum it up, content marketing is knowing what your consumers want and translating that need through content.

Guide To A Killer Content Marketing Strategy - Digital Marketing Trends for 2016

Source – Smart Insights

The key to understanding content marketing is to know what tickles your market’s fancy.

You have to put yourself into the customer’s shoes and start thinking like a consumer and make your content relate to your customers needs.

Make it feel that each word is addressed directly to the consumer.

Once you have learned to achieve that personal connection with your consumer, you can easily achieve your market objective.

What is the difference between content marketing and native advertising?

Native advertising makes customers look you up.

Content marketing can ‘convert’ the customers who look you up.

In content marketing, you have a hold on the media.

In addition, and in all likelihood, your content could also get the extra mileage through the Social Media.

Here are FIVE ultra important content marketing strategies.

Your First Content Marketing Strategy Would Be To Define Your Customer Persona.

A good content marketer always defines and makes a detailed report about his customer persona.
He has to identify that key additional element about his customer that his competitors or other companies have ignored. Track your back links, keywords, brand mentions, and know what your competitors are doing.
Apart from customer demography and geography, you should also have a clear knowledge about their customer behavioral patterns

Your Second Content Marketing Strategy Is To Define Your Content Type.

Adding Images and Lists are easy to do and could result in a post that is more link worthy.

The chance of other bloggers linking to your post is high, if you add a few images to your article or blog post. This is further emphasized by the guys from Moz in their recent study. Of course, this is not images sourced or copied from the net, but from unique info-graphics that you have created.

Guide To A Killer Content Marketing Strategy - Linking, Content Marketing And Images

SOURCE – Moz.Com

SOURCE – Buffer.Com

You can create content in the form of text, image, text and image, video, or audio.
This can be either through blog posts, images, slideshows, info-graphics, videos, podcasts, animations, or jingles.
Every form of content is powerful, but, it is impossible to do everything at once.
A startup also has very limited resources. Hence, the only way to chart out a killer content marketing strategy is to find that one thing that works best for you. Then, put all your energies into that best channel.
The next step would be to select one or two content types and experiment with it.
Content marketing takes time, but once it starts working you will be surprised by the results.
You can start by doing something simple.
Figure out which of your blog posts are working and why.
ALSO RE-USE THE CONTENT OF YOUR BEST POSTS/ ARTICLES.
Make slideshows, videos, and info-graphics of your proven content. While some people are comfortable in reading blog posts, some like the images. Of course, everyone loves watching videos.

Your Third Content Marketing Strategy Is To Find The Right Distribution Channels.

You wrote an awesome article and published it on your blog, but no one reads your article other than your team members. Even your friends and family will not read unless they are your target audience.

If you are a content marketer, you need to put in only 20% (percent) for content creation, while the balance 80% should go into content promotion.

That does not mean you should reduce your efforts in content creation. Don’t ever compromise with the quality of your content. Great content can provide a unique experience to your readers.

Your Fourth Content Marketing Strategy Is To Choose Your Social Media Distribution Channels Carefully.

One of the best ways to make your reader tweet your article is by offering them something tweet-worthy! A sample is given below.

You can distribute your content on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Medium, or whichever social media channel that you feel is best for your business.
But, focus on that one social media channel that has the majority of your target audience.
Besides, there is no benefit of tweeting if your target customer is not on Twitter.
Likewise, there is no point in ignoring Pinterest or Instagram, if your target audience spends most of their time sharing pictures.

Your Fifth Content Marketing Strategy Should Focus on SEO.

Remember that a good content marketing strategy is essential for good SEO.
Search engines will not optimize your content unless you work hard on understanding the mechanisms of SEO.
Every other company is competing on the keywords that your customer is searching on Google.
If you want to come on top of Google search results, then you have to invest your time and money to do a better job than your competitors do.

Finally, Blogging Should Be Your Central Content Marketing Strategy.

Blogging is unquestionably the cheapest form of content marketing. It has been around for the last two decades, and the reason it is still popular is because it still works.

Besides, it is much better than just posting updates on their social media channels.

One of the best functions of blogging lies is its dynamism. In other words, its ability to let you publish content frequently. However, publishing a blog post every day is not recommended.

Do it, unless you are starting out.

PLEASE NOTE there is also NO HARM in doing so on a daily basis.

Blogging Frequency.

Here is a recent link to a Moz STUDY – Self explanatory!

The study shows that while doubling publishing rates on their blog led to an increase in traffic compared to their benchmark rate of 10 weekly blog posts (1 per weekday), the marginal increase in sessions was just 2.9 percent.

Moreover, Moz’s content engagement (likes and comments) dropped only by small a percentage when the normal publishing rate was reduced to ONE blog post every other day. In fact, audience engagement dropped when post frequency increased, showing that users can only take so much content before they lose interest.

Simply put, the additional resources required to churn out more content might not be worth the small gains in traffic. The pain is not worth the gain.

While consistent blogging is important for both SEO purposes and audience engagement, the better approach is to focus on quality instead of quantity.

Longer Content On Blogs Works Better.

A Buffer.com study on the optimal length of online text content shows that LONGER BLOG POSTS often tend to show better results in terms of traffic and SEO performance. The report claims that the IDEAL length for blog posts is about 1,600 words, with 74 percent of users read blog posts under 3 minutes long, and 94 percent of users read blog posts under 6 minutes long.

The below chart from Moz.Com, shows that posts with 1,800 odd words have a much higher average of linking domains.

SOURCE – Moz.Com

Meatier content takes time, research, and knowledge to build, which is what increases its value to readers and helps establish your brand as knowledgeable and reliable. It also increases lead generation and conversion rates.

The point is to focus on creating high-quality in-depth content that doesn’t just answer the what, where, and when, but also the why and how questions of your readers.

Another Cool Tip For Bloggers

All you have to do is find a piece of content that performed really well in your niche and build your own piece on top of it.

You can use a handy free tool called Content Explorer to search for contagious articles. It can track your back links, keywords, brand mentions and know what your competitors are doing. Just put your keywords into it, and the tool will give you a list of articles sorted by the amount of shares they’ve got. This can help you build a winning content marketing strategy.

Summary

Considering the time today's, online market spends in front of their cellphones, laptops, and other gizmos; content marketing helps keep your marketing campaign. It is always better to market your message through online content than compared to traditional forms of advertising or marketing.

Content is the most effective medium for connecting with your audience. It does not matter whether it is on social media, your blog, or case studies, press releases, or white papers. Ultimately, content is what pushes an ordinary reader to go to your site.

Content is what converts a reader to a customer or lead, so it only makes sense to invest in content marketing strategies.

It is also important to know that content marketing strategies are an important aspect in your online marketing reach.

Social Media Marketing – Only good content will generate good social media following. In other words, if there is nothing interesting, it is a waste to post it on social media channels.

Public Relations – Content is the best way to create a personal connection between the target market and you.

Generating Traffic – Content is the best form to generate traffic to your site than anything else.

SEO – Combined with good original and unique content, SEO almost guarantees that search find their websites during online searches. Alternately, if you are not able to position your content effectively, it would mean getting covered by competitor brands who have invested more and better on their content. In other words, you should have a clear objective of what your content is aiming for.

In short, start with a customer persona, create quality content, and don’t try more than two types of content at one time. Remember to reproduce your best content. Also, figure out the best social media distribution channel.

All said and done, there is no SPECIFIC formula to follow and no ONE content marketing strategy works all the time for any NICHE. Nevertheless, content marketing is booming right now, but it is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.

Quite the contrary, content marketing is all about tailoring your activities to your product or service, specific needs, audience, etc. Constantly try to a Don’t be afraid to shake things up and implement new strategies.

Lastly, constantly analyze your content and keep experimenting!

As a closing word, just remember that blogging helps a lot!