Content Marketing

Content Marketing for Your Business

Content Marketing is everything you put online to tell your story. It can be anything from a blog, video, audio, web pages, or even images. It can help define your company and brand overall, as well as it can help generate new leads for your business. Ultimately, the goal of content marketing is to drive profitable customer actions.

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How Can You Improve Your Content Marketing

The best way to improve your content writing is by practice. You should be constantly creating and updating your content. It doesn't matter what type of content it is, the more you create the better you will become. The easiest way to generate more content is by playing to your strengths. If you are passionate in one area you should capitalize on your expertise and knowledge. Playing to your strengths will make it easier to consistently create new, and interesting information. For example, you really enjoy audio editing and recording. You could create your own podcast and record weekly blogs to generate more traffic.

Google Analytics and Content Marketing Tips

Effective content marketing utilizes a combination of different tools and strategies. Although there is no definitive metric for success you must have an idea of what your goal is and how you plan to measure your success. One effective strategy is to utilize Google Analytics to track every activity that occurs on your website. By knowing exactly where customers spend their time on your website and where they abandon your website you can manipulate and adjust your site structure accordingly. This can help with customer engagement and click-through rates for content promotions. Additionally, any website or business can implement Google Analytics. You don't have the be a major corporation or business powerhouse to utilize Googles software.

The main takeaway is that you should be measuring and analyzing your content marketing plan and responding to the data you gather. While Google Analytics will tell you what you are doing well it is also arguably one of the best pieces of technology to help you find out where your online content marketing plans are failing. If you want to be successful you must take this information and change your website, whether that means adjusting your landing pages, or changing the type of content you produce. By constantly re-evaluating your content marketing plan you will be able to redefine your goals, remeasure your success, and continue to make your business more competitive and successful.

Content Preparation

If you study successful content marketing agencies you would notice they prepare they content months in advance and use automated software to update their web pages precisely when they wish. A good rule of thumb is to plan 3 months in advance.You have to look into the future to make sure your content is relevant and interesting. Is there going to be a revolutionary new product launch or some new service that will drastically change the way businesses advertise to customers? In digital marketing staying ahead of the game really only translates into staying afloat. It is also important to consider your own goals in the future. If you plan on launching a new product or service you can schedule a gradual drip exposing your visitors to different content such as photos or videos, to build up hype or buzz. An example of this would be using social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter and sharing your posts with friends and followers.

Listen To Your Target Market

As with any effective marketing plan, you must analyze and make adjustments to your marketing efforts. Although this sounds relatively mundane and obvious, listening to your target audience is one of the critical components of any content marketing plan. If you are spending all this time creating content but you aren't watching and listening to how consumers are digesting that content then you are only doing half the work. Therefore, you must implement a social listening strategy to find out exactly what customers are saying.

This social listening is just the first step. The next thing you have to do is respond, either over social media or by producing or changing your existing content accordingly. If a customer has experienced a service or product failure and nothing is done, the resulting negative word of mouth could be incredibly detrimental to your business. However, if you listen, find out where your company failed, and address the issue directly, the customers are more likely to respond positively. In fact, a strong service recovery can actually generate more goodwill than if a service had gone smoothly in the first place.

Content Marketing To Share Value!

Another great thing about content is it helps drive traffic to your website. Blogs are a great way to spread information to all your social media accounts and to interact with all your customers and potential customers. Social Media adds another avenue for people to access your site, and it is a great way to help your SEO ranking. The more relevant information there is out there connected to your website - the more people will be able to find your website. Understand which social media tools your potential customer or target market are using! Which social media channels are the most relevant to your business? For example - if you are a designer - you likely want to show off new projects, and you want to constantly post photos showing off how trendy your latest designs are. That means Instagram or Twitter would be quite useful for your business - as it is quick news flashes that are going to make people interested. If you are a professional service - you may want to be on LinkedIn - that way all the other professionals can connect with you. There are various strategies for picking your social media channels. Make sure you use them wisely!

What About Other Types of Content Marketing?

Social Media Marketing is Networking Online!

Personally, I think that this is the most useful online advertising avenue. If you are an expert in a certain industry, or you have lots of information to offer your customers, then this online marketing avenue is a must for your business.

Basically, Content Marketing is a method of writing articles and other informative pages to better inform your target market. You could literally write about anything that you desire. But of course, make it relevant to what you are trying to sell! By providing free information to your target group, you provide relevant information about your business. If a potential client wants to find out more they will seek out your expertise.

Search Engine Marketing Works!

Or the way it is better known - SEO. SEO is not visible on your website, but it is ingrained in the website code. Websites have the ability to be coded for certain keywords, and those are the words that search engines pick up in order to decide when your webpage should be picked up in their search results. Search Engines use complicated algorithms to determine where your website comes up in their search results. That is why it is worthwhile to spend the time to ensure your SEO is done properly!

SEO has its advantages. This is an unpaid form of advertising - as it is completely related to a search engine's results. Certain things that the search engine's algorithms take into account are: how relevant the content is on a particular page, how current content is, do people stay on the page or leave it when they come to the page, do other websites link to your page, etc. The major downfall of SEO is that it takes a lot of time, and you constantly need to maintain your SEO rankings, as these rankings are not static.

Strategically Designed Business Websites!

This is an absolute must! If you do not have a website today than make sure this gets done today! Why the urgency? You are behind! Businesses today need to be on the internet. When potential customers are shopping to purchase a particular product, they are doing more research on the internet than ever before. By the time a customer is contacting you, often they have already made a purchasing decision.

Your website needs to be nice, clear, concise, easy to understand, and needs to speak to your target market, just as your brand does. To take it one step further - you should ensure that your website is responsive to all devices. Most people are not only using computers to search the internet, they are also using their tablets, and their smartphones. A great website not only looks amazing, it is accessible anywhere that people have access to the internet.

Offline Marketing Integration

There are many ways you can market offline. Whether you will use offline marketing strategies often will be dependent on your budget, and whether you have the resources to advertise offline! Obviously, there is lots of print media that you can utilize - but of course, this costs money. Another avenue you may want to explore is by going to industry trade shows or networking events. Getting face-to-face with people that may want your expertise, or are searching for someone to buy products from - is a great way to make a good impression