Beyond Diaries

Content marketing has strategically improved over the years. Even though it has been among us, its importance has seen a huge growth in the past decade.

I am specifically focusing on online content marketing which involves marketing content in the form of either blogs, infographics, website content, articles, videos, podcasts, etc. Content has witnessed all of it, from print forms to digital forms (which we use today). Even marketers are not reluctant to promote their brands digitally (thanks to the digital generation).

However, do you wonder why despite the popularity and ease of availability of the internet, not all brands gain the customers’ attention? Why is it that despite spending a massive amount of money on advertisements and online content some businesses fail to accumulate audience? Well, content marketing—as easy as it might sound—needs research and strategy.

Whether you are a beginner or have not seen much success with the content marketing strategy that you have adopted so far, it is time that you reflect upon the essentiality of having great content. I have been freelancing for several years and with all the knowledge I have gained from the content marketing industry, I have summarized 8 ways to improve the quality of your content.

Please note, these are just well-researched and thought about ideas. Ultimately, you need to add an extra flair of creativity in your strategy to have a great online content.

Know your goaL

Now that you have decided to step up in the game of content marketing, you have to realize that having a defined goal is necessary.

A defined goal will not only enable you to understand the measure of your marketing success but would also be of guidance in the later developmental stages of your strategy. You need to define a few things: why you are doing this, what type of content you are making, and where will you share the content.

Ultimately, the goal would be to maximize traffic to your website or other platforms where you have published the content and get more people engaged with the content. This will eventually lead to more customers (slow and steady wins the race!) and brand engagement. When I say maximum traffic, it certainly implies the right traffic (we don’t want bots or users who are uninterested in the product/brand).

Know your audience

Now that you have your goal set in place, it is important that you have the right kind of audience to market your products to. Why would you be interested in selling your product to non-targeted groups? A great brand does not go with the policy of “attract them all”. Rather, they work strategically and specifically to identify their potential customers.

Effective content is born when you present answers to the questions by your audience, in this case-potential customers. You want a long-term relationship with the audience so that they bounce back to you. Hence, it is necessary to dig out their needs, answer their queries and concerns, and make them a part of your content. This would help your audience develop a personal connection with your content.

Also, other factors can help you determine the right audience for your content. These can include likes/dislikes, beliefs, profession, age-group, gender, etc. A well-targeted audience will help you increase the reachability of the content and help increase the customer base for your brand eventually.

Know your content

Now, you have successfully established your goals and your target audience. Next, to create great content for marketing your brand, you should understand that audience engagement is directly proportional to the need you create.

Let me explain it to you simply. If I am buying a product from XYZ company, I would be curious to know their values and the reason behind the advent of their product. In short, I would lookout for a nice story to engage myself with the brand. The more engaged I am, the more I would be willing to develop my trust in the brand.

Your audience will always find reasons to invest their time in your brand and your content should be able to deliver the same. Most of the brands that I come across often start with explaining who they are and what they are doing. Rather, you should focus on ‘why’ you are doing what you are doing. The rest will follow.

In addition to this, you have to list down and decide on how you will promote the content. Will it be through a video, a written content or via podcast. Each of the methods has to be handled differently and requires advanced curation.

Know your platform to share the content

Choosing the right place to publish your content is equally important for good marketing. While selecting your target audience you should also try to identify the platforms they are most active on. These can be any of the existing social media sites or applications or other forums. Some might even love to listen to podcasts while some would just prefer to attend an in-person event.

Taking into account the place where your audience would be will help you reach the maximum number of people. This will eventually increase audience engagement.

Blindly setting up the content on platforms that your target audience does not use will only waste your time and money. In the end, you will end up wondering the cause for less traffic on your content.

Know your blog or website

Moving forward I would like you to know that great content doesn’t come easy. It is time-consuming, to be honest, and would need a good amount of research initially.

Firstly, creating a website for your brand would allow you to market your content to a larger audience. These days almost all of the businesses have their online presence on various platforms. All good businesses have a good website and a blog in common, in addition to various social media accounts.

A website will contain all the information about your brand, the vision and mission of our business and information about the products/services that you are selling.

Secondly, creating an off-site blog would also help your audience understand the brand better. An off-site blog is useful when you want to talk on a particular topic and not directly about your brand. This is a great tactic for consumer engagement in my opinion. I personally like to read off-site blogs because it makes me feel that the brand is going a step ahead and adding value to the whole customer experience.

A blog and a website will give your brand a unique online identity and enhances your content marketing.

Know your promotions

Now that you are clear about certain aspects of a great content marketing strategy, you should approach methods to share your content.

There are various social media tools for content marketing available these days like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Quora, etc. With a plethora of options available to you, choose your platform wisely and engage in active promotions of your content. As mentioned already, go for the platform which your target audience uses the most.

Not just this, you need to be equally aware of the timings of posting your content. Posting content when your local audience is sleeping will not fetch your content enough traffic (unless you are looking for international buyers). Hence, strategic posting times are very crucial to deliver great online content for a blog or website.

Additionally, make sure to keep your content updated with regular posts. The audience loves to gather new information and learn about it.

Create a subscriber list

You surely want to keep your audience engaged with good online content. To do so, set up a mailing list to deliver your content right into the inboxes of the people. It feels more personalized.

There are various email marketing tools like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, AWeber and more. MailChimp is a free and easy to use service. It is free for the first 1000 subscribers. You can select these services based on your personal preferences.

I prefer short and crisp emails rather than lengthy emails. Email marketing should be able to convey a big message with short content. You should design your email content in a way that will drive the audience back to your website or blog. The email should be catchy and short and yet deliver a powerful message.

Do not spam the inbox with multiple emails over a day. Rather, keep it limited to either one or two emails a week. I would prefer one mail a week, and that too at a strategic timing and day. Do not expect your audience to open your email on a Monday morning or Friday evening.

That being said, I guess you would have a better idea now on when to schedule your emails to the subscribers.

Know your SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most crucial aspects of your content marketing strategy. A good keyword search will help your content gain the attention of the target audience. Now that you know the kind of audience you want to target and their requirements or concerns, you can start by preparing a list of topics that you wish to discuss with your audience.

Also, keep in mind the specific keywords that would rank your content high in the search engine. Thus, garnering more views. There are various keyword search tools available that would give you the top keywords based on your search. Incorporating such highly searched keywords would help your content rank higher in the search engine. These SEO tools are freely available and also come as paid versions. You can try either of them to benefit from rich keyword content.

In addition to the above-mentioned points for a great content marketing strategy, it has to keep in mind that verbosity is not the solution to having great content. Great content will have simple words, which are easy to read and understand. An extremely complex jargon will only lead to users leaving the content even before it is finished. You need to be more creative so that users will stick till the end.

That being said, I hope you are now well acquainted with some of the basic points to have an amazing content marketing strategy in 2021 and the years beyond.