No matter the industry your business is in, in this digital age, content marketing is a must for all ventures if you want to attract and engage more customers, build your brand, boost referrals, reduce marketing costs and enjoy other benefits.
However, for many entrepreneurs, knowing how to go about content marketing without being too “hit and miss” is a challenge, particularly without having any experience in the area. If you want to really achieve great things this year with your content, read on for some tips you can implement straight away.
Be Clear on Your Goals and Intended Audience
Firstly, it is important for you to be very clear about what your goals are for your content marketing before you start creating. You need to know what you want to achieve from your blogs, videos, infographics, books, and the like, so that you can produce content that is most effective.
As an example, perhaps you might be keen to:
- Increase the number of leads you have
- Build more of an emotion connection with customer
- Market a new product or service to a new demographic
- Boost your level of repeat business and/or customer referrals
No matter what your objectives are, if you understand them before you begin to create content, you will be much more likely to achieve the results you’re after, and won’t spend unnecessary time, money, and energy on campaigns which aren’t suitable for your needs.
Of course, it is also vital that you know exactly who it is that you’re targeting with all of your content too. By having a thorough understanding of your ideal customer for each piece of content, you have the ability to tailor things according to their interests, location, preferences, and more.
Being clear about demographics will guide when you deciding
- Which information to include in your content
- What style and tone to use
- Where to put the content to reach your audience
- What format it should be in
Use a Variety of Content Types and Lengths
To succeed with your content marketing, it also pays to opt for variety amongst your work. You should experiment with the different types of content that drive traffic, rather than sticking with one type all the time. For example, you can mix things up by:
- Writing blog posts, articles, books, white papers, and ebooks
- Creating infographics, cartoons and other graphics
- Participating in forum discussions
- Running workshops, courses and webinars
- Producing advertisements, both online and offline
- Posting regular updates on social media sites
In addition to the different types of content, keep in mind that it is also beneficial to create content of varying lengths. These days, short-form content, such as Twitter posts and videos, is particularly popular since people have little time and are inundated with content every day. Short-form pieces help to funnel prospects and current clients through to longer pieces you create, and help to increase engagement too.
Make Sure All Content Provides Value
Lastly, if you want your content to be effective, it is essential that everything you create provides value for the people who read, watch and/or listen to it. The content that achieves results is typically easy to understand, full of personality, and funny, inspiring, motivational, and/or educational. It is important that you steer clear of content that is overly technical, convoluted, stuffy, boring or, of course, offensive.
It helps to be conversational in the words and tone used, and to avoid using business babble or complicated data. If you need to include information that is relatively complex, look for ways to give specific examples or use analogies which will help to make concepts clearer for your target market. As well, create things which make people feel in some way if you really want to have an impact. The most memorable and shareable content tends to make people laugh, cry, or feel excitement.
Another way to make sure your content is effective is to be careful about how you present it. This is particularly the case with written text. Be aware that most consumers are overwhelmed with the amount of information thrown at them all day, and are incredibly busy, so don’t have the patience or the time to read every word that might be in front of them.
As a result, your written content should be structured in a way that makes it scannable for readers. Break blocks of text up into short paragraphs, and use lots of headings, bullet points, graphics, and the like to make information more easily digestible. You should also ensure there is plenty of white space on a page so it doesn’t look too crowded, and only ever use fonts that are clear to readers of all ages and not so small that people have to squint.