Content, Content, and Content! It is everywhere on the Internet. Content is the foundation of the Digital world. That is the reason it is referred to as the ‘king’ in the realm of the Internet. Thus to market our business we need a proper content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing involves the process of creating, distributing and promoting valuable content to attract your targeted audience and drive traffic. Today, the power of Content Marketing has outstretched to its pinnacle.
Crafting a successful Content Marketing strategy can be a thriving upshot for your business. Some of the statistics presented by noted marketers have evidenced this fact.
A B2B Content marketing statistics report by CMI states that 91% of B2B marketers prefer content marketing to reach the customer.
Another B2C Content marketing statistics data says that 86% of B2C marketers regard Content marketing as the key strategy. According to Aberdeen, for Content Marketing adopters, the conversion rates are around 6x higher than the non-adopters.
Content Marketing is one of the most cost-effective strategies to grow your business. This fact is supported by the stats presented by DemandMetric which reveals that it costs 62% less than the traditional marketing. Also, it generates 3 times as many leads.
Thus, Content Marketing is the most effective and productive method of marketing. This also validates the prospering future of Content Marketing in the Digital Domain.
With the virtue of this marketing strategy, you can attract viewers, increase traffic, convert them into leads and then boost your sales.
Here I am sharing some of the pro tips to make successful Content Marketing efforts to expand your business.
Best Content Marketing Strategy for Successful Business
Identify Your Goals
The first and foremost step is to identify your goals. Content is a medium to communicate with your audience. So, know what you want to convey to them, what is the goal of your content. Be clear in your aim and intentions.
You should be well aware of what you have to offer to your audience through your content. Set a target for yourself and plan your strategy accordingly.
Without any goal, there is no point of formulating and executing any strategy. You will never know if you are succeeding or not if your strategies are providing any value or not.
Know your Audience
Your audience is the deciding factor for your success. So, your utmost aim should be to provide the best customer experience and satisfy their needs.
It is very crucial to be well-acquainted with your target audience. You should know to whom you are speaking. Build your audience persona and create the outline of your content on the basis of it to appeal to them.
Your marketing strategy predominately depends on your audience or customer. So, it is necessary that you understand the need of your targeted audience, so that you can provide them with what they want.
Do Research
This is an important part of your content strategy. Once you know your goals and your audience, the next thing is to do the research. Know the latest related trends and requirements in the market.
Learn about your asset and speculate the reason why your content is valuable. Collect the data on which your content is going to be framed. Do the keyword research.
There are multitudes of tools available online to help you to discover your targeted keywords. Choose the widely searched terms which are relevant to your niche.
Generate Quality Content
All your efforts will go on vain if you are unable to provide quality content. Generate relevant and compelling content. Your content should be powerful enough to grab the attention of its audience.
It should be error-free and proofread. Hire good and creative content writers, editors or proofreaders in your content marketing team. You can also work with Freelancers.
Besides, You can take the help of tools like Grammarly, Hemmingway, etc which spots your errors or mistakes. Create visually appealing content.
Insert Targeted Keywords
Keywords are the building blocks of content. Do include the keywords you have researched in your content to improve your rank on SERP.
Your keywords should be properly placed in the body of your content, title tag, Meta description, and alt tag. The keyword density should be 1-2%.
Avoid the keyword stuffing, this black hat SEO technique can cost heavily to your ranking and can even get you pinned by the search engine. You can use ‘Latent semantic indexing’ (LSI) keywords to avoid keyword stuffing.
Avoid Plagiarism
Plagiarism is an irremissible offence that you cannot afford to commit. Your content should not be copied, it should be 100% original only then it will produce effective results.
If you are found guilty of plagiaristic content by search engine crawlers, then the SEO of your website will plummet. Furthermore, since there are heaps of content available on the Internet, the unintended plagiarism is likely to occur.
So, to check the originality of your content you can use the online tools like Plagiarism checker, Copyscape, Plagiarisma.Net, Webconfs, Unplag, etc.
Make a Content Calendar
It has become imperative today to include this factor in your content marketing strategy. Make a content calendar! Schedule your content about what, where and when you will publish your content.
It will not only save your time but will ensure that your content has been posted on time without any delays. Scheduling your content will keep you updated and organized.
There are some of the really useful tools which are easily procurable, namely, Hootsuite, Google calendar, Asana, CoSchedule, etc.
Track KPIs
To evaluate your success and to check whether your content marketing efforts are paying off or not, it is imperative to define your KPIs. KPIs or Key Performance Indicator helps you to measure or analyze the performance of your content strategy.
It allows you to track certain metrics like traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, time spent on your page, page rank, blog subscribers, and revenues. That is everything that you need to know to analyze your defined goals.
If you have succeeded in achieving your goals then it means that you are on the right track. Moreover, it will also let you know if you need any improvement in your content marketing strategy. So, do not forget to include this in your strategy to know where you stand and what you need to do to hit your target.
Get Feedback
The feedback of your audience holds utmost significance for your business. Feedbacks provide you with the room for improvement. Many marketers view negative reviews as a backlash and inexpedient for their business.
But both positive and negative reviews are equally important. Positive reviews keep you motivated to do better. Negative reviews enable you to know where you need improvement to provide satisfactory results to your audience.
Encourage your readers to do post their comments or opinions regarding the content of your post. Provide them with a comment section on your blog post. Ask them to comment on social media. This will result in higher engagement and help you to make better decisions.
Besides, do not do the mistake of hiding negative reviews. Be transparent to your audience as it will be appreciated by them. Also, do give prompt and humble replies and recognize their efforts to voice their opinions.
Promote on Social Media
One of the best methods to widen your reach and promote your content is to share them on Social Media. Social Media is a powerful tool which can lend immense exposure to your brand.
Moreover, it gives you a platform to interact with your customers and build your relationship. But first, you need to identify the right or suitable social platform for your business where you can reach to your target audience.
It is not a wise decision to distribute your content on every social media network if it is not adding any value. Instead, gather the data about your target audience, know on which platform they spend their most time. Make your presence on that particular platform and do extensive promotion of your content.
Know Your Competitors
The competition offers you an opportunity to amend yourself. Do comprehensive competitive research and identify your competitors in the market.
Know how they are leveraging their content marketing strategy. How they are building their content, which type of content is working in their favour, what is their social media activity, how they are promoting their content.
These analyses can majorly help you to make suitable modifications in your content marketing strategy. So, keep track of your competition and strive to outdo them with the impelling means of content marketing.
Conclusion
In the contemporary era, the Internet has become that raging force which is incessant. For every possible query, today, we seek the internet to resolve it. In fact, the internet has become a common marketplace for buying and selling. We consume content every day and this has necessitated the need to devise an exemplary content marketing strategy.
Content Marketing is the best marketing efforts to generate traffic and leads; foster customer loyalty; building trust and relationship with your audience.
In this scenario, a content marketer is obliged to provide estimable and satisfying services through high-quality content. The above-mentioned tips are the integral and eminent part of a thriving content marketing strategy. They assure the success in delivering the best customer experience through valuable content.
