Marketing is crucial to business development, both for established companies and start-ups. This article will focus on its more prominent branch - content marketing; the new name that has come to complement other marketing strategies. New entrepreneurs usually find themselves in a corner, not knowing where to implement this form of marketing and how to go about reaping its benefits. It can be a daunting task if you have no experience, but just as with anything else, you can learn by using available resources. The internet is a good place to start, though there is a wealth of information out there - so to help new ventures crack the content marketing ideology, here are the nine tips the stalwarts of the industry wish they knew when they were starting off!
Create a Company Blog
A company blog is the greatest way to have a steady flow of content. Having an information-rich blog will not only attract traffic to your site but also give an opening for converting visitors to customers. Select the kind of traffic that comes to your site by having blogs directed at certain segments of the market. Remember, for your pages to rank high on search engines, they must be SEO-compliant. So you need to be creative and deliver at least four blogs per week, according to Kim Saxton, IU Kelly School of Business.
Use the Right Tools from the Beginning
Tools are vital in delivering content to the audience, and the success or failure of your content marketing depends on how well you select the right tools. Many startups fail to allocate adequate resources to manage and develop their young business, which hurts it in the long-run. Insufficient resources mean you are left with cheap, ineffective tools for your content marketing, and it becomes impossible to achieve desired results. Mattan Danino, CEO and founder of Webitmd, warns of this trend because as you apply low-cost tools, they run the risk of being overtaken by emerging technologies. You can familiarize yourself with content marketing tools as compiled by Curata.com
Quality Content for Better Engagement
As you come up with blogs that target your choice of audience, you need to use the right tactics to keep them engaged. One of them is the story-telling technique. Anastacia Sidko, the Content Manager at Semrush, insists on creating content that has value to the user. Her advice mentions the importance of sharing your own stories, and those of other industry influencers. Who doesn’t like reading inspiring stories? They keep the audience engaged and provoke the reader to give feedback...and often spend money.
If you want to know the ingredients that make quality content, read this article by Kissmetrics.com.
When You cannot Recreate, Repurpose
Sometimes, it becomes difficult to create new content in a short space of time. This is the time to use your past work to come up with new content. For example, you can combine several articles to mine a new topic for your readers. Re-read your past work to help generate new ideas - you can re-modify, recreate and rebuild into something new.
The advice is, as you write new articles, keep thinking of how you can reuse them in the future to ease your content creation process.
Find the Right Platform and Influencers
With whom do you want to interact for your business' sake? Before people employ you, they want to know what kind of person you are. The way to find out is by looking at who follows you, the kind of people you attract, and the composition of your inner circle within social media. The quality of audience you attract is only as good as the people you seem to hang around. So as you research the platform and the influencers, think about the impression you’re giving off, and align yourself with the right people in the right place to reach your goal.
Once you identify the right influencers, move systematically and start leaving valuable feedback on their blogs. Share their stuff as a way of starting engagements with them, advises Julia Anghel of Wallst.io.
You can read further on how to connect with influencers by clicking here.
Start Everything with Cornerstone Content
Cornerstone content is the backbone from which all your other content is rooted. Your genre of writing and theme develops from there. The good thing about developing base content is that it will keep you from getting overwhelmed, notes Michael Passanate, Senior Director of Marketing at Besler Consulting.
You can develop one or several cornerstone pages from where to base your future content. If you would like to know more about cornerstone content, check this link.
Use Rich Images and Videos in Your Content
Nothing tells stories better than pictures. Between a long article and an attractive infographic, which do you find more engaging? The infographic, right? The essence of content marketing is to engage your readers and convey a message, and the way to hold them is by using images.
Add informative and valuable media to your content. It interests users and increases the time they spend on your site, according to Eitan Zimerman, CIO at Act Bold Media Group.
Submit Guest Posts To Reputable Sites
You don’t have an audience yet, and you need a starting point. Guest blogging has been used by many startups to draw an audience of their own. You are probably an expert in a particular area, but no one knows about it - so guest blogging is a good forum to showcase your talent. Search the internet for the various domains you would like to contribute and make a list as you go. Check the Domain Authority so you choose domains with higher authority, in order to gain high visibility. You can use Google to search for guest blogging opportunities. Guest blogging is used by 20% of entrepreneurs to boost traffic, as we learn from Ahrefs.com.
This informative article by backlinko.com will leave you an expert on guest blogging.
Develop Your Content by Learning from the Others
You could be struggling to find a footing, but don’t worry since many others have been as stuck as you before. Research on what worked on your target audience, and come up with topics based on those ideas.
Find the trending issues of your industry, and develop your content from there. Your idea is to come up with a fresh and more exciting content based on that trending topic. If for example, you find an article talking about the best coding languages for beginners, you can come up with a more interesting article on step-by-step ways to learn coding languages for beginners.
Read further about developing your content marketing strategy here.
Now you’ve heard from those who went before you, use their tips to bring your creativity to life. Be confident and forge forward, now you have information on how to face the content marketing part of your business.
Fellow freelancers rely on your feedback on how this article helped shape your business. Don’t deny them; leave a comment below and share it to inspire others.
