Why Ultra Successful Businesses All Engage Content Marketing Strategists
According to every content marketing strategist ever, your business should have a blog. But why? You’re writing all of those words and posting consistently, only to be met with crickets – we’ve all been there. The reason is that there’s a secret – there’s more to content marketing than just writing a blog post. Your business needs an expertly crafted content marketing strategy.
What is a Content Marketing Strategy?
Content marketing is not only about creating and promoting content – there needs to be a rhyme and reason behind it all. Content management strategies consider aspects such as why you are posting on that day or at that time of day. Posting just because you have a free moment won’t cut it if you want your content to be found and reach your target audience.
Take the time to think strategically, and you’ll find your content will be far more successful. There are four key steps to any good content marketing strategy:
- Positioning
Stick to writing content about what you’re best at and the unique characteristics of your brand. Articles written by experts are far more valuable to read as you’ll be able to detail solutions for the readers. Do your research and see if your competitors are doing it. If they are, are they doing it well? Probably not, and this means there’s a real opportunity.
- Value Proposition
What can you provide your audience in terms of content that they will value? Define what type of content you want to produce based on what your audience may want to read about. You can research this through keyword research. Any digital marketing agency worth its salt can provide you with detailed keyword research that can show you how many Google searches are occurring per month for a particular search phrase. This is gold! Get this part right, and you are way ahead of the competition already. Keyword research is a common SEO service.
- Goal Definition
Now it’s time to define success. Don’t write content for content’s sake; think about which products and services offer you the most margin versus the ease of production. Focus on all of the relevant search phrases you can think of and write about them. Again, a marketing agency with content marketing strategists can help you with this research of alternate keyword phrases. The more people who read your blog, the better, so you’ll need to think about how to distribute the blog once published. There’s no point in just publishing it; you’ll need to post it to social media, promote it in paid ads, list it on blogging directories and more if you want real traction. Just be sure to produce content that will solve the reader’s problems.
- Planning
You need to know your audience – define which people you want to reach, and research the best ways to communicate with them. Write in a tone that’s suitable for your audience, keep it readable for people that know nothing about the subject. Dumb it down without being patronising. You’ll also need to know their preferred method of content delivery, whether that’s in email, text, video, podcast, or another form. Finding out the time of day that these people may read your content and posting on social platforms accordingly is another crucial aspect to getting it seen.
Benefits of Content Marketing Strategists
Providing Value = Customer Loyalty
There are so many brands churning out content that’s absolutely useless to the reader in an effort to make more sales. We know that this doesn’t work. Your readers want to click into your content and find well-researched, expert, creative, and intriguing information that adds value to their lives. If your article doesn’t achieve this, you’ll get a high bounce rate, which is a way for Google to measure if your readers are actually engaged or not. If they bounce quickly, Google doesn’t rank your article. Genuinely connect to your audience – and you’ll get the financial rewards. The challenge is that all of which we’ve mentioned in this article already is specialist SEO work and requires a level of business acumen that most bloggers or marketers don’t have.
The goal to chase is the holy grail of marketing, “the pull factor,” meaning that people find you. Just assume there are 4,500 searches for the service you provide each month, and let’s also assume that if you nail your content strategy that you might be able to gain only 1% of those searches as leads. That’s 45 new customers per month. Imagine if you achieved 5%. When we said “the pull factor” was the holy grail of marketing, we meant it. This is why you need an expert content marketing strategist. A content strategist will engage expert bloggers, quality control, build links, conduct all of the research, ask about the seasonalities of your business, ask about margins and transform content so it’s usable on all media. It’s full-on, but what sets the best apart from the wannabe’s.
Marketing Without Content is Futile
You may be thinking that you don’t need content as long as you have a great marketing plan. Wrong! The two go hand-in-hand. You can’t start the job of marketing without any content to promote your goods! Content marketing must come before all other marketing strategies because it feeds into social media marketing, SEO, inbound marketing, and pretty much everything else. Once you have an excellent content marketing strategist on board, all of your other marketing activities become much easier.
Let the World (and Google) Know that You’re a Subject Matter Expert
There is no one who knows more about your brand and products or services than you. Demonstrate that in-depth knowledge through your content, and readers will be persuaded that you are a subject matter expert. Just as importantly, Google will also be convinced; and they rank websites with valuable, expert information more highly than those full of fluff. This can help you climb the search engine rankings, gaining more readers, and better engaging your target audience.
Relevance
Sure, you can write any content at any time of the year. But the more relevant it is to your audience, the more readers you’ll get. A food blogger offering a recipe for hot soups at the start of summer, for example, will clearly not be as effective as releasing the same recipe in the harshest week of winter. By planning out your content months in advance, you can use your skills to create highly relevant content that your audience will love.
Find a Content Marketing Strategist
That’s easy. You’re reading an article written by a content marketing strategist. Rather than hiring an employee or a contractor directly who will have limited knowledge as any individual would access our team, and you’ll get a multitude of experience, including a content marketing strategy. We walk you through the best ways to plan out your content and reach your readers at precisely the right time when they need that information the most.
Want to learn more about Thinkroom’s digital marketing agency? It all starts with a coffee. Contact us here.
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