10 Ways to Make Your Content Marketing Strategy Work
Content marketing is one of the most effective business promotion strategies. Learn a step-by-step plan for using content marketing as a tool for small businesses to compete with large companies.
Most entrepreneurs already understand the value of content marketing, but still do not use it in practice. The reason is the lack of time, money, and understanding of how all this should work.
Paper writing service experts know that the secret of content marketing is not to have big budgets, but to make the most of the resources at your disposal.
If you know your audience - it's already a good start. The second important condition is having a strategy around which to work. The budget is also an important condition, but some things affect the results just as much as the money.
Let's consider 10 content marketing tips for small business owners. They will help you capture your audience's attention, stand out from the competition, and attract more potential customers.
1. Determine Your Target Audience
To understand what to write about, you first need to decide who you are doing it for. So before you start creating texts, identify the audience you're trying to engage with. Create a portrait of your main customers, and identify the types of materials that will resonate with them.
Once you decide on the target audience, it will be much easier to come up with topics for publications and identify possible channels for seeding.
2. Think Through Content Formats
Using multiple content types and their combinations allows you to find what works best in your case. It is quite possible that in terms of traffic and conversions, only 1-2 formats will be optimal for you. But it is possible that in your niche, the key to success will be diversity.
Here are the formats you can use:
- articles;
- cases;
- reviews and interviews;
- ebooks;
- email newsletters;
- video;
- infographics;
- webinars;
- networking presentation;
- posts in social networks, etc.
A variety of materials allows you to share it on different platforms, which gives you a wider audience reach. A sure way to master all this diversity is to repackage the same material.
Based on the same topic, you can write an article, compile a PDF book, record a video for YouTube, make an infographic, etc.
3. Analyze Keywords
Although search engines can understand the context and the essence of the page content, competent adaptation to keywords makes it easier to attract traffic from organic search results. Be sure to include the main search queries in the title, text, and other elements of the page.
This is especially true when it comes to broad topics that will require extensive text creation. Preliminary keyword analysis also makes it easier to shape your article's structure and plan for what information to include.
4. Determine Your Goals and Opportunities
Understanding what goals you're going to achieve and setting specific KPIs is critical to measuring progress toward them. Setting goals is the foundation of any marketing plan, including content. It is also important to set them to allocate limited resources in the best possible way.
For content marketing, the goals can be as follows:
- increase brand awareness;
- increase in traffic to the site;
- attracting potential customers;
- audience retention;
- generating conversions and leads.
The next step you should take is to determine what resources you have at your disposal:
- What budget can you allocate regularly?
- Is it possible to create texts on your own or do you need to look for contractors?
- Which distribution channels do you already have, and which ones are yet to be created?
- How often will you be able to generate new articles?
Having received the answers to all these questions, you can start forming a strategy.
5. Strategy First, Then Everything Else
Any long-term project requires the creation of a preliminary plan for its implementation. Are you going to launch a company content marketing blog? Create a plan with topics for 2 months in advance. Decide how often you will publish new materials and through which channels you will distribute them. Which themes and article formats are you sure about, and which ones are worth testing?
These are important questions that need to be answered before you even start working. By creating fragmented texts on random topics and publishing articles in random order, you should not expect impressive results without distribution.
6. Pay Attention to Social Media
Their potential is huge. But we are not talking about classic SMM, but about using them for our purposes – as a channel for promoting content. One of the important advantages of social networks as a platform for distributing content is when people share it on their pages. This is perceived as a personal recommendation, which increases engagement and trust levels.
Even if you create a great article it doesn't mean your target audience will see it. You need to take care to get the word out to people about your existence. You can be a jack of all trades but without a job just because no one knows about your skills.
If the articles are really good, when you promote them through paid methods, the effect will grow through organic distribution as well. People pick up interesting posts and are happy to share them with their friends.
To promote gambling sites using social media, personal pages, communities, and groups dedicated to casinos and gambling are created on Facebook, Instagram. Content is published there, aimed at promoting the gambling business. This can be direct advertising, reviews of best bitcoin loans, ratings, etc.
7. Measure Results
Before you start exploring other sites for inspiration, you need to understand what works on yours. To do this, you need to study the effectiveness of content already published by examining the pages that generate the most traffic.
Also, figuring out which content provided a good return helps with social signals statistics. A page shared on social media by a few hundred users can generate a huge number of conversions.
If you're not measuring performance, you can't understand your progress and justify the budget you're spending. The effectiveness of its uptake will also be in question.
Regular analytics allow you to understand what topics and areas have already worked well in the past. So, you can use this to achieve even greater success in the future.
8. Pay Attention to Readability
No one likes to read sheets of text in which it is absolutely impossible to understand what the essence is and where the fragment you need is located. Especially if a person is viewing a page from a mobile phone on a screen the size of a palm.
The modern audience does not have a special desire to delve into anything or understand. So the page should be designed in such a way that it can be quickly scanned with a glance.
To achieve this, just do some simple things:
- break the solid text into paragraphs with a small number of sentences;
- use subheadings, underlines, and other formatting elements;
- add illustrations and media contents, if possible;
- correct grammatical errors, at least at a superficial level.
A little polishing of content can provide a much more powerful return on it.
9. Use CTA in Texts
If your site seems simple and clear to you, this does not mean that it is really so. Sometimes a person who has read an article is completely unclear what to do next after he has finished reading it. Then he just closes the tab and goes on to surf the Web.
Therefore, each article on your site should contain CTA (call-to-action) elements, that is, calls for further action.
It can also be an offer to subscribe to an email newsletter, go to the store, join a group in social networks, etc.
In any case, the CTA message should be clear to the reader. He should clearly understand what you want him to do. Whatever your call to action is, your ultimate goal is to get the person to continue interacting with you.
10. Create "Evergreen" Content
Some articles almost do not lose relevance over time. Others quickly catch the wave, but the effect of them is lost along with it. A large business can afford to hire an entire editorial team that will write about trending things, track news events every day. For small businesses, this is an unaffordable luxury.
That is why you need to work primarily on "evergreen" content that can generate traffic for not only months but also for many years. In addition to attracting visitors, it also works well to create the image of an expert.
This type of content includes expert materials, research, and articles that cover specific topics well.
In Conclusion
Content marketing is an essential component of SEO and can work great to attract new and retain existing audiences. There is no perfect formula that will definitely lead to success. Much of this process is trial and error.
Since small businesses often don't have the resources for large-scale activities, you need to act smarter. This is especially important if such work requires resources that can only be attracted at the expense of other projects.
With these 10 content marketing tips, you can get a much greater return on your efforts, getting results even many months after publication. So the most difficult thing is to take the first steps.