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The following is a summary of both general content marketing tips and on specific platforms; it will be especially helpful if you’re at the beginner stage within your content marketing strategy!
General starting tips for content marketing:
Stop selling
– Give your readers information they want and need.
Solve a problem
– Figure out what your potential customers are searching for and help them solve that problem.
Cross-devices
– It’s important for you to get your content available on different devices. Nowadays people have more than three devices to get online and connect which means that you need to reach them on all of these.
Start with asking yourself the following questions:
What niche do I want to be known for?
What are my customers’ challenges?
What kind of content do they consume? Example: Articles and videos
How can I create interesting yet consistent content that will attract new customers and retain old ones? Example: Create a blog on my website
When all is said and done, what business results do I want to achieve for all my hard work? Example: More clients and more sales.
How will I know if this stuff is working? Example: By periodically measuring how many new customers and how many new sales.
With the answer to these question you should be able to determine:
Determine the goals with your content marketing
Create personas – Different personas have different customer journeys and need different messages and offers. For creating a successful content marketing program you need to focus your personas; your resources aren’t unlimited.
Analyze content needs
Then start with the tactics/content workflow:
1. Determine what type of content you’re going to cover. Think broadly about categories. Include sales, customer service, human resources, product, management and customers.
2. Involve a wide variety of employees. Ask for content creation volunteers from across your organization to distribute the work and get different perspectives.
3. Set up an editorial calendar to organize the content creation process. If you’re getting content from a diverse group of employees and/or paid writers, you may need editorial support to ensure a consistent voice.
Content calendar
A content calendar is shared between all members of the marketing team and it is used to plan all activities of content marketing. It allows you to visualize how your content is distributed throughout the year. Here you plan your content around key events and other important dates, see where during the year you lack of content and have to line up more, and also it makes sure you have everything ready.
Here is a link to get you started with your calendar, for free!
http://www.pammarketingnut.com/about/resources/content-marketing-editorial-calendar-template/
what content will be created: How to do your content calendar:
What does your company stand for that aligns with your brand’s purpose?
Identify the people in and outside your company who have expertise on those values, arrange interviews with them. It’s not necessary to create new content ,you might have old blogpost that you can refresh, whitepapers that can be rewritten or a survey that can be turned into infographics. Also, have different content for different audiences.
what format it should take:
Consider ways to create multiple content pieces from that one interview. You might use excerpts from the video interview. You might create an infographic from the interview. You might create several long form pieces of content including blog posts, white papers or an e-book. You might also use the audio from the interview as a series of podcast interviews with the right planning.
which channel it is meant for: -Twitter
-Google+
– Blog
-Website
Have in mind that everyone of these channels need a unique content strategy, they all adopt different content (e.g. Instagram – visual content, Podcast – audio) See list below.
- when it will be published
Here you will learn more about a content calendar, and you’ll find a free calendar template:
Here are more tips to get you started:
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2010/11/get-started-in-content-marketing/
If you need help from an agency, here’s a link to find one:
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/content-marketing-agencies/
The following are specific tips for different channels
Blog
Hosting a blog on your website is the easiest and most effective method of boosting SEO, sharing your content, and ensuring that your site is live. Every time a new blog is added, the search engines scan your site and boost your ranking
write about mainstream news. Google trends will help you find topics
quantity over quality. drives more traffic from search engines
If you want to create a popular blog, you need to work on your networking. The more influential people you get to know, the more social traffic you will generate.
the headlines that are being used on the blog appeal to both users and search engines
Here are more tips to get you started with your Blog:
2.http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/12/13/6-lessons-from-the-top-bloggers-a.-beginners-guide/
3.http://www.chrisbrogan.com/40-ways-to-deliver-killer-blog-content/
Make sure you know your most engaging content
– Review your posts and apply that knowledge to your content strategy
Word of Mouth
– Harness the power of your fans, get them to create and share user-generated content for you.
Campaigns
– Run interactive campaigns for your fans by naming new products, sharing photos and videos
Here’s more tips to get you started with your Facebook Campaign:
When developing your content strategy for twitter you should be able to answer the following questions:
Who’s tweeting and Who are you tweeting to?
– This is the first question you need to answer in your strategy. Who’s in charge of the Twitter account and who you’re trying to reach.
What are you tweeting?
– Your own or others content, multimedia, promoted products?
When are you tweeting?
– You need to figure out timing and in what frequency you want to tweet
Why are you tweeting?
– Write down goals, this will help you with the rest of your strategy
How are you tweeting?
– Outline the tools and tactics you will use in order to succeed
Here are more tips to get you started with your Twitter Campaign:
1. http://blog.kissmetrics.com/7-secret-habits-of-twitter/
2. http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/
Create and Curate
– Authenticity is associated with a brand’s original posts and is often the most effective, but this strategy can be expensive.That’s why you should balance this with re-gramming the best brand related photos and videos that have been curated from customers.
Monitor
– monitor the brand, sub-brand and campaign hashtags (videos and photos along with spelling). Audit comments for critical keywords, these will feature a lot of customer issues, which you need to address. Unlike other platforms, Instagram always feature a photo or video, which means that these have to be spot on.
Respond
– two simple ways you can respond to a customer is by liking or commenting on a photo or video.
Connect
– Customers often location tag their photos and videos which infuses content with location. This creates a more intimate and meaningful relationship between customers and brands. One way you can take advantage of these local communities is through curation and sharing of the customers content.
Here are more tips to get you started with your Google+ Campaign:
1. http://www.annhandley.com/2014/02/12/use-instagram-genius-way/
2. http://heidicohen.com/instagram-sales-versus-engagement-research/
Google+
Optimize your Google+ profile
Optimizing your Circles
Format your posts headlines
Create compelling content
Share compelling content
Optimize the +1 button
Confirm ownership of your site/account
Confirm authorship
Here are more tips to get you started with your Google+ Campaign:
1.http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/02/14/how-to-increase-your-google-engagement-by-281/
2.http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-create-an-effective-google-seo-content-strategy/39734/
Educate
– Educate your subscribers with interesting content. This works especially well for B2B and software businesses as they get to see the value your business provides.
Newsletter
– Send newsletters with focus on editorial content as it can drive conversions in any industry and when you mix editorial content in with your standard offer newsletters or special announcements it can go a long way.
Data driven campaign
– These provides customers with practical knowledge or tools before getting to the actual offer.
Here are some tips to get you started with your Email Campaign:
1. http://blog.getvero.com/9-best-email-marketing-tips-from-2013/
2. http://blog.getvero.com/convert-leads-to-customers/
Content curation
– To get noticed it’s good to have a daily presence on LinkedIn, it can however be difficult to find time to create all that content yourself. On LinkedIn Today you’ll find relevant content that aligns with your professional interests.
Company page updates
– Share content that offers value to the followers of the company.
Employee content sharing
– Have your employees act as brand ambassadors by giving intelligent perspectives to your content in a professional demeanor
Here are more tips to get you started with your LinkedIn Campaign:
1. http://marketingthink.com/5-ways-keep-linkedin-profile-active-relevant/
2. http://www.findandconvert.com/2013/06/7-content-marketing-tips-for-linkedin/
Website
Immediate answers
– Customers want to be able to find the right content quickly. Within 10 seconds a new customer need to be able to see that you can help them solve their problem and where they can find the answers. Customers patience is at an all time low.
Education Centre
– Provide your customers with information in various formats, such as articles, videos, webinars, live chat, podcasts, utilitarian apps, etc.
Build trust
– People buy from the ones they know, like and trust. Make sure to make personal relationships with your customers. This is why the “about” page is very important, Individual pages with more complete and personal information are critical.
Here’s more tips to get you started with your Website:
http://www.thesaleslion.com/important-parts-business-website-2014/
It’s vital that you keep yourself and your business up to speed with all that is going on with content marketing. If you download our Nudge RSS feed (digg_reader_subscriptions.xml) and import it into digg reader, or your usual RSS reader and you’ll find a whole bunch of interesting articles from top blogs focused on content. Don’t miss out!
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