Content marketing is more competitive than ever. While 78% of organizations are approaching content strategically, more than half do not or are not able to due to workflow issues, lack of resources, and failure to prioritize either.

In this article, we want to show you how to scale content creation with minimal to moderate time and monetary investments. You’ll improve your team workflow, the quality, and the quantity of your posts, and learn how to repurpose content for widespread marketing success.

How to Create a Step-by-Step Workflow for Content Marketing?

Many businesses make the mistake of failing to allocate the appropriate number of personnel and resources to creating great content. You are often seeing one individual left with the responsibility of researching keywords and topics, writing 3,000+ words, proofreading their own content, finding or creating graphics, uploading the content, addressing SEO, etc.

Not only does this overburden make it impossible to scale content creation, but it also ensures that each of these processes is not optimized and lowers the quality of your post overall. While you may have staffers that are capable of these tasks with varying degrees of skill, you want an expert to oversee the various steps of content creation to ensure the best results possible. By breaking down the process of content creation into multiple steps, you can better visualize the process and delegate tasks as necessary to your team.

The typical process of creating a single post entails the following:

SEO Keyword & Topic Research →  Gathering Data to Outline the Post →  Writing the Post →  Editing the Post →  Creating Graphics or Selecting Images →  Formatting the Post on the Site →  Proofreading & QA →  Revisions →  SEO Page Optimization → Schedule for Publishing → Scheduling Your Emails or Social Posts for Content Sharing

Assigning all of these tasks to one individual is not ideal for scaling. Instead, take each step as a unique task and assign it to a person that is capable of accomplishing the task efficiently. For our team, we lean on our SEO specialists to perform research well in advance. This gives us a content calendar complete with keyword research so that our writers can plan their writing efforts.

Graphics and images are also assigned to an appropriate specialist capable of producing high-quality content. Assigning a separate individual for editing and/or QA provides a highly-valued second or third look to remedy all errors. An SEO specialist will then format and schedule the post, while ensuring that the page itself follows SEO best practices on the front and back-end. Finally, the social media team can utilize our calendar to coordinate their posting to promote the latest posts.

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By appropriately divvying up your workflow, you ensure that your experts can do what they do best, while giving your writers more time to produce additional posts. Your workflow does not need to mimic ours, but instead should reflect adequate use of the resources your company has at its disposal.

1. Research in Advance and Create a Content Calendar

With your new and updated workflow processes, you'll need to start generating your keywords and topics well in advance to avoid unwanted interruptions. Your old method of looking for one or two topics at a time will do little more than leaving other members of your team with no ability to help push the content creation process further.

Instead, you need to create your company's content calendar immediately. This can be an actual calendar or a company-wide spreadsheet that details numerous topics and the supporting keyword research. We recommend dedicating several days to research, so that your writers and media team can plan months in advance if necessary. Instead of listing 2-3 posts at a time, start thinking 2-3 months worth of posts at a time.

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The content calendar provides a host of benefits including the assurance that you will always have new posts moving through your workflow pipeline. As your writers push their post for editing and graphic creation, they can begin working on the next post immediately. This reliability works its way to each team member and ensures that no backup occurs that could delay your posting strategy.

A calendar also allows your team to better visualize opportunities to enhance your strategy beyond the benefits of a single post. Many companies utilize an approach called clustering where multiple posts within a given period relate to a central idea or theme. It's easy to internally link these posts due to their relevancy and helps promote returning visitors that express interest in the initial post. This type of momentum is what you need to ensure that you get the necessary readership to support your content scaling.

Visualizing your future posts in advance also allows your team to identify any potential problems long before they interrupt your processes. If you identify a problem with your calendar at any point, it's easy enough to supplement these posts with others that are planned for a different date.

In short, the content calendar allows for clear and effective communication between all departments. Communication prevents issues and work delays, which presents the greatest opportunity for the successful scaling of content creation.

2. Write on Topics with Firsthand Experience

The best way to ensure that your content is unique and of high quality is to allow your writers to focus on topics where they possess firsthand experience. While it's not always a possibility, it provides a litany of benefits that are key to expediting the process of scaling your content marketing.

If you were to ask a writer what type of content they like to write best, it is certainly going to be materially related to a subject to which they have familiarity. If someone is an expert in programming custom style sheets, it would take little to no research to create a quality piece of helpful, informative content that demonstrates their expertise in the area. Conversely, that expert would likely have a very difficult time writing something authoritative about HVAC equipment without additional, extensive research.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the latter approach. In fact, most content on the internet is created this way as companies lack the ability to write or the resources to create content with firsthand knowledge and experience. However, performing that research effectively enough for content adds a substantial amount of time to your content creation workflow. What can hurt worse is that content written from a third-party perspective is generally apparent as nothing can substitute for hands-on knowledge. It will be that much more difficult to tap into what that audience wants, so that you can answer their most pressing questions.

For that reason, you may want to rethink who on your team can fulfill the role of a writer. For example, an article on advanced SEO tactics would fare better if scribed by an actual SEO expert on your team. You'll still have your editors and QA personnel available to ensure that the piece is presentable for audiences. In exchange, you'll have the unique insight of a seasoned expert, which is far more valuable to your success than a particular writing style.

3. Where You Lack Experience, Do Your Research

The reality is that many companies will lack the resources to write content with firsthand experience, at least all of the time. However, you can still give your content the best chance of success by using your content calendar and looking into future topics well in advance. Rather than starting on a foreign topic a week in advance, give your writers what they need, so that they can appear as authoritative as possible on the subject matter.

If this is your business situation, you'll want to revisit your own workflow process we explored in step one. You'll want to account for this additional research time and incorporate it into your regular process. Failure to create content that demonstrates authority and is backed by the appropriate sources will do little more than clutter your blog and harm your overall website value.

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Your writers should also look to work with an expert for an opportunity to ask questions and get a little hands-on. For example, if an HVAC business from the previous example hires a freelancer, it would be worthwhile for them to work closely with the content creation team to ensure they have a strong understanding of the topic they are writing about. The expert can provide the unique insights you need, while your writers can adequately translate their thoughts into well-written articles.

An alternative method is to network and partner with experts on the subject matter that do have the time and resources to write content. This not only provides your blog with excellent, unique content, but presents new opportunities to establish relationships and support a link-building strategy. These types of partnerships aren't typically paid, but are transactional by providing guest content for one another to obtain the coveted SEO benefits.

4. Start Writing Content with an Outline

The act of writing a content piece requires deliberate strategy and planning. Making the mistake of starting with a blank document and attempting to write beginning to end will likely result in a confused mess of unrelated thoughts. Even if there are good ideas to be found within, it will be difficult to trace a throughline and even harder to focus your ideas around the relevant keywords.

Instead, you should always begin the process of writing by creating a solid outline of what the article will contain. This way, you can plan your ideas out in a list even if it is initially disorganized and unstructured. I, personally, will create bullet points that capture the key concepts that should be expressed for the topic at hand. With a clear visual, I can look for any elements that may be lacking and look for ways to incorporate them into the overall picture. After I'm satisfied with the elements I have, I then look to align them in a way that helps the content flow naturally to the reader.

SEO experts recommend a blog post to contain at least 3,000 words of high-quality content in order to boost the page value. With our outline, that large document suddenly becomes many, interconnected smaller ideas that are more approachable. While you build out these ideas, you'll keep your guideline handy to ensure you're writing those thoughts in a way that connects to other ideas and the greater subject. Even if you need to step away from the article and create it over the course of a few days, your guideline will always ensure that you stay on track.

An outline not only helps you to stay on task, but ensures that your content complies with SEO best practices. This outline should contain each of your H1 headers, any H2s or H3s if applicable, which keywords to highlight in each section, and any other technical notes of importance. The outline creates the blueprint and all that's left to do is fill in the blanks with your ideas.

5. Expand Your Team with Content Creation Experts

We broke up our typical content workflow in the first step, so that we could determine who we needed on our team at this point. With your content calendar planned, your research complete, and the content written, you're well on your way to publishing your content. However, instead of leaving your writer to deal with the technical aspects of finalizing the post, you need to delegate the remaining tasks to content creation experts that can help you get the most mileage possible out of your article. If you do not have these individuals on your team, you need to start looking if you want to take scaling your content creation seriously.

The number of people your content department needs depends entirely on how large you plan to scale and how quickly. Skilled individuals that are able to focus completely on content marketing may be able to generate several high-quality posts per week so long as the necessary roles are covered. You are likely looking at writers, editors, graphic designers, SEOs, social media managers, and a project manager to oversee everything. It's possible to see some of these areas fulfilled by one individual, but consider the impact it may have on your unique team and their ability to produce.

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An expanded team will enable your writers to focus on writing to the best of their ability. Your graphics experts will boost the value of your content by creating unique images instead of using boring, stock photography. Your SEOs will ensure your website receives the maximum benefits, and your social media expert will look to boost your post around the web.

6. Utilize a Variety of Content Delivery Methods

When you invest all of the above time and resources into creating high-quality content, it's a waste to let it die after hitting publish. The top-ranked websites for content generation utilize the strategy of repurposing their high-performing content for use on other channels and in different formats.

Think of a great piece of video content you love that's well scripted and well-rehearsed. There's an excellent chance that the script, or at least parts of it, began as a blog post. Efficient companies do not generally have teams creating editorial content, video content, and social media content separately. Instead, they repurpose ideas that they've already put together and reformat them to fit a different medium. A high-performing blog post that's run its course can suddenly get a new lease on life as a well-edited YouTube video.

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Understand that despite your best efforts, even your greatest content may not appeal to your entire audience in long, written form. By converting your hard work into unique formats such as videos, PDF eBooks, an email series, or a series of social posts, you get more out of your investment by reaching out to new audiences.

The key to successful scaling is increasing your output and returns while spending as little additional resources as possible. Therefore, you need to capitalize on the various content delivery methods available to help you maximize your ROI out of each new piece of content that comes out of that department.

7. Revise Your Outdated Content

Carrying on from the point above, you don't want your existing, older content to go to waste either. Furthermore, older content that's outdated or contains irrelevant or inaccurate information can actually harm your website's overall SEO value. It's in your best interest to ensure your content team dedicates time to revisiting and revising older content on your website or social media channels.

Revising older content requires a minimal time investment. As long as the article was previously well-researched and optimized, the bulk of the content should still be applicable in the current time period. Instead, you'll want to comb through the content and look for any facts or figures that have since changed since the time of posting. Additionally, you could update the article with news or discoveries that directly impact the material that is discussed in the body.

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This is especially important for content that previously performed well and has tremendous SEO value. When users search for that keyword, there's a great chance your article will still appear high on search engine results pages. Google will recognize updates to the page and potentially push your article higher among its list of relevant content. You can also alert users that may have previously read the post that it contains new content by adding Updated or YEAR Update to the page or post title.

Keeping an organized content calendar for every year or every period will help you to easily keep track of any content you have that's relevant to a topic or keyword you're researching. If there is an opportunity to boost your existing content library by making simple updates, you need to do so to continue extracting additional ROI.

8. Optimize Your Content for All Devices

Most, if not all of your company's content creation likely occurs on a desktop or laptop device. However, those engaging with your content may utilize technology with much smaller viewports and slower processing such as mobile devices or tablets. For this reason, you must ensure that your content, videos, and web pages are optimized for on-the-go viewing.

In fact, a Statista study indicates that over 50% of all worldwide web traffic comes specifically from mobile devices. As content generally takes longer to load on mobile, especially if it's complete with high-quality images or video, your content creation must include mobile optimization to ensure your scaling efforts are worthwhile.

To make your mobile experience better, be sure to highlight your most important ideas in smaller paragraphs that can fit completely on a mobile viewport. You can also utilize lazy loading methods to hide bigger files such as photos from view until the reader scrolls closer to that section of the article. If possible, you'll want to use AMP (accelerated mobile pages) to enhance the content viewing experience.

If you're unsure if your page is properly optimized for a mobile experience, be sure to use Google's free tools such as the Mobile-Friendly Test. You can enter any URL and the software will automatically scan for errors and recommend options for improving your performance and eliminating errors.

Scaling Content Production with These Easy-to-Follow Steps!

By following these guidelines, any business can begin to take steps to scale its content creation. These ideas will guide you along the process of not only coming up with and writing new topics but how to squeeze every last bit of engagement you can out of both your new and old content.

If you take nothing else away from this post, ensure that you have a plan in place both via a monthly content calendar and through a guideline for each individual piece of content. To enable your writers to create at a high volume without sacrificing quality, you'll need to expand your content creation team to include experts in SEO, editing, graphic design, content planning, and content promotion be it through email marketing or social media.

To become a content powerhouse, make sure your library is a living, breathing entity that continues to foster engagement and empower the community. If you create content worth reading, it will take a life of its own and continue to circulate around the web. The more engagement you attract, the easier it will be to continue growing your audience and to justify expanding your content team even further.

As a business owner, you know that digital marketing is no longer optional in 2021. However, you can only continue your ongoing success by choosing the form of marketing that's going to get you the best return on your investment.

In this article, we will give you the inside knowledge you need to become an expert when it comes to content marketing vs paid ads. You will also learn how the two work effectively together to make a good business like yours stand out among the best.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a mostly free method of advertising your business online. The focus of content marketing is to educate and/or entertain your audience as opposed to being an explicit promotion of your brand.

This form of marketing includes anything that attracts and retains an audience including blog posts, well-researched articles, video content, social media posts, and more. You and your team can produce all of this content, and the advent of technology has made it easier than ever for anyone to produce quality content marketing.

Not only is content marketing accessible, but it is also effectively mandatory. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 91% of B2B survey respondents use some form of content marketing to drive profits.

Sources: Content Marketing Institute

The Pros and Cons of Content Marketing

The Pros

Perhaps the most attractive benefit of content marketing is its cost-effectiveness. When compared to paid advertising and other digital strategies, content marketing is a minuscule investment. It can be virtually free if you choose to create content yourself as opposed to hiring a content marketing expert.

Content marketing also comes from organic searches. Users are Google searching questions every day to become more informed about a product, service, or industry before spending their hard-earned dollars. Answering those questions is an excellent step into content marketing and attracts a better quality of lead than you would get through expensive paid advertisements.

By suggesting valuable content to your audience naturally, you get to look like the hero that provides something meaningful without asking for anything in return. The knowledge gained through your content marketing also builds your reputation and helps you stand out as an authority in your field. Over time, that organic traffic will accumulate and you will have users coming to you without needing to pay them for their time.

The Cons

The largest downside of content marketing is that it simply takes time. Creating a few videos or posting a few articles will do little in the short term to help your business turn a profit. If you are a business that lacks an online presence and needs new customers now, you'll need to look to other solutions like paid advertising to get your foot in the door. While still a very much worthwhile investment, content marketing is for the long term.

The additional con is that while anyone can create content freely, there's more to it than putting words on a page or talking into a microphone. Not only does your content need to provide legitimate value, but it also needs to work together with your overall marketing strategies including your SEO, which determines your overall search rankings online.

Fortunately, this con is mostly alleviated by the availability of knowledgeable writers that provide affordable services freelance or through digital marketing agencies.

What is Paid Advertising?

Paid advertising is a marketing strategy that involves bidding for keywords or phrases to secure premium advertising at the top of search engine results. Paid advertising is also commonly referred to as PPC or pay-per-click. You pay every time a user clicks on or engages with your paid advertisement.

Paid advertising is a commonly used, and often necessary, marketing strategy employed on websites such as Google, Bing, Facebook, and YouTube. You can differentiate paid ads versus organic results by looking for the Ad tag next to top results with true, organic results appearing below.

According to a survey conducted by Statista, brands spent 110 billion dollars on paid search in 2020, with that value expected to rise in 2021 and 2022. Paying to cut to the front of the line will always remain a valuable strategy as commercial activity transitions more and more to the digital landscape.

Sources: Statista

The Pros and Cons of Paid Advertising

The Pros

The number one pro that comes from using paid advertising is guaranteed visibility. For the right price, your brand will be the first thing users see any time they type a keyword or question into the world's most popular search engines. Seeing your brand at number one will always be valuable, and will be necessary for brands that otherwise have no foundation built online yet.

While the cost varies greatly depending upon the industry, each of these platforms offers incredible technology that can automatically adjust campaigns and regulate your budget so that you never overspend or waste time pursuing dead ends. That same technology also allows for precise targeting of individuals from varying demographics as well as those at varying stages of the buyer journey.

Paid advertising effectively offers dependable, predictable results and is one of the best ways to start building your brand online. This gets you the results you need upfront, while you cultivate long-term strategies to improve your organic rankings over time.

The Cons

The largest drawback of paid advertising is the budget required to compete with other businesses bidding for the same advertising spots. However, this is more of a warning than a guarantee, as some industries are far less competition for keywords, making PPC ads more affordable. With that said, when you stop paying, you lose your spot immediately.

Paid advertising may also prove more difficult as consumers are catching on to our marketing strategies. The truth is, we all dislike advertisements. They are everywhere we look - television, emails, online videos, search results, website browsing, and so on. Seeing the word Ad stamped next to your brand may be off-putting and make you appear less authentic or trustworthy. Additionally, more and more consumers are using ad blockers to remove your paid ad campaign from the equation altogether.

Should I Use Content Marketing or Paid Advertising?

Based upon the pros and cons of each, you can see that content marketing and paid to advertise actually complement the other's weaknesses effectively. Digital marketing experts will consistently recommend the use of both to help build your brand online and earn you results both in the short term, while you build of a stronger foundation for lasting results.

For example, Business A has no experience in digital marketing and needs to see a return on its investment immediately. They began a PPC ad campaign on Google to start getting customers into your digital storefront. In the meantime, they also begin publishing informative articles, engaging videos, and other forms of content that keep the audience engaged after the paid advertisements get them inside.

Over time, that content library begins to speak for itself, and search engines begin to trust Business A's website more, allowing them to rank higher organically. Brand reputation improves, consumer loyalty and trust improves, and your paid advertising budget goes down as you no longer need to pay for higher rankings.

Finally, consider that your paid ad campaigns also require great content to be effective. No matter what you pay, a user will ignore an ad that's bland, boring, or uninspired. Content marketing strategies work effectively in paid advertising campaigns by empowering your audience with the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions.

When considering the question of content marketing vs paid advertising, the answer is clear - use both whenever possible. Take advantage of the powerful PPC tools the industry has to offer to get immediate results, and cultivate a library of engaging content that builds your reputation, earns consumer trust, and ensures that your ROI remains consistent well into the future.

Take a moment and think about what brings people to your business?

In a lot of cases, it begins with a question and they visit your site expecting a solution. At this stage, you need to understand that they are not just interested in your product, but also seek valuable information.

In many cases, content is what starts your relationship with the customer. Moreover, content remains with them through all the steps of the customer journey. Therefore, it is fair to say that content plays a significant role in how your audience interacts with your business.

The Importance of Content Marketing in 2021

In order to make the most of your content marketing, you need to create content that is detailed, unique, and useful. This is because content marketing is extremely helpful in:

• Bringing people to your site
• Engaging customers by providing value
• Generating leads
• Moving people through the customer journey
• Driving sales
• Giving post-sale care

However, simply knowing that content marketing can help your business isn't enough. You need to know how to create an effective content marketing strategy. As per the latest statistics, 64% of marketers wish to know how to create a better content strategy.

There are different tactics that make content marketing strategies effective. As there are many content marketing tactics out there, you have to decide which ones can help your business grow.

How to Select the Right Content Marketing Tactics For Your Business?

Before building your content marketing strategy, spend some time brainstorming. Understand your aim, what your business stands for, and how you want to represent your values. Armed with this knowledge, you will be more informed to pick suitable content marketing tactics for your business.

Here are 30 content marketing tactics to help you pick one that works for your business:-

1. Know Your Audience and Provide Them What They're Looking For

To create successful content, you need to know your audience. The first step you can take is to conduct keyword research to gain insights into your potential customers and their needs.

You can begin by using Google Trends to get a good idea about the current demand for a particular topic you have in mind. All you need to do is enter the main keyword in the search box to see the number of searches it has got within a defined time period.

For more detailed information, you can use Ubersuggest. Here's how you can use it to unlock a plethora of keyword opportunities:

1. Click on your browser and open Ubersuggest
2. Type in your domain
3. Tap on the keyword analyzer located on the left sidebar
4. Select keyword ideas
5. Enter a keyword
6. Get related keywords along with search volumes

2. Segment Audience To Improve Engagement

You should always remember that different people are at different phases of the buying cycle. That's why the content you produce can't suit everyone. For instance, if you produce content for the purpose of creating awareness among new customers, then it will not work for repeat customers.

Hence, you must segment customers according to their personas. A buyer persona is a profile that talks about one segment of your audience. Buyer personas are based on research and describe your ideal customers. It talks about how they arrive at a decision, the challenges they face, and other useful insights.

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3. Create Content Based On Your Core Values

Core values serve as the building blocks of any business. Dedicate time to articulate the core values of your business in your content. It will help you generate solid content for your audience.

You can also use Storytelling to create content based on your core values. It is always easy to tell stories based on what you believe and know. A marketing effort that appears effortless to your reader will appeal to them the most.

4. Get On The Local Platform

Let's explain this point with an example first. Let's suppose you are a local brick-and-mortar business in California, but your website gets thousands of visitors from Florida. This may not do you much good. 46% of Google searches are made for getting local information. A major chunk of location-based mobile searches leads to an offline purchase. So, it is important to get on the local platform if you haven't already.

For getting on the local platform, you must know about local SEO. It is a fantastic tool that helps people find your business, which can drive sales.

Local SEO is defined as an SEO strategy that helps your business become more visible in Google's local search results.

To drive your local SEO, ensure you produce valuable information for your audience in your target area. When creating this content, concentrate on local keywords.

To know local keyword opportunities, use Ubersuggest.

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5. Provide Your Audience A Behind-the-Scenes Experience

If you want to increase your site traffic and attract a loyal audience, pre-sell your product or content. Let's suppose you are going to publish a new post next week. Share details about its writing process to your readers.

6. Create An Editorial Calendar

Marketers use editorial calendars for the purpose of planning, organizing, and scheduling the content they are required to share. An editorial calendar helps in creating a winning content marketing strategy. This is because it offers a variety of benefits. Here's how:

1. It enables you to track content events
2. It helps you see the performance of your distributed content
3. It helps to establish expectations and deadlines

Tip: These three steps can make your editorial calendar effective:

1. Understand your audience and the type of content they have an interest in
2. Conduct thorough research for your topic
3. Produce content and measure its effectiveness

7. Reply to Twitter Mentions

Responding consistently and quickly to people's comments and concerns shows people that you care. It humanizes your brand and demonstrates a level of dedication. Hence, following this content marketing tactic creates a great impression on your followers.

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8. Encourage User-Generated Content

User-Generated Content refers to content in the public sphere in which the creators share their experiences with your services and products.

A lot of businesses encourage user-generated content. Doing so not only helps the businesses save money, but they are also able to distribute engaging content.

UGC comes in different forms such as-

• Images
• Blog Comments
• Audios
• Videos
• Online Ratings and Reviews
• Social Media Posts
• Testimonials

9. Educate Your Customers

Give yourself some time to think about questions like - Do people want to know how your products work? Do they want to know the complete process of how you created the product? A lot of times, people are actually interested in learning more about your product. This helps them gain knowledge on something new, and they are likely to inform their friends as well. So, you must focus on customer education, especially if you are on a low advertising budget.

Let us give you an example of the kind of content you can create to educate your customers about your products. For instance, you want to educate your audience about HVAC systems. You can tell them how they work, what their advantages are, and what to watch out for. Your customers are more than willing to learn about your product, especially if few people are educating them about something similar on the web.

10. Use Trending Topics

Something or the other is always trending online. What you can do is, search for a way in which you can connect your brand with a trending topic.

To know an easy way to figure out trending topics, go to Google Trends. On the homepage, you will find certain topics. These topics are the ones that are currently getting plenty of search traffic on Google.

Remember, at the time of selecting trending topics, always keep your brand image in mind. Ensure you are only selecting the right trends.

11. Use Video Content

Viewers retain 95% of a message they see in a video and 10% of it when they read it in a text. With these stats, you can very well gauge the power of video content.

To produce useful video content for your audience, you can always consider starting a Youtube Channel. With the help of video, you can capture the attention of people who want to learn visually or want to hear useful advice rather than reading it in lengthy guides.

If you decide to make videos, you have to do it the right way. Ensure you have high-quality software and a good camera. Brainstorm what types of topics you can explore in the video form. Brands create product demonstrations, webinars, and video tutorials to showcase their expertise.

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12. Evaluate Your Competitor's Content

You need to carefully assess what your competitors are putting out there. For this, make it a point to check the types of content your competitors are producing. Also, check the things that they might be doing better, know the keywords they are ranking for, and figure out a unique way of covering the subjects they have already covered.

13. Produce Engaging Visual Content

With the amount of content being put out there, you may find it difficult to break through the noise. Fortunately, visual content can help you do so. People can be really busy and engaging visual content can help you capture the attention of your target audience.

So, start now and create GIFs, infographics, imagery, or illustrations to publish on your social media profiles and site.

14. Repurpose Your Content

Different people consume content differently. So, you can always think of presenting the same information in different formats. This is called content repurposing. It provides you two main benefits:

1) You can cater to more people

2) It saves a lot of time

An example of content repurposing can be:

Choose one of your articles and transform it into a PDF report and provide it as an ebook.

Tip: Repurpose only high-quality content that gave significant results the first time.

15. Create Content According To Common Customer Queries

If you receive a lot of similar questions from your customers, you should create content that answers those questions. Here's how this will benefit you:

1. It saves a lot of time for your customer service team
2. Answering FAQs works well for your SEO
3. It offers you relevant content ideas that you may not find in your keyword research
4. It engages your customer even more

To receive as many customer queries as possible, offer a number of ways in which your audience can get in touch with you. Provide contact or email details. Inform them that you will be answering queries on social media. You can also answer queries via live chat.

In addition to doing this, inform your team to write down any frequently asked questions. You can then consider addressing those questions in the form of video tutorials, comprehensive guides, and more.

16. Try Out New Technologies

Your strategies should acknowledge the current trends in marketing technologies and you must adapt to them accordingly. Nowadays, content marketing has moved to AI, AR, VR, vlogs, and podcasts.

Using new technologies improves user experience and resolves concerns they may have regarding a new service or product. To consider new ways of adopting the latest technologies, assess your competitors to check what they are using. It will give you a fair idea of what you should do.

17. Turn Your Attention To Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging is fast becoming a notable aspect of content marketing. A lot of brands are now approaching experts, influencers, and writing professionals for tips, experiences, and advice in a specific field. Businesses are even asking their own marketers to guest blog on other websites.

18. Personalize Your Content Marketing

There is a high chance that individuals scrolling through their social media will find information about a new product launch uninteresting. This is because they are tired of being sold to. Now, you may think how are you supposed to sell your products and services? We have an answer to your predicament.

You must try to showcase how your product or service adds value to the lives of your customers. To achieve something like this, personalize the way people experience your marketing. Provide tricks, tips, DIY tutorials, and how-to guides that can help your audience. This will help build a connection between your business and your customers.

19. Create Evergreen Content

Make sure to produce evergreen content for your site. This type of content must contain information that will always hold relevance. When you have evergreen content, you give a reason to your potential customers to check your site all year round.

Some evergreen content ideas include:

• How-to-Choose Guide
• Beginner’s Guide
• Buying Guide
• How-to-Make Guide

20. Increase Engagement on LinkedIn

LinkedIn provides better opportunities for businesses to increase their organic reach than Facebook.

To make your content viral on LinkedIn, make sure it is informative and impactful. Also, instead of sharing your blog's link, repost your blog content as an article on LinkedIn.

21. Email Promotion

An effective distribution channel, email marketing is known to bring traffic and leads to a site. To use email marketing for the growth of your business, you can send a monthly or weekly newsletter to your subscribers. Put fresh content in it to engage the reader. Your newsletter should also follow a mobile-friendly format as a majority of people check their emails on their mobiles. Do not forget to write eye-catchy headlines and subject lines for your newsletter and use videos and images wherever applicable.

22. Concentrate on Your Headlines

Put a considerable amount of thought into creating your headlines. Your headlines can impact how well your content performs.

Let's discuss some tips that will help you write attractive headlines:

• Use digits
• Ask questions
• Write different versions and read them out loud to see which one works
• Include the problem or the product
• Choose the most important benefit and include it prominently

23. Create Data-Driven Content

The sales and marketing team have so much data available to them. Thanks to this data, you can produce data-driven content that will appeal to your target customer. Use customer data for planning content for each stage of your buyer journey.

Note: When you dedicate time to analyze your collected data, you save a lot of time and become aware of what your buyers need. By doing so, you can create content that your audience will not overlook.

24. Share Your User's Story

Ever wondered who the best salespersons for your products are? They are the people who have used them. That's why we recommend that you put testimonials on your landing page. Doing so will help a majority of people feel confident about purchasing your product. They would know that people have tried your product and they have liked it.

25. Invest in Learning About Your Target Customer

Content marketing will continue to give high ROI if you put your time and effort into thoroughly understanding your target audience. For this, you need to consistently upgrade your skills and knowledge. Now, you may think how can you do that?

In this day and age, there are so many affordable and effective knowledge resources available. Use these resources to develop useful skills and gain valuable knowledge that will eventually help in the growth of your business.

26. Always Be Ready For A Change

As the content marketing and business world continue to evolve, your business should remain viable. For instance, you should be thoroughly aware of Google's algorithm updates, as doing so will help generate sufficient search traffic.

In case you notice that you are not getting satisfactory results, it is time for a change. Your goal is to satisfy your target audience and for that, you need to adjust and be flexible. The ideal way to stay competitive is to work with the most recent information.

Note: Look for ways in which you can keep up with the ever-changing nature of content marketing. Take a content marketing course or stay abreast of the current trends.

27. Target Gen Z and Millenials with Adaptive Content

If Gen Z and millennials comprise a considerable portion of your target audience, make sure you produce content keeping their needs in mind. Both of these groups have high expectations for how brands use technology. Also, they highly value the experience they have with a business.

A way to target both Gen Z and millennials is through adaptive content. This type of content supports meaningful interactions across every channel. It offers a personalized experience. For instance, you can suggest content based on their previous interactions with your business.

28. Offer Free Tools That Can Address Your Customer's Pain Points

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Are there any common problems your customer may have?
2. Is there a free tool you can provide them to help resolve them?

When you offer free tools that are relevant to your business, you can attract high-quality traffic to your website and gain more customers.

29. Make Your Product Shareworthy

If people tell their friends about your product, then more people are likely to buy it. So, think outside the box and look at ways to make your product more shareworthy. For example, take a look at Coca-Cola's Share a Coke campaign. They put people's names on Coke bottles to give a personalized experience to their target audience. The brand then encouraged individuals to share a Coke with their friends, take a picture, and post it with the hashtag #ShareaCoke.

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The campaign resulted in 235,000 tweets with the hashtag. They sold 150 million+ Coke bottles, too.

30. Support a Social Cause

A lot of brands avoid taking this route. Although, getting behind a social cause can reap significant results for businesses.

The two groups that are the most vocal on social media platforms are Generation Z and millennials. There is a high chance that they will align themselves with a business that supports a social cause. So, if you want to target younger generations, this is one of the most effective contents marketing tactics to try. With this tactic, you can create real change and also expand your customer base.

Conclusion

These 30 content marketing tactics will help you become more efficient in the way you produce content and help you reach more customers. Just concentrate on creating amazing content and use these content marketing tactics to grow your brand. Do make it a point to test these tactics to check which ones are successful in engaging your audience as not every tactic is going to suit your brand.

Quick Note: Trying different content marketing tactics is important for the growth of your business. However, it is equally important for your business to have an SEO-friendly website. Creating an SEO-friendly, professional niche-based website can take a lot of time. With the DashClicks' agency website tool, you can create an SEO-friendly, custom-branded agency website in just a few seconds.

Think about what will happen if a business creates innovative, engaging content? One thing is for sure, it will help build trust among audiences and yield success in the long haul. That's why it's advised that even new businesses should implement a solid content strategy from the very start

This is because you published the kind of content that helps your target audience and convinces them to take action.

But, there is a larger problem to tackle here. In order to achieve the desired results, you must know how to build a content strategy that is going to be successful.

If the content marketing statistics of 2020 are to be believed, 38% of content marketers thought that their content marketing strategy was Average'. Only 9% rated their strategy as Excellent'. The data clearly shows that several businesses are struggling to develop a winning content strategy.

To develop a successful strategy, you are required to set goals, learn about your audience, and map out how a buyer will interact with the content you produce and publish. To help you through this process, we have created this guide.

The Guide to a Creating a Successful Content Strategy

For a better understanding, let us first define content strategy. A content strategy is defined as the ongoing process of converting your business goals and objectives into a plan in which content is used as the primary means to attain those goals.

Let’s take an example to understand the content strategy to simplify things further. Let’s suppose one of your business goals is to increase brand awareness (for the ultimate aim of driving revenue). After you develop a solid understanding of your audience, you can execute this content strategy to reach your goal:

• Focusing on your story: To increase brand awareness, one of the best content topics is your business’s story. Write about where you started, what your beliefs are, how you succeeded, and so on. Because of this content, your potential customers are going to connect with you on a personal level.
• Choosing your channels: Many types of content work well in increasing brand awareness. These include:
• ‍Blog posts: Blogs are an excellent channel for driving traffic to your website. They help you become a trustable source in your industry if you keep posting them on a regular basis.‍
• Videos: This type of content can help you in many ways to increase brand awareness. For instance, you can tell your potential customers how you function with the help of videos.‍
• Downloadable guides: We all love anything that’s free, right? If you advertise a free guide that people can download, it will definitely work in your favor.

Now, it is time to know how to create a content marketing strategy. But before that, you are required to answer some questions to nudge your content strategy in the correct direction and ensure it is best positioned to achieve your goals. This means, at this stage, you are required to do some research. After all, research is a crucial step in any strategic endeavor.

Here's a list of questions to ask:

1. Who Will Be Your Target Audience?

The first question you need to ask yourself is ā who will be reading your content? Also, as your content strategy can definitely cater to more than one type of reader, you need to determine the number of audiences you will be creating content for.

Now, you may also wonder how you will deliver content to these respective audiences. But, you don't need to worry about that. There are so many content types and channels to help you engage every type of customer your company does business with.

2. What Problem Are You Solving?

Ideally, your service or product should solve a problem that you are aware your audience has. Hence, the content you produce should coach your audience regarding that problem which will, in turn, help them recognize and address it.

It is important to note that a smart content strategy helps two categories of people:

1) Those who are still finding out their main challenges

2) Those who are using your product to tackle those challenges.

3. What Makes You Different?

Your potential customers must know what makes you different or better than your competitors. So that you can prove why people should choose you, you need to show them why you are worth listening to. This is where content' comes to your aid.

4. What Are your Main KPIs?

You are required to evaluate the success of your program before developing a content strategy. Ask yourself questions such as - do you want to generate leads? Do you wish for more page views? Are you looking for a boost in subscribers?

As content marketing is a long-term strategy, it is difficult to track its success. So, there is an entire list of KPIs that helps you know whether you are on the road to a successful marketing strategy. Some of them are listed below:

• Overall traffic: It is essential to track this metric because it tells you the number of visitors coming to your site and the posts that attract them. When you know this information, you then get an idea of the kind of content you must continue to produce.

• Click-through rate of internal links: Click-through rate is important to check as well. If some content has a higher CTR, you must examine it to see what is the reason for its high performance. This information can help you apply the same principles throughout your content.

• Social shares: These help to measure the engagement that your content is creating.

5. How Often Do you Want to Publish?

Ask yourself - how often will you be able to publish? Will it be daily or weekly? What will be your plan of action in a situation where your team is not able to publish the way you had planned?

6. How Often Will You Revisit Your Strategy?

Because of the ever-changing nature of the marketing industry, your strategy must be revisited and tweaked accordingly. Some of the questions you need to ask yourself at this juncture are ā how many times in a year will you evaluate your strategy's success? How many changes would you be willing to make? And so on.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy?

Now that you have answers to all the important questions, it is time that you get to know the specifics of how to develop your content marketing plan.

At this stage, it is important for you to know that there is no grand solution that any business can follow when we talk about content strategy. The strategy that you develop will be unique as per your situation. However, there are a few tactics that will steer you in the right direction. Let's discuss them one by one:

1. Set Your Goals

Start with a definitive objective. Doing so will help you stay focused and prevent you from publishing content just for the sake of it. Also, during this stage, ensure that your analytics are set up. It will allow you to track potential metrics such as social media shares, page views, and e-commerce conversions in your analytics tools.

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2. Conduct Persona Research

In order to craft a successful content strategy, you are required to determine your buyer's persona, which is also called your content's target audience. This is particularly crucial for those who are new to marketing. When you are aware of your target audience, you are able to produce relevant content that they would want to read and subsequently convert on.

In case you are an experienced marketer, you must revisit your audience parameters annually. This is because your target may have changed. You may have to re-evaluate if you wish to expand your existing target market or target a fresh group of people. Such a step is of paramount importance when it comes to growing your audience.

3. Research the Relevant Keywords

Now that you have clearly defined your target audience, you need to meticulously research the keywords that hold relevance to your target audience. There are a lot of tools to help you find keywords that will ultimately become the backbone of the content that you produce. So, ensure you research keywords that help you get higher SEO rankings for your business.

Let’s discuss some of the ways in which you can research relevant keywords:

a. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest produces keyword ideas from the search suggestions of Google. You can enter a keyword and Ubersuggest will find long-tail keywords of the term you typed in.

Now, you may wonder what are long-tail keywords. These are search terms with relatively low competition levels and search volume. These are longer in length (more than 3 words), such as “inexpensive life insurance for elderly people” and “order vitamin B12 capsules online.”

b. SEMRush

If you want an excellent recommendation for a paid keyword tool, go for SEMrush. The tool saves a lot of time in your keyword research. Just enter the website of your competitor in Google and examine the list of keywords they rank for. That's it; you can use this ready list of keywords for your own website.

4. Check the Competition

Once you are armed with the knowledge of your target audience and the relevant keywords, now is the time to analyze your competitor's content. This means a thorough examination of the keywords and areas they rank for. Check for the topics, length of content, and the keywords on their site and different distribution channels. In case you spot the areas where you can fill the gaps and offer better value to your audience, use it to your advantage.

5. Choose the Right Channels

The countless amount of distribution channels can seem overwhelming at first. However, it is recommended that you choose a few channels for content distribution, such as a YouTube channel and a blog. This allows the company to concentrate on distribution to the right audience using the right channels.

The channels for distributing your content will differ based on your resources and audience. The categories in which most distribution channels are:

1. Owned media channels: Owned media are the channels that belong to you, so you have control over your published content. It applies to your site, social media accounts, company’s blog, email newsletters, etc.
2. Earned media channels: Earned media channels are also known as shared channels. Earned media is like free advertising. It can range from a press release about your company to a person talking on social media about the products you offer.
3. Paid distribution channels: Paid channels cover media that needs payment for distributing content. Usually, they include paid influencer content, social ads, sponsored content, and PPC advertising.

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6. Brainstorm Content Ideas

Based on the information you have gathered in order to understand your target audience and competitors, you are now in the position to brainstorm content ideas.

At this point, you can determine the type of content you want. Check what type of content will best serve your purpose.

Tip: For example, if you want your audience to constantly visit your website, going for a recurring schedule of quality blog posts can be a step in the right direction. On the other hand, if you want to showcase how your products work, you can shoot engaging videos for the same.

At the time of brainstorming, don't be afraid to try something new as long as it is backed by research. Build a list of ways that will help serve your purpose and execute your research. Then, narrow it down to the ones that will ultimately work the best.

To help you further in deciding the content types you can choose to execute your purpose, consider these pointers:

Social media content helps connect with younger audiences

Blog posts work well in informing your audience and driving traffic for your site.

Digital media, such as videos and infographics are brilliant ways to engage the audience in a way that they won’t easily forget.

7. Create an Editorial Calendar

Last but not the least, comes the aspect of publishing and managing your content. With an editorial calendar, you will be able to publish a diverse content library on your site. An editorial calendar will help you iron out the details of when and where the content will be made available. It not only helps you keep track of your content, but also ensures that you are consistent in publishing content.

In addition to this, you need to create a social media content calendar so that you can promote as well as manage content on various other sites.

Tip: It is important to go for evergreen ideas i.e. the ideas that will always be relevant. However, you must not ignore timely topics as they help produce spikes of traffic even when they don't form the bulk of your calendar. Keep in mind some niche holidays that will be of interest to your audience at the time of planning the calendar.

Bottomline

It takes a lot of planning and brainpower to devise a perfect content marketing plan. To simplify the entire process, ensure that you always focus on your audience and its needs while developing your strategy. Trust us, if you follow this approach, your audiences will certainly reward your website with page shares and views, with many of them ultimately investing in your business.

When you have a solid marketing plan in place for your business, you have already taken the first step towards gaining an advantage over your competitors.

Now, Happy strategizing!

Content marketing has come a long way since its early days when it was primarily about blogs and keywords. Now, you need to understand “content strategy” and its various elements to get it right.

Here we discuss all content marketing essentials that can help both beginners and seasoned marketers. However, if you are already familiar with it, feel free to look at the contents first and jump to the relevant sections.

Table of Contents

• What is Content Marketing
• Elements of Content Marketing
• Content Creation
• Content Distribution
• Customer Retention
• Active Sales Funnel
• Types of Content Marketing
• Blogs and Articles
• Infographics
• eBooks and White Papers
• How to Create an Effective Content Marketing Strategy
• Set Goals
• Identify Your Target Buyer Persona
• Audit Your Existing Content
• Research Top-Performing Content Across Industry
• Create a Distribution Plan
• Implement
• Measure and Tweak Your Strategy  
• Content Marketing Essentials
• SEO Tools for Keyword Research
• Content Research Tool
• Editorial Calendar
• Writing
• Distribution
• Analytics

Let’s start with a fantastic example of what content marketing can accomplish when done right.

In the 19th century, when the automobile industry was in its nascent stage, there were only 3000 cars in France. André Jules Michelin and Édouard Michelin sold tires for vehicles but were thwarted by insufficient demand. The only way for them to push sales was by getting more cars on the road. It involved inspiring and educating people to travel by car more frequently and make it a part of their daily life.

The Michelin brothers came out with an innovative strategy. They started promoting tourism instead of tires and published a travel guide for France’s vehicle owners and travelers. The guide mentioned the best restaurants, motels, and hotels in France’s various locations. However, it offered a lot more than a regular directory. It shared road maps to help the drivers navigate, listed various repair shops and gas stations, provided tire repair and replacement instructions, and introduced star ratings for listed businesses. The brothers named it the Michelin Guide; it is one of the first recorded examples of content marketing in history.

The Michelin Guide is not just one guidebook. It’s a series of guidebooks that the French tire company has been publishing annually for the last 120 years. The first edition was published in 1900, and it sold nearly 35000 copies. Today, it is widely considered the oldest travel guide for Europe. It is also among the most popular restaurant rating systems globally. The guide accords eateries ratings between 1 to 3 Michelin stars depending on their level of excellence. It is so definitive and influential in Europe that a variation of just one star can significantly impact a restaurant’s success. To get a Michelin star is a matter of great pride for every restaurant. If a place gets three stars, it means they offer exceptional, world-class food.

That's what effective content marketing can do.

Despite the complexity involved, content marketing is pretty simple if you stick to the basics. All you need to do is consistently create and distribute relevant and educational content for your target audience.

In essence, content marketing should:

1. Solve your audience’s problems
2. Add some sort of value to their life
3. Build trust and authority

Elements of Content Marketing

It is the easiest and yet the most powerful way to help a potential customer navigate the buyer's journey. Effective content marketing makes it easier for them to trust your brand and make a purchase decision. Here are four key elements you should consider when creating content marketing strategies to boost sales:

1. Content Creation

You can't expect great results from content marketing quickly. It is most effective when you regularly post and publish relevant content to forge strong relationships with your audience.

Your marketing approach should address your prospective buyers' problems. You need to educate them about the possible solutions. More than closing sales, it should be about making life easier for your audience. However, you need to go through trial and error to learn the different aspects of content marketing.

2. Content Distribution

With information overload and almost 3 million blogs published every day, you need a robust content distribution system to target your core audience. Social media is a powerful medium to distribute your content to a diverse audience. Therefore, make sure your content is easy to share.

You can also try content syndication. While syndicating, you will republish your content on third-party websites in your niche to reach a wider audience.

An example of article syndication. The original article was published on LinkedIn.

3. Customer Retention

Knowing your audience’s buyer persona is crucial in creating relevant content. However, to deliver the right kind of content at the right time, you should also be familiar with:

1. The sales process
2. The key factors buyers consider when making a purchase decision
3. Your audience’s problems and pain points

This information is incredibly useful in creating content that resonates with your audiences. Sales is not a one-time activity. Your job is not done after you've closed the first sale. Instead, it is only the beginning of a long relationship with your customer.

Tip: Your ability to generate relevant and valuable content will decide how long your customers will stay with you. You can also use content to provide after-sales support.

4. Active Sales Funnel

Content marketing offers many benefits but its core objective is to educate and nurture leads, move them across the sales funnel, and help the potential customer make a purchase decision. To achieve this end goal, a content marketer uses well-conceived, data-driven, and original content.

Google algorithms are constantly updating themselves to find the most useful content for online searchers. So, the more useful content you create, the higher your chances of ranking on top. Once you start ranking high on search engines, you will attract more visitors to your site, resulting in increased sales. It also means more people in your sales funnel, whom you can nurture with good content and personal interactions. Creating high-quality content for a sales funnel's various stages is an essential part of content marketing.

Tip: Well-written, data-driven, and original content will help you achieve your business goals. The more useful content you create, the higher you will rank in search engine results.

Types of Content Marketing

1. Blogs and Articles

Text-based content, such as blogs, is quick to read and easy to understand. It is also the least expensive to produce as compared to videos and podcasts that need costly editing software. But since text-based content is visually less appealing and engaging than videos, you must find creative ways to make it more interesting.

Tip: Break complex ideas into bite-sized chunks for easier understanding.Ā

Here are a few tips to help you write engaging blogs:

1. Share your stories
2. Provide useful content
3. Experiment with your topics
4. Use compelling headlines
5. Get to the point quickly
6. Write short sentences
7. Focus on flow
8. Promote your posts

Tip: Readers love blogs that are readable, skimmable, and easy to navigate. Use lists, subheadings, tips, graphics, data, and visual elements to create unique content.

2. Infographics

Infographics and picture messages are three times more popular than any other type of content for likes and shares. Their visual appeal catches the attention of the reader instantly. Graphics make complex information easy to process and learn from. You can combine several infographics into an animated GIF to make it even more exciting and useful.

Apart from the design, it’s crucial how you present information in an infographic. It will be much more impactful if you show infographics in easily digestible chunks or in a story format. Your infographic should:

1. Be easy to understand
2. Be visually appealing
3. Be clutter-free
4. Provide digestible information
5. Use storytelling to explain complex concepts

3. eBooks and White Papers

They help develop an in-depth understanding of the product or service. The tone and approach of eBooks and white papers differ from a regular blog or video; they are created mainly for research and analysis.

Most such content is created in PDF format; data, graphics, and stats support it. You can also make this content available on your website in exchange for the readers' contacts using an opt-in page; readers are generally keen to consume free educational content. However, be mindful of the design layout and the presentation when creating this type of content.

Creating an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

To create an effective content marketing strategy:

1. Set Goals

Different businesses have varied business goals, and you should shape your content marketing strategy accordingly. A strategy that's data-driven, goal-oriented, and backed by proper market research will give you an edge over your competitors. Define your target market and focus on your competition. You can use several tools such as SpyFu, BuzzSumo, and SEMRush, for competition analysis.

2. Identify Your Target Buyer Persona

To identify who your real buyers are:

A. Pay attention to their demographics, pain points, job profile, income, lifestyle, buying behavior, and culture.
B. Map their buyer’s journey right from the awareness and introduction stage to the final conversion/purchase stage.
C. Use empathy to give correct information about your products or services across the sales funnel’s different stages.

3. Audit Your Existing Content

All types of content are not equally impactful. You need to perform an audit regularly to figure out which content is performing well. Your content's success will give you a foundation on which you can base future strategies. Apart from performance, audit your blogs to double-check format, layout, design, process, relevance, and the target audience. Use crucial metrics such as shares and page views to find the content that works the best for your website.

4. Research Top-Performing Content Across Industry

Competitor analysis is a great way to discover the kind of content you should create. Run audits across your niche and take insights from well-performing competitor blogs. It will help you shape your overall content strategy. You can find the best global content in your niche using the following steps:

1. Perform competitor analysis
2. Research the top keywords your competitors are focusing on
3. Figure out the keywords you want to rank for
4. Find the leading global content for those keywords
5. Study the factors that contribute to better-ranking content; apply them
6. Generate topics

5. Create a Distribution Plan

Content distribution is as important as its creation. Even the best quality content is of no use if it's not distributed properly and fails to reach the right audience. Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube are powerful distribution channels; use them. You can also make use of email marketing to distribute your content.

6. Implement

Once you have content topics, keywords, and a strategy, gather the necessary personnel (content strategists, writers, graphic designers) and marketing tools to implement your plans. The right people and effective content marketing and SEO tools will help you research, write, and present important information in an interesting way.

7. Measure and Tweak Your Strategy

You need to measure your content marketing performance and constantly tweak it to get the best results. The key metrics are conversion, social shares, traffic, brand interest, and built links. Continuous tweaking and optimization will help you create a laser-sharp strategy that can do wonders for your brand.

Content Marketing Essentials

The following can help you market your content effectively:

1. SEO Tools for Keyword Research

Finding the right keywords is the key to success in content marketing. To research the best keywords, you can use tools like MozPro, Ahrefs, WooRank, SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, and Google Search Console.

2. Content Research Tools

To get fresh ideas to create new content, you need various metrics such as built links, page views, and social shares. You can get these insights through tools such as BuzzSumo and Ahrefs.

3. Editorial Calendar

Create an editorial calendar to plan content and schedule publishing. It will streamline your marketing, make it smooth and consistent, and help you achieve the best results from the content created to target the audiences at the sales funnel's various stages. It will also make it easy to edit, publish, promote, and update old content.

4. Writing

You can use Grammarly, WriterP, SEO writing assistant tool, Evernote, Milanote, and Ulysses to make your writing more impactful and engaging.

5. Distribution

Social distribution tools such as HootSuite, Buffer, and AgoraPulse will make using multiple accounts and social media platforms a breeze. You can use tools like MailChimp or Infusionsoft for email marketing.

6. Analytics

Google Analytics can give you insightful reports on how your website is performing. You can use it to analyze your website's traffic pattern, and measure the performance of your content marketing and SEO campaigns. You can also use metrics such as bounce rate, user engagement, page visits, clicks, and pageviews to formulate recommendations on your SEO and content marketing strategies.

How do you feel when you are watching an interesting YouTube video and the video is interrupted by an ad?  The ads can keep interrupting the video more than just the one time, potentially spoiling your viewing experience.

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People generally don’t like to watch or pay attention to intrusive ads. It becomes even more prevalent in the wake of shrinking attention spans and the overall slump in the reach of social media channels. Emerging competition and loss of public trust maybe some of the reasons behind it. ROAS (return on ad spend) on Facebook advertising decreased from an index value of two in April 2018 to below 0.5 in the following months after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

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You may also lose your ROAS if your ads are not hitting the mark. So, marketers are always on the lookout for more sustainable options to ensure that their marketing efforts are paying off.

If you are seeing your ROI decreasing, divert a part of your marketing spend to content marketing and create authoritative, persuasive, and thought-provoking content that triggers an emotional response.

What is Content Marketing?

With the declining effectiveness of traditional marketing, marketers the world over are switching to content marketing.Ā

Below you can see the definition of content marketing according to Content Marketing Institute, an online resource for everything related to content marketing.

Why Content Marketing?

Here are a few stats that will blow your mind.

1. Businesses leveraging blogging as their content marketing weapon are 13 times more likely to see positive marketing ROI.
2. According to a Content Marketing Institute study, 200 million people now use ad blockers
3. Content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times more site traffic than non-leaders.
4. According to a 2015 IBM digital experience survey, 56% of marketers believe that personalized content promotes higher engagement rates.
5. According to a Demand Metric study, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing but it generates more than three times as many leads.
6. According to a Content Marketing Institute study, 88% of B2B marketers use content marketing in their marketing strategies.
7. Content marketing adaptors have nearly six times higher conversion rates than their competitors.

Businesses have now woken up to the importance and effectiveness of content marketing. Here are a few benefits of content marketing every marketer should know.

1. Less Annoying and More Engaging

Content marketing provides value, and it's not as annoyingā  compared to intrusive ads. Traditional advertising is losing steam and digital advertising is facing many challenges including attention span issues and people using ad blockers.Ā

According to a 2016 Google survey, 600 million devices were using ad blocking software programs worldwide. This trend is likely to grow in the future. Content marketing provides a better and more sustainable alternative to digital ads. There is no need to divert all your marketing spend on ads when you can achieve better and long-term results by creating engaging content according to the interest of your target audience. People love to read blogs and watch YouTube videos related to the topics they find interesting.

2. Enables You to Use Education to Engage

There are many brands that are successfully pitching product information to educate their audience and to encourage them to purchase. There is a psychology behind what drives people to purchase and more and more companies are now using that to their advantage.Ā

Whole Foods is a brand that offers healthy organic food, not necessarily a unique segment. They do content marketing through their community blog which shares delicious recipes along with stunning photos of ingredients and many other things that might be interesting for their audience such as tips to keep kids healthy and spotlights on new local vendors.Ā

They take this educational value one step further to their brick-and-mortar stores where they put posters explaining things like seafood safety recommendations and the source and taste of a variety of mushrooms they offer.Ā

Similarly, Stanford University uses an educational approach to capture the attention of their audience on Facebook, YouTube, and their customized app. They target people who are interested in higher education either for themselves or for their children. To create excitement, they share studentsā€™ work and experiences and allow their teachers to interact with their fans, answer their queries, and provide on-the-go resources for current and future students.Ā

It is time-consuming to create educational content but it pays off in the long run because you build a navigable library of evergreen content which helps in raising brand awareness.

3. Creates a Sense of Reciprocity and Gratitude

When someone offers valuable content for free, they create a sense of reciprocity and gratitude and their audience tries to pay it back by buying their products and services. It also creates brand affinity and trust which helps you to be on their mind. Ann Handley of the MarketingProfs fame, often quotes her friend, Tom Fishburne, The best marketing doesn't feel like marketingā .Ā

When we talk about human behavior, reciprocity triggers the sense of indebtedness in return for an unexpected favor, which brands use by providing free educational content that helps them solve a problem. Gratitude related reciprocal behaviors are an important element of relationship marketing and it affects performance outcomes.

4. Attracts Customers Without Paying a Single Penny

While advertising online, you attract traffic by paying money for it. On the flip side, by creating custom content for different customer segments, you create fresh pieces of content that keep on engaging and bring the readers one step closer to the final stage in the sales funnel. These content pieces act like free online ads that arenā€™t intrusive and posted for a long time.

5. Improves SEO and Delivers Traffic for a Lifetime

Content marketing is not fleeting and transactional as it aims to build long-term relationships. The essential element of content marketing is to keep a conversation going. Since the content we create addresses the queries and concerns of customers and includes popular and intent-based search terms, it becomes a rich, SEO-friendly extravaganza.

Since content is the foundation of organic search, it is the best way to drive traffic to your website. Content is also the number one priority for Google and anybody familiar with inbound marketing knows that you can't win the game of SEO without a robust content marketing strategy.

Effective and helpful content helps your SEO in many ways. High-quality content excites your audience and helps you increase the click-through-rate (CTR) and average session duration. When you create useful content that adds value and provides answers to searchers' questions, Google rewards you with higher rankings in the SERPs.

Courtesy: Stupid Simple SEO

High-quality content also attracts backlinks from high authority websites and thereby helps you to increase Google's trust in your website. But to achieve this, your content should be intriguing, informational, inspirational, data-driven, exciting, and entertaining.

6. Helps to Exploit the Benefit of Sharing

One of the best features of social media for marketers is that it allows users to share content. If your content is exciting, entertaining, and informational, people will love to share it and your business can get enormous publicity without spending any money on promotion.

7. Multiply Traffic From Various Content Formats Such as Podcasts and Videos

Content marketing also allows you to multiply traffic by repurposing your content into different content formats. During content repurposing, we can convert a blog post into a video or a podcast. Similarly, an infographic can be converted into a blog post or a slide deck presentation resulting in the creation of various content pieces. These can be used at different content marketing platforms to exponentially boost traffic. For example, a blog, when converted into a slide deck presentation, can be uploaded on sites like SlideShare, Google Slides, Prezi, Powtoon, and Haiku Deck. A webinar can be converted into a blog post, a podcast, and a video and its key messages can be used as tweets and social media posts.

8. Content Marketing is Highly Targeted

Targeted content is the holy grail of content marketing. If you want the content to be successful, make it personalized and try to speak to a specific person with a specific need. You should also keep in mind where the user is in the buyer's journey. To create targeted content, you should have ample information about your audience.Ā

Messaging is also an excellent way of creating targeted content, which helps you shepherd your audience through every step in their buyer’s journey. There can be various stages in a buyer’s journey such as:

1. Creating awareness
2. Promoting discovery (providing education about the products and services and how they can solve their audience’s problems)
3. Foster comparisons
4. Encourage a sale

It also allows you to do geo-targeting and demographic targeting.

Other Benefits

Apart from that it also offers the following benefits:

A. Increases brand visibility
B. Helps build a long-term relationship with your audience
C. Strengthens trust and loyalty
D. Helps you position yourself as authority in your niche
E. Enables communication through social shares and comments
F. Pushes your prospect to move through the purchase decision faster
G. Provides value without any terms and conditions

Conclusion

So with all these benefits, content marketing turns your website into an authentic source of information related to your area of expertise. Engaging content will also make your audience flock to your website and help them make an informed decision. The content created for different stages of a buyerā€™s journey helps them move to the next stage in the sales funnel. It leads to word-of-mouth promotion apart from trust-building that sparks loyalty.