Because we have been involved in content marketing for so long, we have the pitfall to assume that this term is generally known. We may mistakenly think that the people we speak to know what content marketing is and how this can best be used.
Sometimes it’s good to stop and think about the basics: ‘how do I start content marketing, and how do I make sure my strategy works?’ To answer those questions, we found these six tips. The six best tips to make your content marketing activities work.
Tip 1: Tell your story with a blog
According to the leading Content Marketing Agencies, it is important to first list down the priorities you want for your blog. In other words, do you want to create it as a highly informative and authoritative source or use it as a platform to promote your products and services aggressively? Experts suggest that the first strategy is probably the better option for building a brand’s credibility and generating loyalty for its content and blog.
The first step in content marketing is writing blogs, regardless of the size of the company. The best thing is to keep track of your blog in WordPress, a flexible content management system (CMS) that is easy to deploy and is set up so that search engines can find the blog posts.
Why you need a blog? It takes time to keep a blog up to date, so it makes sense that you or your employer may occasionally have doubts about it. With a blog, you can tell your story.
Every company has a story, every company knows, and that knowledge must be communicated. The reader sees who the blog comes from and reads a person’s story, not a brand or an organization.
This makes the reader more inclined to bind to the company because people prefer to communicate with people rather than brands. With a blog, what you absolutely need, you can make contact with your customer!
Your blog is then easily shared via social media. Your blog or website, for which you create the content, can be seen as a hub that people like to come up with. It is a content platform, and with social media, you guide your visit here.
Tip 2: Set up an e-mail marketing program
Social media. Almost everything is about social media nowadays. Of course, this is important, but it may not be the most important part of your marketing strategy. E-mail marketing appears to have a much higher conversion. And it is even easier to deploy too!
This is what you should do: make sure that your visitors and readers follow your blog and sign up for updates to your blog. This is most easily done by placing a Call-to-Action (CTA) on your website or blog in the form of a registration form. These bidders must then be linked to your mailing system to send every new blog to your entire audience.
You can also send a weekly or monthly summary of the latest blogs in the form of a newsletter. For example, you will receive the content experience newsletter from us, with news items and blog posts. If you want to send out a more advanced e-mail, that is of course also possible.
Consider, for example, an automatic answerer if a visitor has entered something on your website. You can then tailor your e-mail to the visitor’s interest by sending a blog or whitepaper on that subject, thus creating equal trust.
The nicest part of an e-mail marketing program is that you are in constant contact with your audience. This offers benefits for everyone: your readers are helped with interesting information, and you know that interested visitors are reading your blogs. A win-win situation, so!
Tip 3: Know your customers and know what they want to know
What many marketers are concerned with is that they do not understand their target group properly. What are the interests of your target group? Which blog topics can you best help them with? There are a few strategies to use for this, including using Google Analytics and the expansion of your content.
Companies tend to pump a lot of money into talking about their own business. This is a bad choice. Yes, you have to tell your story, but not that way. You can talk better about what your audience wants to know. For example, ask the receptionist or telephone operator which questions they receive a lot, or ask which topics your field employee mainly discusses with clients?
The knowledge of the target group lies with the people who have the most contact with this group. That way, you can find out what your target group is looking for. They enter this search with Google. And because 60 percent of the purchases start with this search engine, it’s good to find on this search. This can be done with a keyword strategy.
Are your customers on social media? Follow them and keep track of what they are talking about. With programs like Hootsuite, you can even monitor the most used topics and discussions. This listening strategy can be efficient for learning.
Or ask your customers about their interests. Sometimes that is all that is needed: ask the audience what you should write about. Maybe there are very nice ideas from there. In short, online marketing can only be used effectively if you know your audience. Do the research, and make sure you have a good overview of your target group.
Tip 4: Learn how to write for the web
What is perhaps generally known: readers scan a text and do not always read every word. And all that on the internet. Internet texts, therefore, have a different format than offline texts, and you need to know that format for your texts and blogs. Your text must be ‘digestible.’ Below several practical tips.
Highlight the keywords. As just mentioned, keywords are the words that your target group enters into Google to find information on the internet. Highlighting can be done by placing a hyperlink under it to good web pages or varying colors and font.
- Use subtitles that are logical and go to the keyword.
- Use bulleted lists. The visitor can then quickly scan or find interesting information in the text.
- Discuss one topic per paragraph. Visitors often only read the first sentence of the paragraph and determine whether they will find the information in that paragraph.
- Start with the conclusion.
- Halve the number of words compared to offline texts.
Online texts are an important part, but it goes even further when it comes to texts for mobile devices. An account can also be taken of holding attention while the reader can be distracted by external influences. These are follow-up steps that are certainly interesting but go too far for this blog.
Tip 5: Use a content marketing calendar
Goals, schedules, deadlines. Whether you believe in it or not, a content marketing calendar and the will to keep this schedule is the most useful way to meet the deadlines and goals. This prevents you from falling into the trap of blogging only when there is time, or just blogging if you have a good idea. Or … what happens in our case, only to blog when a newsletter needs to be filled.
You can use a content marketing calendar as a tool to draw up content online and on a monthly, monthly, or even yearly basis. It helps you plan your content. Do you have an idea for a second blog while writing a blog? Then you can fill in that topic on the calendar and ensure that the idea is worked out the next time.
There are useful programs available for drawing up a marketing calendar, but you can also easily start with an Excel sheet.
Tip 6: Set up a schedule for sharing on social media
You can also draw up a schedule for planning your social media statements. As with the content marketing calendar, the planning can be seen as a roadmap for social media messages. You get a signal when a message needs to be placed, giving you a constant stream of messages. This ensures that something is actually placed.
Planning the messages can be tricky, but placing a tweet or LinkedIn update is a lot easier if that has already happened. Once you have published a blog, a crucial process follows. This process looks like this:
- Immediately after placement: state the new message on social media.
- Same day: two or three hours after placement, there is a notification on several social media, the message is spreading.
- Next day: spread the message even further across multiple channels.
- Next week: send a new series of messages, for example, by setting this up in advance.
- Next month: send another new series of messages.
- Even later: follow-up messages, extra information; just what fits the subject.
The most important thing is that you know how you will promote your blogs as soon as the message is online. With a schedule, this can be planned as well. Especially if you combine your calendars with each other, you have a powerful handle on your marketing program.
Anyone can become a content marketer.
Conclusion: everyone can become a good content marketer, especially if these tips are followed! The problem often lies in time or the lack of it. Try to let that go and have faith that the time is effectively used with content marketing!
Do you want some useful tips to improve your writing? Then download our free Ebook (see right-hand column)