We all know the benefits of producing high quality, engaging content – when done well, it stands at the forefront of all successful digital marketing strategies. The problem is that many marketers still struggle to prepare content properly – and there’s a significant gap between what companies are producing and what audiences are looking for. Here are key tips you should know, that’ll help make your content marketing problems – history.
Don’t sell – educate
The majority of marketers are still trying to connect with their target audience with information about a service or product. The problem is that these ‘targets’ care little about your offerings – they don’t want a sales pitch – but they do care about themselves, their wants and their needs.
In reality, the content that audiences deem as the most valuable, is when it helps them understand relevant views across their industry, or inspires with new business ideas, or educates about key challenges they face. By listening carefully to audiences, you’ll understand their needs, which will ensure that your content delivers interesting information that they’re passionate about. You’ll then be rewarded when they pay attention and want to know more – and in turn, you’ll gain their trust and credibility against competitors
Keep it personal but go multi-channel
In today’s attention deficit culture, people spend seconds – rather than minutes reading content, so to keep audiences engaged for longer, you must deliver content that’s personalised and relevant. Your fundamental challenge is engaging customers 24/7 by getting the right message to the right person at the right time. With lots of competition, you want to be at the forefront of where customers go.
Maintain your investments in customer data and analytics so you can personalise content on social media, websites, emails and mobile devices. With more customers consuming content from their phones, ensure that you keep up with mobile marketing by optimising web pages for users and deploying mobile apps to enhance engagement, build loyalty and drive sales.
Video content is becoming increasingly popular with its ability to explain concepts and ideas quickly in visual format. According to Hubspot, 43% of consumers want to see more video content from marketers – so plan to produce more.
Re-use and re-purpose
To maximise the time invested into content production and make it go further, re-purpose it. Old content, such a blog posts, can be re-packaged into a variety of formats including; infographics, videos and newsletters. Infographics help readers to quickly understand a large amount of complex information, as the visuals make statistics easy to digest. According to Mass Planner, infographics are also the best way to build brand awareness as they are shared and liked 3 times more than any other type of content on social media.
Streamline production
Updating or producing material, such as news, research, reports and videos – consistently and swiftly can be an extremely challenging and time consuming task. Daily struggles you’ll be familiar with include updating collateral, or not using content because it can’t be found, or not having the ability to tell whether it’s effective. Also, having multiple customer content channels can create risks of inconsistent messaging that can potentially damage brand credibility – especially if information is out of date, irrelevant and inaccurate.
To address these issues, look to employ a proven content management system that integrates real time data and analytics to allow you to produce relevant and targeted content based on customer insight. This will ensure that customers are steered towards engaging with content in a more seamless process. The more chances of customer interactions you generate, the more likely you’ll achieve your business goals.
Produce content consistently
Look at curating content more regularly, as it helps infill your editorial calendar and isn’t a time-consuming task. An efficient way of delivering these expectations is using content curating software that automatically surfs the web for relevant content and provides it straight to you.
If there are skills and knowledge gaps which exist in your team, content curation will help plug those knowledge deficits. The ability to drip feed third party, curated business content which is well researched, authoritative and timely, alongside your own – also saves you time and money. When curating content, always attribute it to the original publisher – never portray it as your own. It’s also vital that you check the copyright and get permission where necessary to publish the content. Finally, the most obvious, don’t change or alter curated content sources.
Make an expert accountable
Finally, to ensure that your content strategy is consistently delivered, put the right person in place to oversee it. This means either hiring a content marketing specialist, or assigning this responsibility to staff with the appropriate talents within your business.
