Content is king, and the way of business these days. Picture it like this:
Your business has a freeway running in front of it with thousands of cars going by every hour. For some reason, they can’t see your business. How do you make your business more visible to them?
Content is the answer. Utilizing social media, business blogs, email marketing, and more will connect you with your audience (potential customers) on a deeper level resulting in:
- You being considered an Industry Thought Leader
- More visibility for your business
- Your business being top of mind
- Improved customer loyalty
- Increased web traffic
- More sales
- And more!
It’s a no brainer to engage in content marketing. However, how do you do it effectively?
Here are some tips to help you be effective in your content marketing journey.
1. Make content a priority
You may be saying: “Kelvin, this isn’t really a tip.” Hear me out though. We recently wrote about making content a priority in our article “Four Ways to Kickstart your Content Marketing.” Think of it, where do we put our focus? We focus on what we prioritize. If you want to get fit but don’t make exercising a priority, will you become fit? When we want to eat more healthily but don’t prioritize it, we won’t change our eating habits. If we prioritize work over our family, our relationship with our family members will suffer.
What we give priority to in our day to day lives is where our focus and attention goes. When we prioritize content, we will put our focus on creating quality content while making sure we actually create the content and publish it.
As you continue to create content and all that comes with it, it will become a habit. You may feel like you enter a flow state when it comes to content, as it comes naturally and is stress-free. With so much in business causing us stress, just imagine how nice it would be if we could remove creating content from that list.
2. Consistency is key
Again, may not sound like a tip but hands down, one of the more important parts of content marketing. You don’t want a Facebook profile that you only post on every other week or so, it makes you look like a business that isn’t engaged and doesn’t care about its own business. If you don’t care about growing your business, why would anyone care about buying from you?
You don’t need to post at the exact same time every day, but you should come up with a plan. Look at the analytics to see when your audience is most engaged on the social channel. You could have a plan in which you schedule a post on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday anytime around 3 pm to 5 pm (depending on your audience. Or a plan in which you post every day in the early afternoon.
You want your audience to know you are there, you care, and you’ll always strive to create the best product you can, no matter what that product is.
3. Focus on quality first
Would you rather digest content that companies just throw out there, not concerned with what is in the body of content? Content that brings no value to its readers? Of course not! I wouldn’t want to digest that content either.
Or would you prefer consuming content that was carefully thought out, and brings value to those who read it?
I’m not talking with you while you are reading this, but I am fairly certain I know your answer. When a business just puts content out for the sake of putting content out and focuses on the volume of content rather than the quality, they do not perform as well as businesses that put out quality content. Readers will quickly realize that you’re not adding any value and if they keep seeing posts from you, they’ll unfollow your content. This strategy is detrimental in the long term.
High-quality posts will gain significantly more engagement on social media. High-quality content will also gain the attention of those in the industry and will put you and your business in the position of a thought leader, expert, and educator. A business that consistently puts out sub-par quality content will never be considered a thought leader. Not to mention that there is a plethora of poor quality content in everyone’s feed which will naturally cause them to gravitate to your content when you focus on quality first.
4. Consider your audience and what they care about
If you consider the content you’re going to create, do you think it best to create content that is internally focused? Granted, you want to educate others about your business, products, and services you provide. However, you don’t want to be blatant about it. When you’re looking to grow your audience, do you truly believe that most of them just want to hear about what you do?
It is best to think of what your audience and potential audience is interested in and how you may bring them content they care about. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think about what they would truly like to hear about. Take content marketing for instance. When creating content for our business, we create content that teaches others about content marketing, provides tips, insights, and how-tos. Sure, a potential client could try to manage all of their content on their own using our content as a road map. You may say, “that’s lost business.” That’s the wrong perspective though. If a potential client is going to manage their own content, we want them to be able to manage it to the best of their ability. Also, it demonstrates our expertise, positioning us as an industry thought leader. When a potential client is looking to have someone manage their content marketing, we hope (and believe) they will look to us.
5. Don’t forget about SEO
One of the many goals of content marketing is to improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you happen to not have an understanding of what SEO is, the simplest way to think of it is:
Imagine you own a landscaping business. When someone is looking for a landscaper, what do they do? They go to Google and search for something along the lines of “landscaper near me.” When they get their search results, your business is somewhere on the 4th page. Do you think they’ll ever find your business? Of course not. Most people take the first, second, or third option listed. They may not actually do business with them but they will look deeper into that business.
Do you think you’ll gain much new business when you aren’t showing up in search results? You need to focus on keywords and phrases that will improve your SEO. SEO is an entire book on its own and we’ll take a deeper dive into SEO in our next article.
Conclusion
Regardless if you are just starting your content marketing journey or if you’re a seasoned veteran, these tips will help you be highly effective when it comes to content marketing. Make content a priority, I can’t make it more simple than that! Be consistent; you may not immediately see the results you would like but if you consistently create quality content, you’ll achieve your desired results and more. On that note, quality over volume all day long, every day. Think of what your audience is interest and you’ll never perform to an empty theater. Lastly, it is easy to forget about SEO when creating content, easier than you may expect. Keep SEO in mind while creating content to help ensure you rank high in search results.
What else do you do in addition to these tips to be highly effective in your content marketing? Where are you seeing positive results, and where are you seeing negative results? Your input is always valued.
Until next time, keep smiling.
Recent Comments