In today’s everchanging and technological world, how companies, businesses, enterprises, institutions, corporations, and others market their services continues to change. Organizations that have a clear understanding on how to get their content on social networks and how to be found on search engines is indicative of a profound execution of how effectively they market their content.
The single biggest tool and arsenal at the disposal of businesses is doing great content marketing since customers today consume via mobile devices, social media, web, and email. This means having aligned your business goals with your content marketing strategies will have a greater return on investment (ROI) along with growing your customer base, and offer greater visibility for your company’s brand.
In regards to content marketing there is a high value proposition around this effort and it is paramount to craft great quality content for your targeted audience. The following are the reasons content marketing brings opportunities and prospects:
- Content marketing generates roughly three times as many leads as traditional marketing
- It costs 62 percent less
- Exactly 90 percent of organizations use content marketing
- Marketers spend 25 percent of their budget on content marketing
- Precisely 91 percent of business-to-business (B2B) marketers use content marketing
- 86 percent of business-to-consumer marketers use content promotion
How a brand succeeds will depend on just how well they are able to hook their targeted customer through good content. It comes down to superb storytelling and utilizing the different technologies that allow the brand to connect online (podcast, pictures, videos, blog posts, social media, etc.).
The entire process of coming up consistently with world-class content comes down to finding your voice or tune with your audience or community. With regards to frequency of sharing content it is a safer bet to produce snackable content that is in depth instead of generic or superfluous updates.
Content Marketing Checklist and First Impressions in Email Marketing
The exchange between a business or an entity with their audience is a dynamic conversation compared to what it used to be over a decade earlier. This means putting a winning content marketing plan that contains your organization’s identity and has something of value to offer customers from across the different dimensions of the web.
So what can make good content have a long lifespan? It cannot be stressed enough the importance of digging deep and offering the masses or communities information that ultimately makes a difference in their lives. Content with a lengthy lifespan can be the form of an e-book, infographics, webinars, snackable social media posts, or call-to-action (CTA).
The infographic below encapsulates how to grasp the general idea of where to target content and utilize it as a content marketing checklist:
This alphabetized content marketing list is a starting guide and practically highlights the various online networks to join (Facebook & FB Groups, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn & Groups, Quora, etc.). There is that old but very much relevant notion that content is king and design is queen; remember both of these principles.
In addition, networking is another ingenious way of exposing your company’s brand and content marketing efforts. For example, guest blogging is another avenue that legitimizes your expertise since it offers a window into your products and services in a manner that is less aggressive. None of this happens overnight, yet put your best foot forward to make your branding that much more interesting for potential customers.
Aside from marketing content well there is still another medium that remains important for organizations and that is email. Surprisingly, email has yet to fade or even diminish in its usage and is the less invasive communications’ channel. This is a great way to keep existing targeted customers informed about company developments and is also an asset to convert customers especially during the customer journey.
According to a Campaigner marketing survey found that making a first impression boosts customer engagement that eventually leads to conversions. In other words, include eye-catching images and videos in your transactional messages for welcome or thank you emails. This builds a unique customer experience and people will be talking about it to their immediate circles growing that word of mouth marketing.
SEO Tips & How to Effectively Index Your Site on Google
Search engine optimization (SEO) remains an important piece to a business to appear on top of Google search results. Why is SEO instrumental? According to HubSpot, 61 percent of global internet users research products online, 44 percent of online shoppers begin using a search engine, and over 12 billion searches are conducted on a monthly basis.
So, before trying to make your website live for search engines like Google give it a score, you have to make it search engine friendly and ready. A comprehensive post by Neil Patel thoroughly explains how to index and adapt the website to Google’s standard. From understanding how search engines work to creating a content strategy or setting up to updating a social profile it will give you all of the necessary resources.
It can be a costly and time-consuming process to provision a functioning website to perfection. Sometimes you do not have the budget to hire a consultant or webmaster to optimize your site, so free SEO tools are great to have. The fewer website flaws exist the better and HubSpot deems Screaming Frog SEO Spider a search marketer’s best friend. Basically what it does is weed out common SEO issues and then you can make the adjustments to prepare a successful website launch.
What sort of SEO trends should you expect in 2016? Since Google updates its algorithm several times each year it becomes a challenge, so keep checking the company’s updates from time to time to adjust your campaigns around these events. For this 2016 year, Sitepoint.com advises on a mobile-friendly site, faster loading time, social content boosts SEO scores, and keywords.
Takeaways and Conclusions
Content marketing is the icing on the cake and it is here to stay for a long time. A report by Falcon.io asserts the word “content” started making its way into marketer’s vocabularies around 2011 and is now playing a bigger role in marketing strategies carried out today.
All of this entire process requires planning, planning, and planning. You are more than likely forced to modify your campaigns, but that is the nature of the business so do not fuss about constantly having to tweak your content marketing campaigns.
Finally, as the Ascend2 Content Marketing Survey report summarizes that creating compelling content leads to increase in lead generation, improve customer engagement, increase brand awareness, and improve lead nurture.
