What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is pretty much what it says on the tin:

Content marketing is all about marketing your content

The creation and sharing of your blog posts, videos, images, social media posts etc. is at the core of drawing visitors to your website, and drawing potential customers to your business.

A content marketing strategy is your plan of how to promote your content.

The right content marketing creates a “buzz” around a certain piece of content.

Remember that people do not know anything about how good your content will be before they actually click through to the content.

This means that your website traffic relies almost entirely (especially as a newer blog) on your content marketing techniques.

Content Marketing Strategies

A content marketing strategy is your way of defining the needs of your target audience and planning how to address these needs through your content or product.

Every good blog and business will have a marketing strategy in place, which will have been personalised to their own needs and wants.

You can spend hours and hours online looking at the various different marketing strategies that other bloggers and business use.

You can even receive seo help that will help to maximise your brand’s online reach. Taking advice from the experts will ensure that your business can put the right strategies into place.

This, in turn will help your brand awareness and ensure that you are as discoverable as possible online.

Having a maximised reach will help you attain more customers and more sales, which is key for the success of your business.

Or, you can stay on this page and work your own strategy out from here.

 

What do you want to achieve by getting more attention on your content?

What will this attention do for your business?

Think about your main end goal for your content marketing strategy?

• More visitors to your site?
• Better suited visitors to your site? (visitors that match your target audience more closely)
• More sales on a product?
• More subscriptions to your mailing list?
• Higher rate of views on a video or post?
• More customers for your service?

Before you create any kind of content marketing strategy, you have to actually know what it is that you want to achieve with it.

Once you have a clear vision of what your target audience and “avatar” is, you will find it much easier to answer the above questions.

 

Know your audience

Who is your avatar?

Think about who your target audience is.

Your “avatar” is a very specific version of this.

The target audience for a high-street fashion blog might be:

• Women
• Aged 18-28
• Living in London (or wherever the writer lives)
• Not a high-earner

The avatar for the same blog might be:

• A 22 year old woman
• Living in a London flat
• Works in a job she wants to progress in
• Earns between £16-21,000 a year
• Likes fashion, but can’t afford the luxuries, so she buys from “high-street” fashion stores, such as Primark, Next, Topshop and Asda etc.

 

What does your audience need from you?

Now that you have a clear vision of who your target avatar is, you can figure out what you can do to help them.

A “pain point” is the thing or things that annoy, trouble, or bother your avatar. It might be something that they want or need but don’t know how to get it or do it.

Which services, products or content can you provide them that will help them with their “pain points”?

Our example avatar above tells us that our avatar wants high-fashion clothes, but on a budget.

You will need to target all of your posts towards that specific avatar.

This includes social media post excerpts!

You might currently offer more written posts than anything else, but a fashion lover, for example, will like lots of high-quality images.

Pinterest is one of the best ways for visual content to get noticed online.

Read my post all about how to explode your Pinterest traffic here!

What is different about your product?

Every business and blog has a Unique Selling Point / Proposition (USP).

What is your USP?

• What is it about your content that is different from everyone else’s?
• Why should your readers actually read your blog?
• What reason do your readers have to pay for your services or products?
• Think about your branding. Is there something special in your branding that will stand out to your target audience?
• Think about what it is that your blog offers your readers that other blogs or businesses do not?

It is important to note that your USP does not have to be entirely unique! Your USP can 

That would be almost impossible.

Take this blog, for example.

The USP of Life It Or Not is me!

I have the authority to teach and talk about children’s development and parenting, as I have been a motivational educator, teacher and youth worker for over a decade. I have been recognised for my behaviour management techniques, and I am also a single parent.

My authority to coach and talk about personal development comes from my experience as a Wellbeing Champion, a support group leader for many groups and from overcoming the odds in my own life to live the great life I now live.

I have the authority to coach others how to blog, as I have created and developed my own blog from scratch, to reach a point where I now blog full time.

This article can help you find the USP for your blog.

 

Analyse your performance data

Analytics are one of the most important tools in blogging.

…When used correctly!

There are many more questions to ask in the analytics of your site, but these are the most important ones to get you started.

Google Analytics can answer you ALL of these questions, except the last one, which your mail automation service should be able to answer.

Once you have asked these questions and done your research, you will be able to adapt (or completely change, if necessary) the way in which you create and market your content.

 

When is your audience online the most?

Day Example

You currently publish your posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

You find through analytics that you actually get more visitors to your site on Tuesdays and Fridays.

~ Change the second day you post to Friday.

Time Example

You currently post whenever you have finished your post, even if this is at 11pm.

But wait!

Uh ohhhh…

Most of your visitors arrive at around 2pm.

~ Put a BLOGGING SCHEDULE in place to ensure that you post at around 1pm so they see your new post.

* Don’t forget to send an email to your subscribers to update them on the new publication!

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What source of technology do they use the most?

Hopefully, you are using a responsive theme or have a responsive plugin to make things easy to scan on mobile, desktop and tablet.

Many new bloggers (and sadly, some experienced ones) do not check their site to make sure everything is readable and “clean”.

There might be headings that “blur” into the main body text, or pop-ups and lightboxes which obscure the main view of the post.

In order to really make the most of your content marketing efforts, you need to look into every avenue of your analytics.

This includes how you present opportunities for readers to subscribe to your content.

If people have to try or work to actually read your content, why would they bother to stay on the page?

Spend some time looking through your site (all pages and posts) on different sources of technology.

Is everything easy to scan, read and subscribe to?

If not, fix it!

 

Which social media platforms are directing the most traffic to your site?

Example

You might decide to change when you post or on which social media platforms you post.

You currently post equally on your social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin etc.) at the same time every day.

But, you notice on Google Analytics that most of your readers come from Twitter and hardly any traffic at all comes from Linkedin.

~ STOP using Linkedin and focus on one or two social media platforms!

Save your effort and time on using platforms that do not benefit you right now and concentrate your efforts on the platforms that are drawing traffic.

 

Which posts are performing the best?

Do you notice any differences or trends in the traffic to certain posts?

Have you done anything different with those posts?

Think about:

• Title
• Word count
• How you have shared it on social media
• Keyword usage
• Images

The posts performing the best will have something different about them compared to your other posts.

It is not always about the actual content.

Think about how you use SEO in your post excerpts and make sure you are doing keyword research to ensure you are appealing to the correct audience who actually want to read what you write.

Calls to action

A call to action is when you tell a reader what they should do next:

• Read more
• Join my mailing list
• Go to website
• Join group
• Buy now

Most bloggers – especially at the beginning of their blogging journey, tend to only add calls to action in the blog posts or blog pages.

You can also add a call to action in the marketing itself.

Think about Facebook ads. 

You can decide which call to action you will have on these ads, as you also can on pop-ups (lightboxes) and email links.

Don’t miss out on a prospective opportunity by not including calls to action in a social media post.

At the end of a post excerpt (or at the beginning), you could add things like:

“Don’t forget to subscribe”

“Feel free to join my Facebook group”

“Follow me on…”

 

Email Marketing

Your subscribers are the only people in the world (provided they open your emails) that have immediate and direct access to a new post, product or service when it is published.

The people who subscribe to your blog do so because you taught them something or you provide something they want.

Presumably then, most of your loyal subscribers open most of your emails.

Effective email marketing can convert prospective readers, listeners, viewers, buyers etc., so make sure you email them as soon as you have something new to promote.

Don’t forget your calls to action in these emails too!

Marketing week have a very detailed and informative post about how to use email marketing effectively.

 

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Photos by Jeshoots.Com, Mimi Thian