Content Marketing?? Did that word just came to your mind and you have no idea about it??
If you wish to know what kind of marketing it is but you are too shy and embarrassed to ask someone then, you have come to the right place.
What is Content Marketing
According to the Content Marketing Institute,
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
The most important word from the above lines is “Valuable” as it helps to keep a sorted list of advertisements and contents that according to you will be liked by your audience and they would wish to make the most out of it rather ignoring it.
Therefore, instead of raising all your products, you can provide totally relevant products depending upon your users and their problems.
According to an annual research maximum marketers like P&G, Microsoft, Cisco, etc. nowadays use content marketing to find success.
Content Marketing Specifically benefits the marketers for three reasons mainly to increase their sales, minimize the expenditure, and to get better and loyal customers.
Content Writing is the present and future of Marketing.
Generally, companies send information about their brands but most of the time it’s irrelevant.
This is what makes Content Marketing so special and fascinating for people in today’s world as it focuses only on creating relevant information for their users.
No matter what platform of marketing you use, Content Writing has its importance for all forms of marketing.
But Content Marketing can never be successful without a proper Strategy.
So, the next thing we should know is how to make a proper Content Marketing Strategy so as to run a successful brand.
Content Marketing Strategy
But while reading this most of the readers might wonder about the need of having a strategy.
So, in this section of the blog we will dive into:
- What is Content Marketing Strategy
- Why do you need a Content Marketing Strategy
- What steps your Content Marketing Strategy should include.
What is Content Marketing Strategy
In the words of Justin McGill from HubSpot
“Content strategy refers to the management of pretty much any tangible media that you create and own: written, visual, downloadable … you name it. It is the piece of your marketing plan that continuously demonstrates who you are and the expertise you bring to your industry.”
Content Marketing Strategy helps to analyze all the different ways one can select to market their business.
But first, you will need to know the behavior of your target audience their interests, disinterests everything.
The problems and queries to be solved for the audience, the content format that has to be focused, the channel where it will be published and the management and creation of content need to be taken care of while planning the strategy out.
Why do you need a Content Marketing Strategy
Businesses prepare and plan for a cost-effective and dependable source of lead generation and to gain traffic with the help of Content Marketing.
These leads and traffic generated from your unique content will give you the privilege to experiment with different marketing techniques to make more revenue.
Your content will not only attract traffic but will also spread awareness of your brand among your users.
So, these were some of the reasons for having a Content Marketing Strategy.
What steps your Content Marketing Strategy should include
1. Define Your Goal
You must know your aim before developing the Content Strategy i.e. what industry you will be creating content on, what will your users get from your company.
The most important and essential part of your Content Strategy is to know the motive behind setting the company up, most of the entrepreneurs nowadays start a business but at last, they end up nowhere just because they do not think about their aim that they wish to achieve.
So, don’t be like one of those entrepreneurs.
2. Research About Your Buyer Persona
Wait!! What? Buyer Persona?? Now, what on earth does this word mean??
Alright so, according to Buyer Persona Institute
“Built from the real words of real buyers, a buyer persona tells you what prospective customers are thinking and doing as they weigh their options to address a problem that your company resolves. Much more than a one-dimensional profile of the people you need to influence, or a map of their journey, actionable buyer personas reveal insights about your buyers’ decisions — the specific attitudes, concerns, and criteria that drive prospective customers to choose you, your competitor or the status quo”.
This is what a buyer persona is, so to know your Buyer Persona can help you expand your business rapidly.
You need to show your Target Audience the type of content they want to see.
By analyzing your Buyer Persona you can provide your audience all the relevant content that might attract them and help increase traffic on your website.
This is important especially for the ones who are new to the digital marketing industry be it a marketer or an entrepreneur.
The newcomers have no experience so knowing the Buyer Persona of their industry makes it much easier for them to know their target audience better.
Not only the newcomers but also the experienced people sometimes plan to start something new in a new industry which is totally different from the one they are working in, then, they use Buyer Persona to analyze and judge their target audience so, they can create attractive and profitable content.
3. Run A Content Audit
A Content Audit allows you to review a record of all the past indexable contents, and decide whether you have to keep the content as-it-is, make some changes in the content, or have to remove or integrate the content as per your wish and the requirement of your company and Buyer Persona.
4. Choose A Content Management System
To manage your content properly you must have a good system in place.
Some most important parts of your Content Management System should be Content Creation, Content Publication, and Content Analytics.
WordPress website hosted by WP Engine is one of the examples of Content Management System.
5. Brainstorm Content Ideas
Now after following all the other steps, it’s time for you to start coming up with amazing ideas to write your content on.
Below is a list of Content Generation Tools that might be of some help:
Hubspot’s Website Grader- This is an amazing tool used to keep a track of your position in the market, i.e. the performance of your website in the field of marketing. Starting from your blogging efforts to your social media marketing and management, Hubspot’s Website Grader keeps a check on all your essential social media areas and gives you a list of everything that needs to be improved and optimized in your website.
BlogAbout- IMPACT’s unique content idea generator, BlogAbout is meant for you to make your mind gears run faster. It works somewhat like Mid Libs but in place of jokes, it shows you the common headline format with a blank for you to fill with what you have in your mind. This technique helps you collect all your general ideas in contexts so as to make your content appealing to the users. You can add your thoughts to the “Notebook” of BlogAbout as soon as you gather all your best ideas.
BuzzSumo- Explore amazing and interesting content ideas using BuzzSumo. This tool provides you a number of research tools the main of which use social media engagements to determine the popularity of particular contents. This information will help you know which topic of the content will help you get more traffic on your website.
Blog Post Headline Analyzer- This tool by CoSchedule analyzes the headlines, and gives feedback on your title selection, length, choice of words, grammar, etc. This Headline Analyzer is used to make the title options in your mind stronger so that you can run your mind much faster while brainstorming.
While talking so much about Content Marketing we forgot to discuss the most essential part of Content Marketing i.e. Content Writing.
To know more about content strategy click here.
What Is Content Writing
Content Writing is the most important aspect of Content Marketing and I wonder we never discussed about it until now. Writing is no doubt a dream job, but not everyone can be a content writer. While almost all the content writers have a life desired by every human present on this earth yet living that life is not everyone’s cup of tea. People usually lack skills which are mandatory for a content writer to succeed, because no matter what but a writing talent is not enough to become a successful content writer.
There are certain more skills one should possess in them such as:
1. Must Have Mastered In Different Content Writing Styles
You must know how to write different types of contents because this increases your demand in the market. There are many forms of Content Writing and every form has it’s own significance. Therefore, mastering all forms of Content Writing will give you an advantage of working with more companies and on different types of projects which will increase your popularity in the market.
2. Don’t Pick Random Topics
Picking Random Topics might lead you to lose your traffic, therefore before choosing any topic one must always do proper research regarding the topic. The number of people searching the topic, analyzing one’s buyer persona or target audience, searching the important keywords regarding and all the other points mentioned above in the content marketing strategy needs to be considered while picking a topic for writing good content.
3. Maintain The Originality Of Your Content
It is very necessary for you to maintain the originality of your content as it’s about your reputation. The content should not have copyright issues and it is not as hard as it seems. A good content writer can think of different ways to express the same emotions that thousands of people have already expressed it’s all about how one perceives things.
4. Must Know SEO, HTML, and WordPress
These terms prove to be the most important aspect of a successful Content Writing.
Now, no need to panic if you don’t know about these terms as you need to know only the basics to keep yourself updated in the digital world and gain much traffic organically.
5. Should Be Specialists In Social Media
Recognition is very important. The more active a person is on social media the more likely it is for the users to recommend the content written by them. Building a loyal audience, and meeting the industry experts are some of the vital needs to become a successful social media specialists. Content Writers are the ones who are supposed to be marketing experts, SEO specialists, and social media butterflies. With the right skills and strategies, one could succeed and realize that Content Writing is the dream job one could ever wish to have.
So, these were the main points and main skills one should possess for becoming a successful content writer.
Conclusion
Now, after reading so much about Content Marketing and Content Writing one must know that their marketing plan has to be way better than their types of content.
I know it is a lot to do and the competition is too high but hard work and patience is the key.
It takes time, patience, organization, and exceptional creativity to make a successful content marketing strategy and run a successful online business.
From building the content marketing strategy to publishing and measuring the return on investment and using tools to manage the content won’t be difficult if one follows the steps and advice mentioned above.
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