If 2014 was the year content marketing came into its own, this year it will further entrench itself in the marketing ecosystem. Consumers want to know more about a brand and the products and services it’s selling through custom content in the form of articles, infographics, videos etc. This is the reason why 86% of B2B and 77% of B2C organizations are using content creation and distribution to boost their marketing efforts.
While there is no doubt, content marketing is playing a mission critical role in an organization’s brand building efforts, this is a branding tactic that demands a lot of effort and is time intensive. It’s important that you, as a content marketer take the right decisions and make the most of the content marketing process.
Here are 5 tips that will help optimize your content marketing efforts:
1. Focus on Content Quality
While this is a no brainer, there are plenty of content marketers who actually don’t realize the importance of quality content. Content forms the backbone of every effective content strategy. But regular, run-of-the mill content will not cut it for you. It needs to be engaging, unique, informative and must deliver tremendous value to its target audience. As can be imagined, such content cannot be developed in a hurry and by just anybody. You need qualified and experienced content creators who have a habit of coming up with content, which readers will love going through. This is what quality content is all about.
2. Influencer Outreach
Content marketing improves brand connect, awareness and its reputation by building relationships. While interacting with your brand’s target audience is an important part of this process, so is reaching out to domain influencers. These are the people who can help promote your content, provided they trust you and your content deliverables. What you are essentially doing is allying yourself with a person whose voice, your target audience trusts. Overtime, this trust and credibility will rub off on your brand as well.
One of the first things you must do while initiating influencer outreach is search for thought leaders in your domain. This can be done by searching for the most viewed/shared blogs and connecting with their creators through social media. Find common ground and engage with them. Doing this often and over a sufficient period of time will establish a meaningful relationship with influencers and who will share your content with their own fans and followers.
3. Give Importance to Visual Content
Visual content should be an integral component of your content marketing strategy. By leveraging the power of visual content, you will improve the effectiveness of your content marketing campaign. If you haven’t been giving due importance to the use of visuals in your campaign, it’s time that you changed your approach.
Textual content in the form of onsite and guest posts works, but what work better are content formats like infographics and videos. They can grab attention of target viewers and hold them. What’s more, these visual formats allow you to convey actionable information in a manner that is easy to understand. It’s a win-win situation for you.
4. Thought Leadership is the Way to Go
I’ve already covered the need for influencer outreach in an earlier point, but why not try and become an influencer yourself. One of the ways of becoming an influencer is to offer your target audience relevant content that provides them with the information they need. The idea is to not focus on promotional content but emphasize on opinion pieces that keep your target consumers/clients updated about the latest happenings in the niche.
Your content must act as a solutions provider, which offers actionable answers to a particular problem your audience is suffering from. Do this on a regular basis and you will come across as a reputable source of valuable information.
This will enhance your reputation in the niche and more and more people will come to trust you through your content offerings. You will be able to keep adding to your list of fans and followers. Many of them will become brand advocates.
By becoming a thought leader, you will soon find other influencers getting in touch with you. You will become an influencer magnet. This is a tremendous benefit of becoming a thought leader.
5. Build Expertise Slowly, but Surely
Don’t do anything you cannot do well. For e.g. I’ve talked about the need for using visual content, but if you think you won’t be able to create a great infographic/video, then don’t. The idea is to make sure you are able to maximize deliverables from activities you are comfortable with. Yes, you must make an effort to create visual content, but you mustn’t publish it until and unless you’ve got it absolutely right. Remember, your audience is looking for really high quality content, and coming off second best won’t deliver the returns you are looking for.
For starters, keep things simple! If you are using textual posts, start integrating custom images into these posts and make these easily shareable. Once you’ve got the hang of using images, start with infographics. Get a good designer onboard who understands the nuances of making an infographic. After you start churning out good infographics regularly, begin making videos. Think of content marketing as a long drawn out process that doesn’t deliver returns in a hurry. You need to keep building expertise in the various aspects of content marketing slowly. Once you show some expertise in one area of content marketing, move on to the next.
Keep these tips in mind and you will optimize the use of content marketing this year and beyond.