Content Marketing is often identified as one of the best inbound marketing strategies. However, it can often be difficult to implement, and can provide a meagre return on investment (ROI) when poorly conducted.
Some advice and strategies to get you started
Identify your audience
The first question is what type of content do your customers want to see? This is assuming that you intend to sell something on your site and your content marketing campaign is intended to generate leads and sales. Whether you are in business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-customer (B2C), it is essential you understand how your prospects access and consume content that helps them make a decision. Is it in the daytime or in the evening? With a mobile phone or a PC? Do they appreciate newsletters, and if so how often?
Also ask yourself what content they might prefer, and what type of content is likely to influence their buying process. The best way to answer these questions is still to question them yourself. Take advantage of this to identify their interests, concerns and social profiles.
Develop an editorial strategy and planning
Your editorial strategy allows you to work out how your content can let you broaden your audience and grow your customer base. To do this, try to answer the following questions:
- Does the creation of content meet the needs of your business plan?
- What role should your content play in the purchasing process?
- Should they educate your customers about a problem, promote solutions, or convince them of the need to buy?
Once your objectives are clearly identified, you must set up a calendar that will plan the types of content to be published and when. Stay one month ahead of schedule and production, and create titles, set dates, and stick to your schedule. Another thing to identify is the criteria of the content. Determine what you consider as quality content, what can be published and what cannot. Make sure that you stick to these guidelines.
Define Performance Indicators
More than half of the companies in content marketing face major difficulties in the measuring of their ROI. Whether you are a small to medium enterprise (SME) executive or search engine optimization (SEO) manager, it is necessary to make sure that your investment expenses pay off. Set clear and measurable goals, which you can follow over time. Such objectives may include:
- Increasing the number of sessions and page views
- Increasing the number of leads
- Increasing the conversion rate
- Increasing online turnover
- Reducing bounce rate
Do not spend time creating content
Two major problems facing marketing managers are: allowing enough time to write content that meets the desired quality, and: producing enough content. For around 70 percent of marketers, lack of time is a problem. And most blogs become dormant after around 6 months. It is normally after that period that the effects of content marketing start being felt.
Curating content is about finding quality, unseen articles, written by others, and giving them your personal touch to make them pertinent to your readers, while respecting the principles of fair use. Always cite the original source of the article, do not copy and paste the content, and always put it in perspective. Content curating is not new in marketing. There are many advantages offered by content curating in content marketing. Practicing curating content in your industry help to position yourself as an expert in the field, and can show your audience the scope of your skills and your understanding of current market trends. Content curation can also save you time in writing new content, and increase the amount of content you can produce.
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