Are you looking to pour more of your marketing dollars into an advertising campaign for 2016? That’s so last year.
For 2016 and beyond, efforts to ace your audience building and engagement – and as a result boost your client roster and bolster sales – will be simplified by employing digital marketing strategies which focus on content being king.
How do you do that? Focus on creating content aimed at branding your business, organization or your own entrepreneurial efforts as an authority in your particular field.
- Blog about it
Tell your customers and prospects what makes you or your business stand out from the competition. Create a series of ongoing, topic-specific 300- to 400-word blogs offering the latest tips, insights and education/information on how to address pain points among your target audience. Tip: Create a calendar of weekly topics, including some relevant seasonal options to make blogging less of a chore and more of a planned activity.
- Share what you know
Research forums, LinkedIn groups and other Websites which actively discuss your area of expertise. Monitor the conversations and join in when appropriate. Tip: Work to build trust by sharing tips or advice only. If someone wants specifics on what you offer, take the conversation offline. Sales pitches will turn off users and could result in you being blocked from the forum or Website.
- Get personal
Don’t be afraid to share a bit about who you are in your blogs. Blogging should be fun, entertaining and informational. Weave in a personal story, a contest or a Q&A. Tip: To get started, consider introducing yourself and telling what led you to start your own business or to choose the particular industry. Future blogs could simplify frequently asked questions about your business or shed light on perpetual customer pain points and how your product or service helped.
- Illustrate with graphics
Colorful illustrations and graphics are a great complement to your written content. How-to images, step-by-step illustrations or eye-catching infographics break up the text and help you tell the story in another way. Graphic design elements can also help to make your blogs and social media posts pop. Tip: Try adding bold text to images shared on Facebook. Be sure all of your graphics can be resized and repurposed on a variety of platforms, including mobile devices.
- Show with video
Video is to content marketing what commercials once were to advertising budgets: Integral. Consider filming a business overview video or creating video tutorials to demonstrate how your products work. Tip: Draft a script and stay focused on one topic per video. To be most effective, videos should be short, preferably one minute and no more than two minutes in length. While anyone can use a mobile device to make videos, it’s worth the investment to use professional equipment and shoot higher-quality videos.
- Share. Repeat
Once you have the above referenced tools in your content marketing toolbox, it’s important to customize and share them on various platforms, including social media. Tip: Tailor your content so it’s best-suited for each of the outlets. That means using relevant sections of a blog to answer a forum question, writing a short lead-in on Twitter to link to your blog, sharing graphics sized to Facebook’s preferred dimensions, creating a YouTube channel to house videos about your business or organization, among other sharing techniques.
Would you like some help making your business’ content king in 2016? Click here to email Theresa Katalinas and request a free consultation.
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