The Basics of Content Marketing

November 27, 2020 Content Marketing No Comments

The basics of content marketing really haven’t changed much since its inception. The only thing that changes are the tools at your disposal for making content marketing work for you. Tools like blogs, social media, email autoresponders, streaming video.

Often there are multiple options for each type of tool such as Instagram versus Pinterest. Audience knowledge will help you decide which tool is best to use for your niche.

let’s go over the basics of using content marketing to support your business. It will help you to understand what tools you might need for content marketing,

Understand the Order of Operations

Content marketing is designed to bring more traffic to your website, first and foremost. You want more hits on your blog, landing pages, products, services, and so forth on the pages they can buy from. For this reason, content, for the most part, should start on your website, and then you should take action to promote it by using the other channels and platforms at your disposal – like email and social media platforms.

Develop Your Brand Voice

It can really help you understand your brand voice. Your brand voice includes the selection of words you choose, the attitude and values you display while addressing your audience or others, and how you make the audience feel about you and themselves. Some business owners like to make a brand persona to help them remember their mission and reason for being.

Develop Buyer Personas

One way to really help you target content to the right person at the right time is to develop buyer personas for your audience members that you want to target where they are in their buying journey.

When you – or someone you have hired – create specific content, you can use that as a guide on who you’re trying to target with the information.

Don’t skip this step.

Tightly targeted content always outperforms general content.

Conduct Keyword Research

Based on the knowledge you have of your audience and your product, take the time to conduct keyword research. Again, please don’t skip this step. It can make such a positive difference in the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.

Start with brainstorming a basic list of keywords about your product, services, and audience. Use these keywords to help you find others using tools like Google Trends, SEMrush.com, WordStream.com, and others.

Identify Types of Content You Need

Do they like videos, or do they like reports? Perhaps they like webinars live, or will they watch your YouTube.com channel? Maybe they like reaching educational and informative material on your blog? Determining the types of content that you need will require you to understand how and where your audience likes to receive information. Take some time to explore and even test the formats of content and types of content they prefer.

Know Where You’ll Place the Content

Audience understanding always helps you with all aspects of content creation, including distribution. Understanding the order of operations, plus where your audience likes to hang out to find the information that they need, will help you determine how you place and promote it.

Create a Consistent Strategy

It’s imperative that you create a strategy and then use it consistently for the best chance of success. Content marketing works. Content marketing is the most effective form of marketing ever to exist. If you publish and promote content regularly – the more, the better (if it’s valuable and relevant) – the more opportunities your audience has of finding you and for content marketing to pay off.

Analyze the Results

No matter what you do, you must always study the numbers. The metrics and data you look at come from the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are tied to the goals of each piece of content. For example, if a blog post is designed to pull traffic, look at the traffic numbers before, during, and after promotion to find out if it was effective or not.

Modify and Optimize

Using the data that you gather when you study analytics, you can choose to modify and optimize to improve results. Sometimes you may decide to do more of something, and sometimes you may decide to do less of something – all based on the numbers. This is the smartest way to ensure you don’t work hard for no reason. Focus on results and impact.

Mix It Up and Try New Things

After you’ve chosen how to get started, keep up to date on content marketing and what’s popular and effective so that you can occasionally try a new method along with the known working methods you’re already using. For example, today, Facebook marketing may be a great way to distribute your content, but tomorrow a brand-new platform could rise, and you should be ready for it.

Taking the time to develop your content marketing strategy before you get started is the thing that’s going to really determine your success. Knowing why and how you’re doing any action is imperative so that you can reach the goals you set.