Content marketing is a great way to start getting a larger quantity of high-quality leads. If you don’t currently have a set content strategy for your business, let this guide help you to understand a little bit more about what is involved with content marketing. If you’re looking to add to your current efforts, this guide will give you ideas on what you should be paying attention to that can help you improve.
Analytics – When it comes to marketing, one of the most important things to look at is your social media and website analytics. How else are you going to know if what you’re doing is working? Compare the analytics from time to time as you adjust your strategy or try something new, to see the impact of your work.
Blogging – As you’re currently reading this on a blog, you can see how easy it is to be drawn to someone’s website due to it. While other methods of content marketing are popular, blogs are here to stay. Come up with interesting and useful content that your audience will like and they will surely come back for more.
Calls to Action – Any content you put out on your social profiles, you should always have a call to action along with it, preferably at the end. This will encourage potential leads to reach out to your company to get more information on what you do. The following are some great examples of calls to action: contact me today, shop now, request a demo, sign up.
Design – What typically draws you to content? It could be the title, but what might catch your eye first is the design. Whether your content is a video, image, or article, it’s the design and organization of it which will bring in some viewers. You want it to look aesthetically pleasing.
E-mail Lists – Building your e-mail list is very important so you can market your business directly to your target audience. While you can buy e-mail lists, it’s much better to build you own. When you build your lists, you’re sending content to people that already know about your company and are more likely to want to know more.
Frequency – One of the things that I preach about the most is keeping consistent with how frequent you post content. Whether this is to your social media, blog, or e-mail list, it’s important to pick a frequency of how much you want to post and stick to it.
Graphics – Using graphics in your content is a great way to get people to notice and pay attention to what you have to say. Think about it – when you’re on social media – it’s typically the photo or video that draws your eye before the text. While some attention may be due to the title of the post, the graphic that was posted along with it was likely what originally caught your eye.
Hashtags – When you post your content on social media, be sure to use hashtags. Hashtags are a way of connecting thoughts from people all around the world. When someone is looking for a certain piece of content, they may search that hashtag. Be part of the conversation.
Influencer Marketing – An influencer is a person who has a high social media following on one or many platforms. Finding an influencer to promote your products is becoming a more popular way to create content that will reach thousands of people in your target audience. There are numerous benefits to adding this into your strategy.
Jargon – It’s very easy for companies to be so caught up in what they want to get across, that they don’t realize that they are using jargon that most people won’t be able to understand. Try to make your content easy to read. This will not only have people come back for more, but also works well for SEO purposes.
Keypoints – With every piece of content, there should be some key points that you want to get across. If you don’t have a point to your content and it’s not going to be helpful or useful, you shouldn’t be posting it. Be sure to have at least one key point and keep your articles focused.
LinkedIN – This social networking site is arguably the best one out there for networking purposes. Going further, it’s also a great place to post content and get opinions from other people within your industry. You can make connections and be part of conversations. If you have good content, people on LinkedIN will notice.
Mobile – It’s no secret that people are constantly using their phones or tablets instead of laptops. Make sure that your content is easily readable for those on the go! This could mean making sure your website is mobile-friendly (something stormhold can help you with!) or making sure you publish to social media platforms that are.
Newsjacking – This is a common phrase for taking something for the news and creating content that complements this. This requires being very timely. One of the most famous examples of this would be when Oreo posted a graphic that stated “You can still dunk in the dark” when the lights when out at the Superbowl in 2013.
Optimize everything – Whether it’s your blog posts, social media content, websites, or social media profiles – it’s important to optimize them for viewership. The way you do this differs depending on the platform and kind of content it is. The extra step of optimization has become a necessity to have the right people find your content and profiles. There’s a reason marketing specialists always talk about SEO!
Pinterest – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Pinterest is an awesome tool that any business could benefit from. It’s more of a search engine than social media. Put your content on here and both women and men will be able to find it and pin it for others to see and notice. It’s no longer just for cooking, decorating, and teachers.
Quality – While you want to be sure to post often to keep your readers engaged and interested, it’s all about the quality of what you send out if you want them to stay. Think about your customers – why should they choose to look and your content versus other sources? What makes yours stand out or better? Make sure you put out what you’re proud of.
Reddit – Reddit can be a great place to go when you’re looking for ideas. Simply find a subreddit that matches your industry and browse what people have to say. You can find out what questions people are asking and use that to your advantage when creating content.
SEO – Something that you’ve likely heard hundreds of times is SEO, but what exactly is it? Search Engine Optimization, means crafting your content in such a way that search engines will display your content more prominently. Be careful though – you still want to make sure your content is ultimately for your readers.
Tone – You need to be careful of your tone when you’re crafting statements and content for your target audience. It’s important to keep your content’s tone steady and in-line with your website, brand personality, and simply 
from post to post. This will help reinforce that your company is consistent and true to itself.
User Experience – At the end of the day, it’s all about user experience. You want to content that your provide to your viewers to not only be useful, but also entertaining, and easy to find. It’s all about your target audience at the end of the day. You want to make sure your content is for them, not you, and not for search engines.
Video – Video marketing is here and it’s not going anywhere! Making videos for content is a great way to use more of your creativity and show off your brand personality. It can be a unique way of getting your ideas and thoughts across in a format that is entertaining and different.
Webinars – If you’re not currently doing webinars, start considering it. Webinars are not only great for showing off your knowledge on a particular subject and talking about what your business does, but they’re also great for building up your e-mail lists organically.
eXpand your knowledge – You should always be looking to expand your knowledge. As marketing is an ever-changing field, it’s important to always learn about the new ways you can do something or improve upon what you’re currently doing to fit your target audience.
Yoast – Yoast is a great plug-in for WordPress that helps you out with SEO and the readability of your content. While there are other plug-ins that will suffice. Yoast seems to be the one that is easiest to understand for beginners. It clearly spells out what you need to be doing for your content to have better SEO.
Zero – When it comes to content, you should always have ZERO mistakes and spelling errors. Always have someone proofread it and give you feedback before you send it live for your audience to see. You better believe that’s what I did here! It’s a good practice to keep up, as spelling errors can come across as unprofessional and sloppy.