Content marketing is all the rage in Internet marketing these days. With Google and other search engines preaching quality content over links, many brands are embracing the practice of content marketing to reach their audience. The premise of content marketing seems simple: create great content, distribute it to your audience and the rest is history. However, this is definitely not the case.
Successful content marketing campaigns involve lots of behind the scenes work including research and planning. Additionally, brand distribution channels must be set up and activated. On top of all that, the content must be of the highest quality.
Sounds like a lot of work, right? That’s because it is a lot of work. Many steps must be taken to promise content marketing success. Here are five tips to take into account when developing a content marketing campaign:
1. Know where your audience likes to hang out
As a brand, you should know your audience, as all marketing revolves around this information. However, do you know where your audience hangs out online? Do you know when they are online? What about how much time a day they spend online? This audience research is imperative when it comes to content marketing. For content marketing to be effective, you need to serve content to your customers on the channels they are active on, or it will go unnoticed.
2. Have a goal
Each and every piece of content you produce should be created with a specific goal in mind – one that supports your business objectives. If your content piece isn’t being deployed with a goal in mind, then what is the point of it? Don’t waste time, money or other resources on creating content (which is very time consuming and expensive) unless you know what success metrics to measure.
3. Find your niche, and stay there
Don’t try to be an expert in everything; that’s not possible. Be the expert in your niche. Focus on something very specific to your business and be the expert there. We can’t all be good at everything, but we can each be good at something. Find your “something” and stick with it.
4. Don’t forget to optimize
Content can look, sound, or be written amazingly, but without optimization, your content may not be found by the right people, so don’t forget about SEO. Be sure to include appropriate keyword-rich anchor text links within your copy. Even if you’re working with a video, infographic or image, having some introductory content with optimized links can help your content get ranked in the SERPs.
5. Volumize the heck out of your content
Create once, use many. It’s as simple as that. Say you create an infographic. Now break up the infographic to pin on Pinterest. Upload the photos to Flickr and Facebook. Record a voiceover for a video. Make a slideshow for SlideShare. And don’t stop at the “big” social media networks. Look into niche social networking sites specific to your industry. The opportunities are endless.
Content marketing may be the new marketing, but it’s here to stay. Learn content marketing best practices and reference these tips before deploying your next content marketing campaign.
Do you have any content marketing tips to share? Leave them in the comments section below.