By this point, you’ve heard about the ubiquity and importance of content marketing to a digital marketing strategy endlessly. But aside from seeing hundreds of repetitive blogs announcing content’s coronation, have you ever seen an article that clearly states what your content’s goals should be? While every strategy has different objectives, content marketing is useful for accomplishing:
- Link building for SEO purposes
- Social shares for social media marketing, SEO purposes, and increased brand awareness
- Customer service
- Thought leadership/building brand authority
- Lead generation
All of these targets are highly profitable to companies, particularly business-to-business ventures, which must communicate industry pain points and potential solutions, often to a niche audience. In order for your content to accomplish one or more of these goals, it needs to blow your audience away. How do you create compelling content that stands out in a crowded marketplace? Here are some of our favorite strategies:
- Generous mentions and links: If you quote or refer to another industry source, customer, or some outside entity, show some love with a mention or link. Not only does this boost your content’s authority and legitimacy, but it also forges a connection with that source – they might be more willing to share your content with their audience.
- Use multiple promotion outlets: You can create a fantastic piece of content, but if no one sees it, it will be a waste of time and resources. Make sure you talk about your new piece – on your website, on social media channels, through email.
- Reuse, Recycle: Content is great in that it is mutable – you can take one piece of content, reshape it, and have a completely different product than before. Invest the time in creating pieces that can be reused, or easily tweaked into a new product – this will help you gain a greater return on your content marketing investment.
Content marketing is a powerful took for brands; it can accomplish a myriad of goals, from brand awareness to customer service to SEO and beyond. In order to do it successfully, you need a carefully considered content marketing strategy, with tangible goals and metrics to measure your success. Don’t know how to get started? Our team knows how to make a successful game plan – and produce consistent, amazing content to support it. Take a look at some of our original content, and contact us to help get the ball rolling on yours.