Author @AlmuCorazon
Do you want your content to ensure sales, drive traffic and help build your online audience? Or perhaps your content needs to be designed to enhance your online reputation and search ranking? Either way, you are on the right place! Today I'm sharing with you 8 powerful #tips and steps you should follow and include in your marketing plan to take your online game to the next level. Regardless of whether you offer services, physical products, or media, these #tips and ideas will help you increase your opportunities to create effective content marketing to support your business goals.
Content marketing is being recognized as its own discipline. From building brand equity to managing online crisis communication, content creation has been crowned as the king of the digital kingdom. As such, content demands to be of the highest quality and follow a smart strategy. No doubt about it, there is a very real need for organizations to rethink their business plans by adding content to their marketing mix, and refining their existing strategy. Now, the real aha moment here is the realization that an effective content marketing strategy doesn’t create itself. It’s the result of clear intention, careful planning, well thought out management and focused execution.
Have you ever stopped and ask yourself if what you are triggered to click is worth your time and attention? Well, you are not alone; most of us click rather impulsively. Our online shopping and engagement behavior is very close to our behavior in supermarkets. Business psychologists and researchers have for decades been studying various shopper profiles to strategically design their store layout and merchandise distribution. This is why you always find attractive little items near the cashiers that instantly grab your attention and invite you to toss them into your shopping cart. In online communications we have digital intelligence experts like myself who optimize your online messaging, or what we call "content marketing" to boost your sales, reputation and lower your investments.
To this end, you first need to know that online users click on calls-to-action based on emotional connections, desires for instant gratification, short term-needs, long-term goals and other psychological and pathological behaviors. The following 8 #tips are designed to guide you on how to create 101 content that will drive your audience to link to your great deals and opportunities. Make sure to include them in your content marketing creation and your e-commerce development to increase ROI:
- Identify your audience before writing content, designing visuals and developing web pages. Every piece of information has its place and time. Whatever you do online to create leads and sales think about how your consumer targets will process your content and approach your page layouts.
- Create an editorial calendar - as I always say, plan your work and work your plan. Planning in advance what you will be posting allows you to find other sources of content to support your information, products and services. Every month there are multiple major events -- #EarthDay, #CancerAwarenessMonth, #ValentinesDay -- that allow us to diversify our content marketing to specific themes. Doing this helps you become influential in trending topics, increase leads to your website/online store and grow your fan base.
- Make your readers feel special by creating content that adds value to their experience, lives and business. Cover their needs and provide exclusive access to information. You can utilize a wide range of content formats, such as checklists, videos, interviews, pictures, how-to articles, infographics and worksheets.
- Create content having your online visitors, existing customers and prospects in mind. You want to attract them at every stage of the engagement journey, seeding awareness and nurturing ongoing interest. My extensive experience has taught me that it pays off to plan your content program from the start in order to minimize costs and to leverage related distribution and promotion opportunities.
- Q & As. Extend the value of your content by answering questions that audience members formulate. You can collect this data from your reader and follower comments on your blog, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, webinars, industry colleagues and peers, etc.
- Avoid repetition. Curate additional content to support your core information from your website, blog and online store. Complement your new stories with existent content to bring a new message to every single online channel. This will help your audience better understand the issues involved; and, it is also a good way to repurpose your older content and give it new life and online visibility.
- Invite your team of co-workers and key people in your industry to write and co-write with you. This gives your audience a behind-the-scenes glimpse of your company and network. Think theater, applied to content. Even “boring” businesses can leverage the power of talking to employees to make a product and service come to life through pictures, graphics, videos and interviews. Find those members of your team who are truly passionate about your service/product, regardless of what their roles are within your organization. It’s these internal evangelists who can really bring your brand to life.
- Develop #SEO friendly content. The search engines are constantly leapfrogging over each other to expand development and deliver better results. This intense and continuous activity makes for an ever-shifting landscape. Why? Well, the business success of a search engine company is completely dependent on satisfying the human searcher. This leads to demanding content creators and communication managers to constantly optimize their online game to meet the requirements of search engines. Google, for example, typically makes between 500-600 algorithm changes per year. While most are inconsequential, a few are major enough to impact your #SEO efforts. So your business and brand success will 100% depend on how well you know your audience needs and how fast you can cover them through content creation.
Are you getting a clearer idea on how to create effective content marketing to increase sales? If not, leave me a comment below. But no matter what we can agree that content marketing is the liaison between brand awareness and the generation of great leads. When you generate good content, you get to build familiarity, affinity and trust with prospective and current customers because the information you provide resonates with them – in the right format, through the right channel, at the right time.
The rule of thumb is to remember that content marketing isn’t about selling. It’s about creating the emotional connection with your readers, entertaining your audience, educating them, or otherwise informing your followers in order to earn their trust over time. To be successful, you need to find ways to get them activated. To do that, you need to understand where your audience is, why they are there, and what they want and need from you.
Stay tuned for more tips!
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