What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing that brings potential customers to you. It is considered to be one of the top marketing initiatives for B2C and B2B companies. By creating content that answers customers’ questions and needs, you can attract qualified prospects to your business.
Common Content-Marketing Mistakes
If you’re experiencing trouble with your content-marketing strategy, ask yourself two questions:
- Is my content useful and relevant to my target audience?
- Am I promoting my content and making it easy to find?
With these questions in mind you can begin to fine-tune your content-marketing strategy.
1. Write for Your Audience First
Write for your audience first and search engines second. Avoid creating content that is overloaded with keywords. This practice can be very obvious to your reader and will make your posts feel inauthentic. Google’s ranking algorithms may also penalize you for having excessive keyword density.
Instead, use keywords as the foundation for your content – create topics based on commonly searched keywords, then write content that relates to your reader.
2. Keep Evergreen Content Fresh
Evergreen content is content that is timeless and continually relevant to your readers. The idea is that it stays fresh and valuable for months and years to come.
Creating evergreen content is an investment. As time passes, you can re-publish evergreen content with new or updated information. This is useful in converting site visitors into loyal readers, as your content will always appear fresh.
3. Stick to a Publishing Schedule
In order to establish an audience, you’ll need to post content consistently. Create a regular publishing schedule and stick to it. Your readers will come to expect new content from you daily, weekly or monthly and they’ll be more likely to re-visit your page.
4. Write Scannable, Long-Form Content
The length of your posts will depend on your topic and audience, but long-form content tends to perform best among both readers and search engines. According to recent statistics, posts with an average of 1,500 to 2,000 words see the most readers online. Long-form content shouldn’t appear as a wall of text. Creating scannable content is also crucial to the performance of your content-marketing strategy. Most people don’t read articles diligently, word for word, so make your content more digestible with:
- Headings and subheadings
- Images and videos
- Paragraph breaks
- Bullet points and numbered lists
5. Promote Your Content
Social-media platforms are among the best online tools for sharing your content. They allow you to personally interact with your readers to build trust and engagement. The best social-media platforms on which to post your content include:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Google+
- LinkedIn
In addition to social media, there are other free and paid tools online you can use to promote your content. Deciding which service is best for you will depend on your audience, but these tools should not be overlooked. Investigate the following to see what they can offer you:
- Mixpanel
- TrendSpottr
- HubSpot
- Eloqua
Ultimately, you’ll need to find out which sharing platforms your audience visits most so you can market your content there.
Talk to a digital-marketing specialist today
Need help implementing your content-marketing strategy? Learn how Graphically Speaking can help you bring more potential customers to your website today! Book a free consultation.