Content Marketing Tips

Every Blogger needs the best content marketing tips possible in order to win new customers and build loyalty. The use of content marketing in your overall plan is very effective and absolutely necessary for your blog growth strategy-the aim of this article is to show you how to get it done!

As we already know, content marketing is part of inbound marketing, and the nuts and bolts of it can be broken down by asking three basic questions:

What? – Get to know your customers and find out what their needs are, so they can be addressed.

How? – You must decide on the most suitable and appropriate channels to use when conducting your communications with your customers.

When? – And finally you have to decide the best time frame for executing your content strategy.

When implementing a content marketing strategy, it is only appropriate to generate useful and relevant content that is of high quality.

However, feel free to introduce your company and to include promotional content from time to time-just make sure you are focusing on the reader and their needs without being too “salesy”.

Be up front with any writers or independent contractors that you hire to design your content strategy. Discuss errors and be clear with your requirements.

Your Content Marketing Plan

In order to be able to consistently post top notch quality content, you need to come up with a plan. Let’s start off by defining what content marketing actually IS and take it from there:

What is Content Marketing?

It is the creation and sharing of quality information that seeks to continually communicate with prospects or have an endless string of entertainment for the purpose of converting them into paying customers.

Different Types of Content

Social: All content published on social networks. Online files that you publish in online format, such as eBooks, newsletters, articles, white papers and infographics, etc.

Physical: The best known examples are magazines and newspapers, but the physical format has changed a lot in the last five years, and there are new formats.

Multimedia: Images, videos, podcasts, etc.

Make sure you get creative when considering this type of marketing to promote a product or service for a company. You don’t want to be conveying cold advertising messages: instead, make them meaningful and fun to create engagement with your audience.

Some Famous Quotes

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are based on trust. Trust drives sales. “- @TPLDrew

“Empathy in marketing is not all that you do, but what you do for your customers.” – @ MarketingProfs

Definitions and History

In the site What Is, I found the following definition: “Content marketing is the publication of material designed to promote a brand, usually through a more oblique and subtle approach than that of traditional push advertising. The essence of good content marketing is that it offers something the viewer wants, such as information or entertainment.”

Content marketing has become popular over the last three years. However, there are people who claim that it has been around since the 1920s, when companies were distributing books and magazines to households with the intention to entertain and be of public service.

Content has evolved into a conglomerate of many other things; webinars, videos and huge platforms, like social networks. But a successful content marketing campaign lies in the small details:

Tips for Creating a Successful Content Marketing Campaign

• Know your audience well and any social issues relevant to your content.
• Each social network has a unique identity and audience, so take the time to get to know your followers.
• A blog is a good way to build a community around a brand. If you publish relevant, grade A content, you can turn your readers into subscribers.
• Pretty amazing things can happen when consumers’ voices are heard.

Do Not Use Abusive Language

• There are plenty of companies out there that fail to follow this rule. They don’t have a content strategy and have become complacent-and they forget to keep their egos in check. It is always preferable to focus more on meeting the needs of your audience and politely addressing their concerns.
• Make communication with your followers better. Try to customize and interact as much as possible.
• Social media creates communities.

Share What Works

• Do not share content randomly. Choose content that can provide great information and resources.
• Infographics are vital.
• Use guides and manuals that you consider useful.
• Share news and current affairs in social networks.
• Provide free eBooks.
• Content is like fire and Social Networks is the gasoline, so use this fuel!

Choose the Best Time for Publication

• The best time to post content on your blog is between 11am and 1pm, from Monday to Friday, but of course you can experiment to find the best suitable time for your business.
• Analyze the time frame when your followers are most active on social networks.
• In my case, the best time to post on social networks ranges somewhere between 5 and 7pm.

Facilitate Blog Subscriptions

• Earlier I mentioned the importance of email marketing, Content Marketing and Strategy, so you should try to get as many subscribers as possible.
• The subscription opt-in box must be visible in different areas of your Blog: in the Sidebar and/or Header area.
• Add a popup to the middle of your posts’ pages to capture subscribers.
• It is a misconception that email marketing is not a type of content marketing.

Analyzes the Results Week After Week

• Analyze the impact of your publications every week; all the comments, shares, private messages and visits you receive, etc.
• It is important to remember that a content marketing strategy takes a long time and overall continuity.

Examples of Content Marketing

• Videos. Video is one of the most important types of content with which you can inform or entertain your audience. YouTube is owned by Google, as I’m sure you know, so using it in your strategy will also help your search ranking results.
• Infographics. Images are very important for your content game plan. They enable you to capture a large number of visitors and they are a fantastic tool for generating completely natural backlinks to your site-which also helps your ranking positions in Google.
• Blog Posts. These are the most widely used forms of content and one of the most classic and basic tools in any marketing strategy.
• Publications on Social Networks. This is currently one of the most popular methods to attract attention and get visitors to your blog.
• Newsletters. If you send useful content regularly to your loyal subscribers, you’ll get more visits to your blog.

Essential Tools in Content Marketing

If you are serious about implementing a content marketing action plan, then it is very important that you consider using some of these excellent tools:

• Hootsuite – essential for managing the content you publish on your social networks.
• Bitly – this indispensable tool shortens links and provides the means for measuring the impact of your content on social networks.
• SumoMe – makes it possible for you to get hundreds of weekly subscribers and increases the chance of your content to go viral on the Blog.
• Mailchimp – an auto-responder that helps you send valuable, informative and helpful information to your subscribers. In addition, you can use MailChimp’s List Subscribe opt-in form to turn your Blog readers into subscribers, adding them to an email marketing list inside your MailChimp account.
• Google Analytics – a tool to view detailed web analytics of your content, like the number of visitors to your site per month and which articles receive the most page views from your blog traffic.
• Blog with WordPress. It seems obvious, but a decent content marketing strategy calls for a well-optimized blog on WordPress, preferably through a self-hosted site.

I hope you liked my content marketing tips outlined in the article above.

What other tips do YOU have that I might have missed? Let me know in the comments section below. 🙂

Albert Palacci is graduated marketing specialist from London Business School, he is passionate about digital marketing, and he is regularly writing for several online blogs and magazines. You can also visit his social profiles in SlideShare and Academia.

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Content Marketing Tips

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