Growing your online presence through digital marketing is a key part of being a successful brand in today’s business world. However, to actually have successful digital marketing campaigns, you’re going to have to come up with a compelling content marketing strategy.
Creating content can be quite difficult, creating many challenges, especially for those who aren’t used to content creation and aren’t outsourcing content marketing services. That being said, there are some surefire strategies that you can employ to ensure that the content your brand creates is compelling and effective. So how should you be looking to approach your content marketing? Here are some content marketing strategies that you absolutely need to try out.
Create a Specific Audience
One of the most important parts of creating a content marketing strategy is making sure that you have a specific audience. There is a vast user base out there, and it’s almost impossible to write content that satisfies everyone’s needs. For example, if you write a content piece that is meant to be introductory to a topic, someone who is an expert in that topic will likely get little to no value out of it.
However, if you write a content piece full of industry-specific language and jargon, someone who isn’t as familiar with the industry might not be able to understand what you’re talking about. As a result, you first need to identify what type of audience you want to attract to your website and create content that caters to their needs. Having a specific audience and using a consistent voice to reach this audience will make your content much more effective at meeting your goals.
Provide Value to the Reader
Rather than just trying to appease search engine crawlers and attempt to rank higher on search engine results, your content should be adding value to the lives of your readers. Your content shouldn’t just be a mechanism to rank higher but should instead be another medium to reach consumers.
A good content piece should be able to educate a reader, leaving them with more information than what they had before they read your content piece. When a reader gains value from your content piece, they will be much more educated on the topic and industry, meaning they’re much more likely to do business with you.
Additionally, the consumer will view your brand as much more trustworthy and authoritative afterwards, and they might even peg your website as an industry-leading source of information. Content marketing is so much more than just boosting search engine results, so make sure you’re actually creating content that users can get value out of.
Plan Out Content Maps
The key to creating an effective content marketing strategy is creating an extensive content map each and every month. When you create a content map, you should map out what content pieces you’re creating and when they will be posted. You should also plan out features of the content, such as its word count and specific keywords well ahead of time.
Creating a content map and sticking to it can make your content have a much sharper focus and can ensure that you have a steady stream of content coming out at all times. Failing to adequately plan out your content ahead of time can make your content seem sporadic and all over the place, something you definitely will want to avoid.
Establish KPIs and Goals
Something that many people fail to do when it comes to content marketing is establishing KPIs and goals to monitor performance. It is not enough to simply create content, publish it, and then leave it to its own devices. If you truly want to get the most out of your content, then you need to establish specific goals and then monitor its performance to ensure it reaches those goals.
For example, you may state that you want your content piece to get a specific amount of views or want a specific link in the content piece to be visited a certain amount of times. Setting these goals and then monitoring them can allow you to see what types of content you create are most successful and what ones are lagging behind.
If you notice certain types of content are overperforming your KPIs and goals, you should try to emulate the features of those content pieces in all of your content pieces. However, if you notice certain types of content pieces failing to meet expectations, then you know what types of content to avoid in the future.