There are many aspects of digital marketing that a brand needs to master before they can really improve and grow their online presence. At first, it may be difficult and overwhelming to learn the intricacies and best practices of concepts like SEO and paid media. One aspect of digital marketing that some brands struggle to master is content marketing, as they either don’t know how to create compelling content or fail to properly use their content to improve their search engine rankings. So how exactly can your digital marketing be effective when you try to create your own content marketing services? Here are some keys to success when using content marketing.
Content Marketing: Cater to Search Engine Crawlers
One thing that you absolutely need to do to have successful content marketing campaigns is to cater to search engine crawlers and optimize your content for SEO purposes. To do this, you must first conduct some keyword research, determining what consumers in your industry are searching for. When you conduct keyword research, you should look at the number of searches a keyword has and the competition and cost of ranking for that particular keyword. Once you have determined what relevant keywords would improve your web traffic the best, you need to include those keywords in your content pieces. In addition, you need to include several links in your content piece. These outbound links might link back to credible sources in the industry to build your website’s authority, or they could be internal links that direct crawlers to other parts of your website. When writing content, you absolutely need to optimize for SEO and cater to search engine crawlers to see results.
Content Marketing: Consider the Human Reader
A common mistake that brands make when creating pieces for content marketing is completely neglecting the human reader. Yes, content pieces are extremely important to rank higher for search results and improve your company’s SEO, but that isn’t their only purpose. Human consumers will be consuming your content, whether that be reading your blog posts or watching the videos you produce. If these content pieces offer little value to the reader and are just pieces stuffed with keywords and backlinks, then you’ll experience little success in your content marketing efforts. When engaging in content marketing, you need to ensure that your content provides value to the consumer and paints your brand in a positive light. Content marketing can be a great way to establish connections with consumers and build credibility with them, so ensure that you’re not neglecting the human reader in your attempts to impress search engine crawlers. Balancing the needs of both audiences is key to a successful content marketing campaign.
Content Marketing: Keep a Consistent Voice
When engaging in content marketing, it is extremely important that you keep a consistent voice in the content that you make. Keeping a consistent voice throughout your content has many benefits, all of which relate to your brand’s recognize and trust with consumers. By keeping a consistent voice, you are helping consumers easily recognize when they see one of your content pieces. In addition, keeping a consistent tone will make consumers much more likely to trust you. If your content is all over the place when it comes to voice and tone, consumers will be much less likely to trust your brand. In addition, keeping a consistent voice around your content is extremely cost-effective as well. You don’t have to worry about shaping your content to specific platforms and mediums since you have an effective format and voice locked down and can easily translate it to other pieces. If you want to come off as an easily recognizable and trusted brand, you need to keep a consistent voice across all of your content.
Content Marketing: Create a Target Audience
Creating content that satisfies all groups of readers is a virtually impossible task. For example, if you try to create a very technical content piece that goes very in-depth, it can provide lots of value to experts in the industry looking to learn more or brush up on their knowledge. However, this type of content piece will likely be full of industry jargon and be too complex for industry newcomers to understand and gain any value from. On the other hand, a basic introductory industry piece may be perfect for educating industry newcomers, but industry experts may get little to no value out of your piece. When creating content, you need to consider who you are creating the content for. What stage of the buying process are they at? What is their knowledge level on the topic? These are all things you need to consider and create a target audience around.
