In today’s clustered and competitive marketplace, it has become very difficult to get attention, so just trying to grab the attention of your target audience will not work. You will have to explain to people what benefits your audience will get by using that product/service or what value it will add to their lives, that is why we will need content marketing.
Content that brings helpful traffic sources such as blog posts, articles, video shorts (reels), longform videos (vlogging) and infographics, social media posts, email newsletters, website content can be used to attract, engage and convert audiences into customers, although content marketing seems a bit complicated, here are 8 key essentials to understand it.
Content Marketing Main Purpose
Before starting content creation, clarify its vision and purpose. Content marketing is a medium to make people aware, read, connect with them and make sales. You just have to keep providing useful and unique content to your audience so that they can find a solution to their problem and build trust in you. Content marketing is the journey from helping to selling, which makes it so powerful.
Identify Your Target Audience
Content will only work well if it is created for the right audience, so it is important to have a clear idea of your audience and their demographics without which all your good work will go in vain, know the buying personalities of people, their likes and dislikes, profile your potential customers in detail like age group, location, profession, gender, financial status, milestones, goals, interests and online purchasing pattern.
When the content reaches the right audience, it will get more engagement and for that SEO optimized content is a must, so instead of assuming that everyone is your favorite, a focused approach should be adopted.
A Content Strategy Should Be Planned
Content that is posted aimlessly gets almost no views. For that, a solid and clear content strategy needs to be made before publishing the content. This strategy acts as a blueprint for the future and prepares you for long term success. This will save your time, will take your efforts in the right direction and stability will be maintained. Usually, the following elements are included in a content plan:
Know the purpose of your content such as generating leads, website traffic and creating brand awareness.
Maintain an organized content calendar to keep track of which topic is published on which date.
Design the content as per the audience’s requirement. Choose the distribution channel (blog posts, social media, email marketing) as per your convenience and how your audience responds.
Know About Content Marketing Types
Content marketing is not just limited to writing blog posts and articles. You can create a variety of content based on the demand of your audience such as social media graphics, short or long videos, podcasts, ebooks, whitepapers sales funnels and engaging infographics.
To start with, choose one or two formats that are beginner-friendly, easy to create and most widely reach your target audience, for example GenZ and younger generation audiences prefer to consume short reels/short videos content rather than long articles. If your target audience is young generation, then you must create reels content. Focus on Instagram and YouTube marketing. The content is repurposed or expanded into other formats.
Content Should Be Optimized for SEO
Even the best quality content will not be noticed by the people if it is not placed properly, it will not get visibility nor traffic to your site, that is why SEO optimization is very important, SEO is mainly for blog/article content, the main purpose of doing SEO is to show clarity in the content and not just to please the search engines, readability, content formatting
When the content is optimized, it will appear in the first page of Google search results for your blog post or your webpage. Basic SEO includes these main practices to improve visibility and user experience:
Choosing the right keywords
Writing compelling meta descriptions
Using proper headings and subheadings
Adding internal and external links
Distribution Channels Must Be Utilized
Once your content is ready, it is important to spread awareness about it so that it becomes recognizable to people, which is hardly possible without promotion. People ignore even content that is well-structured and can be of use to them.
For example: A blog post can be presented as Instagram’s carousel, LinkedIn’s short summary post, or YouTube’s video format content which gives you the flexibility to experiment with which form people are accepting and liking your content the most which allows you to use an idea in different ways to increase the reach of the audience
Several channels can be used to distribute content:
Social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
Email newsletters
Community groups and forums
Paid promotions (boosted posts, native ads)
Performance Should Be Measured and Analyzed
Content marketing does not run on guesswork. It needs to be monitored and measured just like you take care of a child. After publishing, the performance needs to be tracked and noted down, i.e. metrics like engagement rate, bounce rate, CTR, shares, likes, comments, website traffic, page views, lead conversions.
For that, free tools like Google Analytics, Search Console and Social Media Insights come in handy. With the help of analytics, you can understand the best performing format of content and can work on the same pattern in future and can remove the method which did not get visibility/reach.
Consistency Should Be Maintained
The most important rule of content marketing is consistency which is often ignored and rarely seen. For beginners, results are not that easy to come by but with regular, weekly or bi-weekly posting, beginners will surely get success. With time, when consistency comes, people will start liking your content. Google algorithm will keep promoting your content more so that it always stays in their sights, which will increase their trust towards you and due to this your audience will increase.
But there should be no compromise on quality. It is better to post some high-quality content than posting regular low-quality content. Every piece reflects the brand and should be carefully crafted.
Conclusion
Content marketing does not require a huge budget or a full-time team, boss, it requires a clear purpose, a vision and plan and consistency.
With every blog or video post, you can connect with people and build genuine relationships when you create honest content that is helpful and entertaining.