Content marketing is not a new concept.
Content has been used to attract customers ever since businesses started sending print newsletters in the post.
What’s new about content marketing?
Now is that it’s more strategic, it’s not just about consistently publishing blog posts and sending out tweets.
There is much more to be done to get the most out of your content. With 60% of marketers producing at least one piece of content a day, a content strategy is what gives your content the edge it needs to really be seen.
Instead of just putting out content and hoping for the best, a content marketing strategy will enable you to create relevant content and distribute it in a way that gets quantifiable results.
“Making sure a consistent brand image is being presented can be difficult,
especially with a large team working on content creation.”
Buffer is an example of a company that was able to do this brilliantly. They used content such as blog posts and emails very effectively, and it helped them build recognition, trust and a customer base of nearly 400,000 users.
Here at BluLux Media, content marketing is also a big part of what we do. So, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned marketer, here are some actionable tips that can put you on the right track when it comes to effective inbound marketing.
#1 Keep Brand Image Consistent
Content is what best defines your brand.
Your brand’s personality shines through whatever content you choose to publish on your blogs and social media.
Making sure a consistent brand image is being presented can be difficult, especially with a large team working on content creation.
In these cases, it can be helpful to create a set of branding guidelines to give to internal and external contributors. While being helpful to designers, a branding guide can also help keep brand voice consistent and tell writers what tone, vocabulary and formatting to use.
Whether someone comes across your blog post, social media content or videos, they should feel like it’s all coming from the same place.
Try asking questions:
Does this represent the brand positively?
Does it coincide with the company’s values?
Does this seem in tune with previous brand content?
“According to Forbes brand consistency across all platforms
can increase revenue by 23%”
#2 Post Evergreen Content
Evergreen content drives up to 40% of publisher traffic.
Start out with making sure there is a certain amount of evergreen content on your blog or website.
This helps your company build an online presence and find a place in the Google rankings.
We know trending topics and news can get clicks at first, but they stop getting as much attention once their peak time is over.
Google’s crawlers index articles and webpages that have not generated a lot of traffic in recent history as dated or expired.
These may contain a lot of statistics for a particular year, be news-related or specific to certain occasions.
Articles that contain information and advice that can be useful at any time perform at a steadier rate.
This content covers topics that people have consistently searched on Google for over long periods of time.
Some topics that have longer lifespans include FAQs, how-to posts and simplified concepts.
Find out what the evergreen topics in your industry are, and write your take on them to establish credibility.
#3 Be Original
Online content within the same industry is often just the opinions of a few leading companies being stated over and over. This makes readers lose interest very quickly. According to SoftwareFindr there are 505 million blogs on the internet, and 2.75 million posts are published each day on WordPress alone. This may seem like an impossibly large number of competitors, but if every post just repeats what the last one had to say, then why would anyone read them? That’s why it’s so important to always share your unique stance with your readers. If you say what nobody else is willing to say, then your content is already at an advantage. Of course, you shouldn’t be offensive just to stand out, but if you have a new perspective on something, don’t hold back from speaking your mind.
#4 Repurpose Old Content
Once you have content that’s pulling the target audience’s attention, you should think of ways to get the most return out of it. You may have created content with a certain format in mind, but you can always create variations of it to fit different formats. An article can become a video, podcast or even a series of shareable tweets. If a blog post about a particular topic garners more audience response, then consider putting them together in an eBook or creating an email newsletter for that particular topic. This will not only bring you more return on the time and money you invested in creating successful content, but it will also bring you new audiences who prefer a certain format over another. Give your audience all the chances you can to see the content they’re particularly interested in.
#5 Use the Tools Available
Content marketing isn’t just about publishing content. It’s about publishing content as efficiently as possible and measuring the results. There are so many tools out there that will make your work easier for you. For example, Google Keyword Planner can help you brainstorm topic ideas. You could also use one of the many topic generators available online. Services such as Buffer and Hubspot can help you manage your content. You can get high quality, free images from Unsplash, and improve the quality of your text with tools such as Grammarly and Hemmingway. Once you are confident about the quality of your content, you can use analytics tools to find out what content is providing you the most benefit. Don’t just focus on views; be mindful of conversions and leads. Measure the metrics that are relevant to your content marketing goals. You can use Google Analytics to measure overall traffic and for other metrics such as social shares, tools like Chartbeat can be used.
Of course, there’s a lot more to do to fully optimize your content for the web, but with these tips, you will be off to a good start.