Today’s business landscape is saturated with countless content marketing ideas. It’s getting harder and harder to stand out and gain trust with your target audience. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Many businesses have found success by focusing less on the how and more on the why of their content marketing strategy. To help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most useful and actionable ideas for your content marketing strategy. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is a great place to start if you’re looking to refine your strategy or create a solid foundation for future content marketing efforts.
Keep a Blog
The best way to build trust with your clients is by continuously conversing with them. This can easily be done through blogging. To maximize the effectiveness of blogging, you’ll want to keep your content consistent.
But consistency is only one part of the equation. The other half is relevancy. No matter what you publish, you want to make sure you’re writing about topics that are relevant to your audience.
You can boost your relevancy even further by including images and other media in your posts. This will make your content more interesting, memorable, and likely to be shared on social media.
Show, Don’t Tell
Many people in the content marketing world are guilty of over-explaining their ideas. It’s important to convey your message, but you don’t want to come across as trying to shove it down your reader’s throat.
Where you explain and where you simply show is an often-misunderstood aspect of blogging. You don’t have to tell your readers everything, but you do have to show them something helpful.
When this is done properly readers may be able to comprehend the concepts in your post, but they may not be able to put their finger on why they like your business or why they should choose you over your competitors.
Write About What Matters
When choosing which topics to blog about, don’t just pick topics that derive from your business. Rather than writing about a topic that’s tangential to your industry, write about an aspect of your industry that matters most to your clients.
This will help you stand out from the crowd and build trust with your readers. Sometimes the best way to show how important an industry or topic is is to explain why it matters. We don’t want this to sound at all preachy. It’s just an example of how you can create a bridge between your content and your readers’ needs.
Leverage Videos
Videos are one of the most popular forms of content marketing. They’re easy to create, share, and most importantly, consume. If you have an interesting story to tell, it’s worth taking the time to tell it in a way that’s not just informative, but also entertaining. This can be done through the use of videos.
By creating videos, you’re not just sharing information with your readers — you’re enticing them to come back and check-out more of your content. You can do this by embedding a call-to-action at the end of each video or by adding a link to your blog on your video.
Create Content Consistently
When it comes to content marketing, consistency is key. Blog regularly and publish new content at regular intervals. Keep your blog title and tags consistent, and make sure you’re writing about topics that are relevant to your audience.
Depending on what you choose to write about, you can also keep your audience engaged by using images and other media in your posts. This will help boost your posts’ relevancy and make sure your readers come back for more. If you’re already doing all of these things, congratulations.
You’re already ahead of the curve. But even if you’re not, you can still make some improvements.
Use Updated Content
One of the easiest ways to improve your blog’s consistency is to make sure you’re updating your content regularly. New research and techniques are released every day. Some of these new techniques and findings can be applied to your industry and your clients.
If you’re blogging, it’s worth taking some time to read through the new articles that have been published on your topic of interest. Doing so will allow you to incorporate new information and techniques into your content.
Conclusion
As you’re creating content, you’re also building your authority and authority networks. Your content is the body of your networking efforts, so it’s important to keep it on track.
When you publish your blog posts, you’re also growing your network. Readers who read your blog will send you content, email you, and add you to their social media networks. This is how you grow your business.
And when you use social media to present your content, readers will leave comments on your posts, re-share your posts, and add you to their social media networks. This is the power of content marketing. It’s not just about more creating content for content’s sake, it is all about building your business.