With search engines putting more emphasis on ranking websites with a wide range of high quality and varied content, we want to take the time to let you know how you can be producing and delivering great content your customers (and potential customers) will love.
1. What is content marketing?
The term is quite broad, it covers a range of different mediums – from articles, interviews, videos, galleries and podcasts, content can be anything that offers your customers and potential customers valuable knowledge about your products and services. It should be useful, valuable and be original.
2. Why use content marketing?
The content you publish should have a clear intention, mainly to exchange information – which later down the line reduces friction to convert and increases your sales leads. The content you publish should inspire people to engage with you, either in the form of social media shares, likes, comments on your website posts, and the ultimate goal of course is for them to purchase from you.
3. Who should you be writing content for?
This is where many business struggle, and not just in content marketing. Who do you write for? You wouldn’t see a report on the agricultural technology market in Hello! magazine. So think carefully about who you are targeting and use the tools you have to identify these people. What was the demographic of your last 50 customers? Find a commonality, were they all independent business? Over 50’s with pets? Bachelors? Consumers with a limited budget or with a larger amount to spend?
Once you know these customer profiles your content will be much more focused and therefore much more effective. Don’t write for yourself – speak to people with your content. End your content with a clear call to action. Your article should inspire a feeling, emotion or response and you can guide that with your Call to action at the end of the article. Keep it clean and snappy, to the point. Do not give too many options as this can cloud that split second decision to purchase.
4. Should you be writing content of quality or quantity?
Unfortunately, the answer is both! Quite simply, you should be publishing good quality content regularly. Luckily there are many scheduling tools that can help you with this. You can line up multiple articles and post them over a period of time so you don’t need to log in every few days. Use a posting software to push onto your social media and even re-post previous content if it is still relevant. If you still struggle to publish quality content on a regular basis, there is no better time to test the water by outsourcing the creation and or publishing of your content. Here at Alloy, we manage inbound marketing campaigns for a huge range of clients. This involves writing blog posts and press releases for them on a daily basis, publishing the items and then encouraging shares of the content through social media and email marketing. Our work helps them to keep the momentum going on their content marketing strategy.
5. Something is better than nothing right?
Wrong. Beware of posting bad content, an article with one or two lines is more likely to be detrimental to your business than if you haven’t posted anything at all. Potential customers that click through to an article that offers absolutely no value to them will decide right then not to waste their time on entering your site again, so don’t waste an opportunity. Google feels much the same, and will ignore pages with very little content.
Creating content is your chance to show customers you know what you are talking about, it will enrich your brand message and give you a point of difference on your competitors. If you would like more advice on where to start, get in touch today, we have a team of copywriters for your case studies and articles and our video editors can help your produce professional video clips to add to your website, marketing campaigns and social media profiles. If you would prefer we manage the whole campaign, we can produce your content and publish it for you, making sure you are happy with all that we are doing to promote your brand online. Call today to find out how we can help on 01845 6422005 or email us through our enquiry form here.