By Ken Dirkzwager - September 09, 2015
If lately you have been asking yourself,”How do I get a good content marketing strategy going?” Then you came to the right place. You’ll learn how to adequately grasp the concept of content marketing and how to efficiently integrate it into your very own website’s content and marketing plan. The proper content marketing strategy will help you build your business and make you stand out from the rest.
In due time, you will have to define why you are writing the information that you generate and what you are trying to achieve with it. Before you jump right into writing, it is vital for you to understand the purpose behind your content and this will lead you to obtain a solid foundation before you even commence.
What Is Content Marketing Really?
Primarily, content marketing is the way that you establish a trusted and loyal relationship between yourself, your brand and your clients. This is the new strategy towards building a community. Through content marketing, you obtain those sells that you yearn for, instead of using the same hard, worn out and predictable tactics.
Gather Objectives
Like mentioned earlier, it is important for you to have a clear picture of what you want to obtain out of your content, what is it that you want to accomplish? When generating your content, keep questions like this in perspective: Do you want to get more prospects? Do you want to sell quicker? Do you want to become a leading brand?
Once you ask yourself those questions, plot your goals and objectives as a business, you should try to center your content towards 3 main objectives like directing traffic, focusing on sales, and integrated messages.
Think of the Audience
Here’s the truth, if your content attempts to target everyone is going to end up hitting nobody. As a business, you need to define what audience you are trying to target and get them to read your content. Think specifically about who needs to be interested in the things you write about. Here’s an example: If you run a fashion blog, you must specifically write for fashion lovers, people who love to shop, individuals who are devoted to all the latest fashion trends and so on. So, think about those individuals that you want to have read your content, and go from there.
Personalize the Content and Be Relevant
When you identify who you are writing for, you need to remember to make your writing feel personal. You need to make the reader feel as if you are speaking to them directly, and not to a group in general.
You have to be able to comprehend what content is appropriate and for what time it is useful. In other words, never wait a week after an update occurred, big news happened, something is trending, etc. to write about it, you must generate your content while the topic is popular and relevant. You will only look uninformed if you write about a certain topic after it has passed or it is no longer being talked about.
And I must point out, don’t wait for long periods of time to write more content; you want to be frequent and engage consistently with the audience.
Be Original
Not everyone is aware but, since 2012, Google rewards companies with superior content and penalizes those with duplicate writing. Meaning, if you take writing from any other website this will ultimately affect your ranking, plus nobody likes plagiarism, right?
Be yourself when writing, and think of creative ideas that nobody has thought of before, this will only improve your position through the rankings and have a positive impact on your business.
Promote Your Content
I know you are probably questioning how to adequately promote your content, and well it is quite simple, social media! You can start with the basic use of social media, and share your content on your personal Twitter, Facebook, and so on. Once that gets some momentum going, the word of mouth of people who enjoy the content that you write will begin to share it with their friends, and the chain continues. When you least expect it, you will have loyal readers anxious to read what you have to say.
You can always look into social media ads that drive people to your content but of course, for this option you need to pay advertisement money. This is useful too, as it is a strategic way to increase social media reach at a faster pace.
It will take some time and effort to create a good content marketing strategy, but it will undoubtedly pay off in the long run. Don’t get frustrated when you are just starting out, it takes some work, but you will get there!. With these helpful highlights on what makes a good content marketing strategy, you will take your content marketing strategy where it needs to be.