You Are An Expert And The World Needs You

We all agree that we are living in unprecedented times.  COVID-19 is not only a health crisis - it’s an economic crisis as well.  In these uncertain times, people are looking for answers, but they are also looking for leaders.

This is your time.

Now, you might not see yourself as an expert or having anything particular of value to add to the conversation, but I strongly disagree. I have a lot of friends and connections who have done a lot of interesting and useful things. This is the time to share what you have learned with everyone.

Everyday Experts Enjoy More Trust

According to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, you don’t need to be a celebrity, CEO or politician for your audience to trust you.  In fact, company technical experts (65 points) and those described as “a person like yourself” (61 points) are ranked significantly higher than a CEO (47 points) a journalist (36 points) or a government official (35 points).

Even if you are representing your company as an employee, you enjoy far greater trust than the head of the company or the Board of Directors.  Entrepreneurs have a higher level of trust than their corporate counterparts, scoring 53 points versus 47 for a CEO.

Additional good news: looking at industry trends, the private sector around the globe is trusted more - by a 10 point gap - than the government or the media.  Companies are given almost the same level of trust as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

Even before you say a word, as a “regular” expert in your field, you enjoy a high level of credibility.  It is time you put it to use.

People Need Shortcuts

In so many areas, your audience is looking for the smartest, and in some cases the fastest, way to get things done.  Think back to a time when you were just getting started in your field of choice. Tasks and breadth of knowledge that may seem basic to you now likely looked intimidating then.

What tips and tricks have you collected on your professional journey?  What would be valuable to your audience? If you are having trouble coming up with ideas, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

This is information that your audience will find valuable, and it is information only you have.  Make sure you add value to your community by sharing it.

Your Brand: Your Unique Formula

You have a unique perspective.  Very few people in your industry, or around the world, have experienced what you have experienced.  So it is important to offer that point of view to your audience. You could have a unique combination of two different backgrounds, a particular type of education or maybe you just experienced things very few have.  What is your unique formula?

At its core, this is your brand.  Over time, this is the lens that your audience will view you through. Your particular way of approaching a situation or a topic can provide an important perspective that your audience will look for.  It doesn’t happen overnight, but by focusing on your unique voice, you can add value and grow your audience.

How Can You Show Your Expertise?

Hopefully, you now understand that not only are you an expert, but there is a big upside to sharing that expertise.  Of course, that means that you need to find vehicles for you to communicate that expertise.

Here are a few suggestions on how to do that:

In such uncertain market conditions, there has never been a better time to plant your flag and show your expertise.  Drawing from your everyday experiences, you can truly add value to your audience. The world needs you.

Need help?  Reach out to the ContentSquire team to learn how we can help you create regular content.

Why Techies Should Learn to Write Better

You must already hate this article if you're a back end developer or software engineer. Well, how much ever you're dreading what this article has to say, please don't skip it. Writing is a crucial skill that can easily be learned. But most importantly, it can make considerable changes in your career. Here are a few tips to keep in mind.

Express yourself in a brief and concise manner so others can understand you

It's good to begin with the basics.

What is often overlooked is that sharing thoughts with others through writing can help you reach out to a lot of people and further enable them to learn from you. This is a two-way street, and you may be able to use this kind of collaboration to learn something from other people too (as mentioned in the third point above). You may even end up finding like-minded people, and could even find a new job opportunity through this more enhanced network by posting online.

Being a good writer has a lot of benefits, but you have to keep practicing it. If you don't like to write because you believe you're a terrible writer with awful grammar and a ton of spelling mistakes, here are a few suggestions:

Invest in Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style"

If you don't wish to buy a copy of your own, you can borrow it from someone you know in the marketing or communications department. This book focuses on punctuation and grammar, along with sentence structure, and more. You can also purchase the Kindle version on Amazon, which you can read on your smartphone.

Take a Coursera class or another MOOC

There are many online courses like Coursera, Skillshare and others available that provide lessons on the basics of writing. Dedicating a few hours after your work or on weekends to learn about writing concisely is definitely worth it.

Keep in mind that you aren't seeking to turn yourself into a professional writer, but rather, just want to learn the basics to be able to put together content in a coherent and meaningful way.

Make friends with writers

Surround yourself with other writers who can go through your writing and give you some constructive feedback. Perhaps there is a colleague who also writes, making friends with such people can help you find a mentor who wouldn't mind helping you to learn and grow.

Find an online editing tool suitable for you

There are several online editing tools like Hemmingway and (my personal favourite) Grammarly that can help you. Whatever you decide to use, pay attention to finding the one that coaches you on writing well rather than changing your writing style without any explanation or reasoning as to why it did so. Try out a few different editing tools or ask experienced writers the editing tool they use and why.

Final thoughts

If you're worried that you haven't reached the stage of being an expert on a topic you wish to write on, guess what? You don't need to be! You can research the topic and learn all you need to before actually starting to write.

You may also be anxious that your posts aren't good enough. Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good.  Every single writer (or human being, for that matter) makes mistakes and readers (especially devs) will probably call you out. But instead of letting this demotivate you, just go ahead and correct your errors, and in situations where what you wrote was actually correct but just not understood correctly then be sure to educate the reader about it.

Don't worry about writing in a very simple way, coming across as an amateur, or writing in a technical enough manner that most people don't understand. You will find your audience and get into the cycle over time. Just write as often as you can and in time it will become second nature.

7 Content Trends for 2020

Are you in the midst of planning your 2020 content marketing strategy? The effectiveness of content marketing, the tactics, the channels and tools marketers use to create and distribute content will continue to evolve in 2020 and beyond. So, what content marketing trends should you watch out for? And how should marketers change their marketing strategy to keep pace with these changes?

Content Trend #1: User-Generated Content

According to a recent study, 85% of consumers find UGC or user-generated content more influential than brand content. User-generated content is a staple of most eCommerce websites today. Consumers tend to share their feedback and other shoppers often trust these reports about products and services. Consumers agree that user-generated content is more influential than brand content and therefore follow it more closely.

One of the studies of Instagram for tourism marketing found that UGC posts were the most engaging type of posts for tourism marketers. User-generated content is not only engaging but allows a higher volume of content creation with fewer resources.

In 2020, figure out what inspires your audience to share more content online and how you can successfully engage customers to create UGC content. This is, in fact, part of most content marketing planning processes for many brands today.

Content Trend #2: Continued Rise of Video

Video is a critical part of every stage in the customer journey. Surprisingly, in 2018, internet users watched in excess of 500 million hours of content on YouTube every day. Today video has become an essential part of every marketing strategy. And to do that marketers need the best tools in the market. From generating ideas to designing killer videos and deploying video content, there are numerous useful video tools you can use to generate interest, broaden your audience and create tons of converts, so start today. What's important to note here is that product videos don't have to be boring but super exciting to engage your customers.

Fundamentally, video is a widely preferred form of content compared to other types of content, especially when learning about new services and products. In fact, 80% of people generally switch between online search and video when deciding which brand or product to buy. On the other hand, 50% of shoppers are of the opinion that online video has helped them decide which specific product or brand to purchase.

For 2020, consider how you can make video a part of your content marketing strategy. If you’re afraid of the idea of creating a video, don’t be. Depending on your brand and audience, a simple video may just be the content you need to connect with your potential audience.

Content Trend #3: Voice

Voice content strategy is no longer optional and has become a necessity. Voice is the new interface that will soon surround each one of us in many ways and in many places. Voice content for Amazon Echo, Samsung devices and Google Home are extensively being developed by brands today. As per stats, smart speaker adoption grew 38.9% in the last year and more than 26% of all U.S. adults have access to a smart speaker. Marketers today are building voice-activated content strategies for their clients, helping them take advantage of this fast-growing consumer interaction opportunity. In fact, the voice industry has been reported to be the largest-ever growing industry - an increasing opportunity for voice content strategists, technologists, developers,  vendors and hardware platforms.

Presenting compelling voice-activated content to consumers opens an all-new avenue for engagement. It’s an opportunity that will dominate the expensive and bulky websites, as well as the social media platforms that increasingly require ad budgets to reach customers.

Till today, most of the voice-activated content created for clients was rooted in information and helpfulness. As user and consumers get more comfortable with using smart speakers for more complex applications - API-driven interactions of voice-activated content is likely to grow in 2020. A recent survey of business decision-makers by Adobe found that 91% are preparing to make significant investments in voice, and 44% plan to release a voice app in 2019. It will be interesting to see how these two elements of content and voice are converged by every brand and business - thus driving increased customer engagement using voice-activated content.

Content Trend #4: B2C Behaviors Continue to Impact B2B Expectations

According to a survey, 61% of all B2B transactions start online and 51% of customers turn to social media to do their initial research. B2C behaviors indirectly impact B2B expectations. Even B2B decision-making is heavily influenced by social media content.

When it comes to marketing to B2B buyers, many of the elements considered for the content creation process remain similar to the B2C world. The only difference is that the B2B customer has a longer buying cycle. This is governed by more money spent on a product/solution, and the more time a B2B consumer is likely to spend researching the pros and cons.

Touchpoints that are seen as traditionally B2C like social media, chatbots, augmented reality, mobile, have become even more critical in B2B, considering the complexity of the purchase decision in B2B. In 2020, it’s time for B2B focused businesses to take a few steps back and reassess how they are reaching and engaging their customers. It’s a new world and digitalization continues to disrupt everything that has come before it. Therefore B2C behaviors broadly impact the B2B world, whether it is searching, problem-solving, purchasing or consuming.

Content Trend #5: Continued Proliferation of Messaging Apps

Messaging apps will continue to generate in 2020, which will include many aspects of ‘content’. The apps come with a bunch of new opportunities for marketers. Messaging apps continue to advance, setting new and innovative trends. Messaging apps today are constantly evolving and changing the way marketers do business. Living in the digital age calls markets to stay up-to-date with the latest trends to offer customers with the best service.

With more than 3 billion consumers spending a lot of time and sharing emotions on messaging apps, consider how messaging apps will impact content strategy in the near future.

Content Trend #6: No More Random Acts of Content

For 2020, think smart and try to stop all random acts of content that never work.

Instead of continuously reinventing the wheel, you should try to create less content and make each piece of content more compelling. Many content marketing clients have adopted this approach and in 2020 many more companies will as well.

What does this approach actually mean? You need to give your audience a chance to find your content in their preferred format and channel, delivered to them in a steady stream over a period of time. You can’t simply post an article in an unplanned manner and expect leads to contact you.

Try to think about this approach. The most effective marketing and advertisements are experienced over a period of time. Always remember, it takes about seven impressions for a display ad to sink in and about 5-6 emails to warm up leads. This is also the reason why you see the same commercials over and over again. The rules of content are pretty simple.

One must stop random acts of content and instead focus on a rich, nuanced plan to create less but quality content delivered more frequently to your target audiences.

Content Trend #7: Customer Journey Mapping

More and more potential and new clients are showing interest in customer journey mapping: how to create and improve them, and how to tie them back to their content strategy. In many instances, it can be challenging for your company to get into the minds of your customers. You may wonder why a customer spends so long to get from Point A to Point B when it should only take a few seconds. This isn't something you can assume or should predict based on your internal perspective. It is where you need to understand the customer journey to enhance the physical experiences of your customers.

What exactly is the customer journey map? A customer journey map is a visual representation of the process a customer goes through to achieve a goal with your company. With the help of a customer journey map, you can get a sense of your customers' motivations, needs and pain points. Most customer journey maps start with excel sheets that outline key events, customer motivations, and areas of friction within the user’s experience. Then, this information is combined into a visual representation that describes the average experience of your customer with your business.

This customer journey map is a trend that will continue to grow in 2020, and if you haven’t done so already, try reading about a few great tips to get started with customer journey mapping.

Here’s Why and How You Need to Master The Art of Storytelling

Storytelling is an art, and requires creativity (a lot of it), vision (thoroughly), skill (of course), and practice. You cannot master this art in a sitting or two. It’s a trial-and-error process that takes a lot of practice. Storytelling has become a crucial step in successful marketing campaigns, it smartly sets vibrant brands apart from simple businesses and loyal consumers from one-time shoppers. Further, it’s the heart and lungs of inbound marketing.

If you can’t understand why it’s so important, consider this: what does a copywriter do? Sells with words. What do salesmen do? They sell by telling awesome stories. And the most popular copywriting story that at least I have heard of a billion times begins with the headline, “They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano, But When I Started to Play!-” Read the story here if you know nothing about it and then proceed with this post. On a side note, you may or may not know that Salman Rushdie, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joseph Heller all started as copywriters before becoming excellent novelists!

One thing that moves people to action is good stories. Stories create sympathy and empathy that makes people willing enough to open their wallets for purchase and donations. Not just that, a good story can start a revolution of sorts, it is memorable and a great influential component that can increase sales. When you use a story in your content, you are essentially painting an imaginary town for the reader that they reside in, so that they can envision themselves using your product or service without even buying them.

For those who believe in scientific evidence and facts, this has been proven in theory so you can trust it. Let’s pick up our pens, keyboards, or whatever you use to write and start mastering the art of storytelling and dive in.

Why Storytelling?

Stories sell; you can tell stories to entertain, educate, or brag. They overshine data-driven powerpoint presentations because -

Stories simplify complex messages and solidify abstract concepts

Have you ever been confused by a brand new idea that’s doing the rounds on the internet? Say, a viral video of a man protesting something and the world is talking about it, while you’re wondering what the beef is about? Those ideas can be simplified by storytelling because they can help you understand the concept by putting you in the shoes of who it is around. It generates empathy and sympathy. For example, think of how your math teacher used to give you real-life examples to explain math problems, which was a much better way of doing it than just drawing characters and numbers on the chalk-board.

Apple has been able to describe computers and smartphones, which are rather complicated to a typical consumer, and has been successfully selling them too. They do so by using real-life stories to describe how the products benefit the users instead of using technical information that consumers rarely find enticing.

Stories bring us together

Cavemen used to imprint their stories and messages using characters and pictures. We don’t fully understand them and are still trying to decode them; but this draws attention to the fact that stories don’t have a language. They themselves are a language - very universally so. We all understand the hero, the heartbreak, the underdog, the emotions the characters go through, and everything else a story depicts. We, in fact, go through those emotions as we read a story or watch it in a film or a play. Sharing a story gives people a sense of commonality and community. They feel the same emotions as they are shown, in unison.

Despite the multitude of things that differentiate and divide us, stories can unite people, removing the differences that our religion, ethnicity, language, or political preferences make; stories bring us together through our common humanity.

TOMS shares stories of both customers and the people they serve through purchases. By this, they have greatly benefited and created a movement that hasn’t only increased sales but also built a community.

Stories inspire and motivate us

When brands are transparent and authentic, they are perceived as down-to-earth, which helps consumers to connect with them. Stories tap into people’s emotions and bare both the good and the bad and therefore motivate and inspire. Stories, eventually, drive action. They also foster brand loyalty. When you create a narrative around your brand, you aren’t only humanizing your brand, but you’re also inherently marketing your business.

Some brands also use inspiration as a selling tactic, but some like ModCloth have done it all too well. It shares the touching, real story of their founder, which makes the brand relatable and worth purchasing. Not only this, but it also inspires other founders and business owners.

How to Write a Good Story

What is a good story

Good and bad are relative terms. But there are a few components that we can’t negotiate on that make for a great storytelling experience for both the teller and the reader.

In all aspects, - Good stories are:

In essence, there are three components that make a story successful, no matter what message you’re trying to convey:

  1. Characters: A story should feature at least one character, and this character is the key that audiences relate to. This component is the bridge between the storyteller and the audience. If you can put your audience through the very emotion that the character goes through, your job is done. The audience will be much more likely to comply with your call-to-action than otherwise.
  2. Conflict: The conflict elicits emotions and connects the audience through relatable experiences. Though the conflicts vary in everybody’s lives, they are a lesson of how the character overcomes a challenge and, consequently, how the audience can too. When you’re telling a story, the power lies in how you’re conveying what you’re conveying. If a conflict isn’t there in a story, the story isn’t going to be received as a story.
  3. Resolution: Each and every good story has an enclosure - whether or not it’s good. Your story’s conclusion should wrap up the story and provide context around the characters and conflicts, thereby leaving the audience with a call-to-action.

Now that we know what a good story is let’s talk about how we can craft a story.

Into The Storytelling Process

Storytelling is a creative process that tests your experience and skill. Just like painters, artists and sculptors and potters follow their own creativity when producing their art; you have to, too. They go by their process, and they know where to start, how to go forward developing their vision, and how to perfect it over time. Here are a few cues for you.

1. Know your audience

Who do you want to tell your story? Who is going to benefit and respond with the highest strength?

Before you create a final story, it’s important that you understand your readers and how they will respond to it and take further action.

Knowing your audience will require thorough research on your target market and define your buyer personas. This will get you acquainted with your readers, viewers, or listeners, which will make your story more relevant in its approach. You will be able to write in a direction that’s crucial for your audience after you build out the foundation of your story.

2. Define your message

However long your story is, it must have a message to deliver. And just like the foundation of a new structure, it must be established before the story’s structure is created.

Is your story trying to sell a product or raising funds? Is it explaining a service or advocating for a trending issue? What is the point of your story? To do this, you can maybe try to summarize your story in six to ten words first. If you aren’t able to do that, your story, unfortunately, doesn’t have a core message.

3. Decide the kind of story you want to tell

To determine the kind of story you’re telling, you can try to figure out how you want your audience to feel as they go about reading, listening or watching it.

This helps determine how the story is going to be weaved and what objective you’re pursuing.

So, if you intend to:

4. Establish a call-to-action

Objective and call-to-action are similar, but the call-to-action is used to establish the action that you want your audience to take after reading.

What exactly do you want the audience to do after they’ve consumed your story - do you want them to purchase something, subscribe to a newsletter, take a course, or donate money? Outline this alongside your objective to ensure that they line up.

So if your objective, for example, is to foster community, your call-to-action can be in the lines of ‘Tap the share button below’.

5. Chose the medium of your story

A story can take many shapes and forms. Some stories are watched, some read and others listened to. Your medium doesn’t only depend on the type of story you want to tell but also resources like time and money.

Here are some ways you can tell your story:

6. Write

Next, you write. Take out your pen and paper or your word processing tool to start crafting your story. Keep your message and objective straight in your head and simply start with adding detail and creative flair to your draft.

7. Share the story

Don’t shy from sharing and promoting your story. Like with any piece of content, creating is only half the battle since post-production is also an important step in storytelling.

Depending on your type and chosen medium, you should unquestionably share your story on social media and wherever you find fit, like emails and newsletters.

In addition, your stories can also be promoted on your blog or by guest posting on other platforms. Digital stories can be shared on YouTube and Vimeo. While spoken stories are best delivered in person, you can record a live performance to share later.

The more you share your story, the more engagement you can expect from your audience.

Takeaway

Storytelling is definitely a great way of conveying your message to your audience, whether it’s in the form of a blog, a podcast, a short film, or even simply a newsletter. Stories make us human, and we all connect to them if we can relate to them. So understanding your audience is also an essential part of the process along with the creative and practical aspects.

You can use the art of storytelling to move your audience to subscribe to your newsletters, take up a course, purchase a product or service, donate or just register on your website.

Content Marketing Strategy Essentials

Fundamentals of content marketing state that the concept is not all that complicated - one needs to consistently provide something of relevant value to their target audience in the hope it will create trust and loyalty. Startups to even medium businesses today recognize the value of content marketing but it is only achievable through an optimized content strategy. Hence the creation of an optimized content strategy designed to support your brand objectives and comprehensive marketing plans is vital for your business.

A content marketing strategy (not to be confused with a content strategy) looks at how content marketing can be used in a strategic way and with other marketing, customer and sales strategies. The power of a content marketing strategy is to bring in new customers, drive revenue, educate new users and help build a powerful brand for any business.

Serving the needs of your audience with high-quality, valuable content consistently is an admirable goal for any company. But of course, all your efforts will be wasted if your content doesn’t trigger the audience behaviors that would help your company achieve its business goals. In order to get the desired results, every content marketing leader should be prepared to answer a few questions:

  1. Who specifically should your content be most relevant to?
  2. What distinctive and desirable content experience can you consistently deliver?
  3. What benefits will your audience receive from consuming your content?

Why do you need a content marketing strategy?

Your company should certainly have a content strategy – a strategic plan for all its content usage across the enterprise. Often content marketers benefit from having a strategic road map that focuses exclusively on using content to attract, acquire, and engage prospective customers.

Content marketing strategists determine what content will build the customer base by helping the audience make decisions or solve problems at crucial points in their experience with the brand.

The main reason you need a content marketing strategy is that content marketing is not an island. Without a content marketing strategy, you risk focusing on the content itself, not on the overall goals anymore. In fact, this is one of the most crucial and deadly mistakes in content marketing. Unfortunately, this disconnected view on content marketing happens very often and leads to focusing on the wrong things.

What’s in a content marketing strategy?

Your strategy should define your customer needs and key business areas, as well as how your content efforts address them. While no two strategies are exactly alike, they all should detail a few essential components:

Steps to build a content marketing strategy?

A content strategy involves various components.

Let’s detail the content marketing strategy a bit more with a quick to-do list.

1. Define Your Content Marketing Goal

Every content marketing strategy needs to start with a clear goal and true purpose.

How are you going to measure the success of your online campaigns? Is it with traffic? App downloads? New subscribers? Social shares and engagement? Conversions? Video views? Sales?

Understanding your goal early on will guide other important decisions as you proceed to develop your content marketing strategy. Such as, what are we making? And where are we going to distribute our content? One of your goals could be to attract new readers through clever blog posts and then converting them into email subscribers who can later be converted into paying customers.

2. Research and Understand Your Audience

Who you create your content for is equally important as what you create.

Once you have clear guidelines of why you are making content, the next step in your strategy is to define the audience. You need to understand exactly who is going to view, read, or watch the content you create.

Effective content is only produced with the direction, involvement, and feedback of your audience. The best content marketing strategy is designed to answer the most pressing questions your target audience has - to educate and transform them. The most important step is to understand the demographics (age, gender, location, job title) and psychographics (attitudes, belief systems, values, and interests) of your ideal audience.

3. Creating Your Audience Personas

It is all about buyer personas - the fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Developing a clear understanding of who your target audience is, will help immensely in crafting the right messaging in your content marketing efforts.

For each of the audience personas you create, write out their (demographic and psychographic) attributes on a bulleted list. This will give you info like whether they are searching on Google or are heavy Facebook users or use community sites like Quora/Reddit to source answers and ideas.

4. Set Up Your Blog

This is the technical part of your content marketing strategy.

You need to find a place to host the content you’re going to create, now is the time. Do you want to build your own blog on a WordPress-powered platform?
You can opt for a ready-to-go content management system like Squarespace, or you can simply host your content on an external domain like YouTube, Medium or Apple.

5. Update Your Current Content

You need to know exactly what kind of content ‘types’ you plan to produce.

If you are already in the process of writing or creating other types of content, now it is a great time to align your published content with your new content marketing strategy. Which topics are you going to create on a consistent basis?

If you have content already published, check if it fits into your new content marketing strategy. Does it speak to your audience and work towards your goals? If not, you can start updating it.

6. Start Building an Email List

Content marketing is useless if you are not getting in front of the right person. Your email marketing goals should relate back to core business objectives.

Let us discuss the most important piece of your content distribution puzzle: emails.

Email lets you communicate directly to your subscribers and gets you into their inboxes - where so many of us spend countless hours each week. Starting early with list-building is a great way to amplify the content you’re creating. Some of the most popular ones for marketers are - MailChimp, ConvertKit, Campaign Monitor, AWeber, ActiveCampaign.

7. Brainstorm Content Ideas and Use Keyword Research to Find What Your Audience is Looking For

Here we talk about the actual content.

For your content marketing strategy to be successful, you need to make sure you stay strategic in what you’re creating and apply the principles of content marketing into your plan.

Firstly brainstorm topics and note down blog posts ideas your audiences might be interested in. It would be good to involve end uses like customer service or sales guys. Secondly use a keyword research tool to gather information like Google’s Keyword Planner, Moz, keywordtool.io etc. Thirdly, outline your SEO-friendly content that will serve your goals, the user’s needs, and the keyword targeting.

8. Decide on the Format of the Content You Want to Produce

Blogging is essential to content marketing because it has a low barrier to entry and high returns.

Blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics - they all have their place in your content strategy and it is your discretion to use them.

Blog posts or pages are a great place to start with your content marketing strategy as they have the lowest barrier to entry, by far. You do not need design software or special tools. Just start writing and you’re ready to go.

9. Use Social Media to Promote Your Content

Content marketing is a long term investment in your audience but pays massive dividends

It’s pretty much impossible in recent times to separate your content marketing strategy from your social media strategy. Social media plays an integral part in getting your content in front of the right people. Generating platform-specific content should be a part of your strategy as every platform has its pros and cons.

Final Thoughts on Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

These tips should be everything you need to plan and execute a killer content marketing strategy. Everyone today wants to produce more great content, whether that means articles, videos, ebooks, podcasts, blogging or even social media content that is engineered to get lots of shares. A content marketing strategy is a roadmap that not only tells you what you are going to create, but how you are going to develop it, and ultimately use it to attract, retain, and convert readers into customers.

Why SEO Is Actually All About Content Marketing

Content marketing is still a buzzword. And with this buzzword, every company has its own definition - which leads to confusion.

SEO companies were the first to jump into Content Marketing as links and content are intrinsically linked to more traffic, but there are lots more to it than SEO. In doing your research, there are several questions you might come across:

Yes, they do for together. SEO is actually about content marketing and vice versa.

SEO (search engine optimization) refers to the technical process of increasing the quality of traffic and attracting maximum visitors to your website. SEO without content marketing is like a body without a soul. In other words, SEO is actually strategized around content marketing since every website needs words, articles, substance, keywords, etc.

So to start, SEO refers to every action you take on the website to make it rank higher for keywords in search engines like Google. These tactics work together to help certain pages on your website rank well when users search words or phrases related to your industry or service.

SEO encompasses quite a few different strategies:

How SEO and Content Marketing Work Together

SEO and content marketing have a mutual relationship. There is a good bit of overlap between the two. Another way to look at it is like this: SEO makes demands. Content marketing fulfills those demands.

Your content should include highly searched keywords in your industry or niche that helps your website rank better in search engines, meaning it will attract more traffic. Hence your content is more effective in reaching your marketing goals.

Adding strong content to your site will improve its domain authority which will, in turn, give an extra boost to your overall SEO.
In short, the better your SEO, the better your content will perform and vice versa.

SEO demands keywords. Content marketing means using keywords.

One important feature of SEO: Keywords. Keywords are the fundamental component of SEO - researching them, utilizing them and tracking rank on Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). SEO requires keywords to perform properly. Content cannot perform without keywords.

How does one apply the use of keywords? How is all the research funnelled into its practical application? This is what content marketing is. The only way you can use your keywords is to be employing them strategically throughout your content. This means you have to research, track and utilize the keywords to rank your website at the top of search results. Through the use of articles, blogs and other online content, you can use more keywords relevant to what your site is about and what people are searching for. On the other hand, you need to avoid overstuffing your content with keywords - a tactic search engines now penalize.

SEO demands consistent output. Content marketing requires consistency.

Google likes fresh content, and they have for a long time. It is a fact that fresh content gets rapidly indexed and registers higher in the SERPs than older low-value content.

When fresh content is updated on a website with high domain authority, you can be sure that it is going to offer a SERP boost. Good SEO, then, means a consistent output of content. Consistent output means that you’re doing content marketing, and you're publishing often. This is the best solution. Content marketing is an ongoing process, so think of it as a regular investment.

SEO demands backlinks. Content marketing encourages backlinks.

Over the years, backlinks remain one of the most powerful Google ranking factors. If you want to substantially boost your site's SEO and improve your Google rankings, link building is one of the best ways to do it. Link building activities should try to get as many links to the target page as possible.

But the best way to build links is by publishing killer content and letting sites link back to it. This is the real way to continual SEO success.

Otherwise, you can build links by contracting with link building agencies. Guest blogging and infographics can also be good for link building.

SEO demands content. Content marketing is content.

Content is king. There is no such thing as SEO without content. We do not need to argue about that anymore. It’s a truism of the SEO industry. Content content content is everywhere.

And what is content marketing all about? It’s about content - as the name would suggest. The practical application of SEO is the very substance of content marketing. When SEO shouts, “We need more content!” content marketing responds, “We're on it!”

SEO demands onsite technical optimization. Content marketing needs great UX.

SEO is not just content, articles, blogs, keywords and backlinks. SEO is more about optimizing the robots.txt, utilizing tags, enhancing metadata, and constructing a strategic sitemap. This technical checklist includes meta tags, breadcrumbs, meta descriptions, call-to-action, headers, and responsive design.

These technical optimizations are for the benefit of users when they are searching, selecting, or reading content. Their enhancements are required from a user experience (UX) perspective. SEO and UX go hand-in-hand in creating a successful website experience. SEO components like metadata, site map, robots.txt are present to serve the user better and promote your content.

The elements of great user experience have been rolled into SEO best practices.

Why do you want a good sitemap? So people can easily find and access your content. Why do you want an optimized robots.txt? So search engines can better crawl your site, and so readers can see the content. Why do you want the right tags in the right places? So your content can get indexed fast, resulting in accurate search results, and more readers of your content. Again, it all comes back to content.

The Difference Between SEO and Content Marketing

Now that we’ve established the relationship between the two, it is time for us to dig into what precisely separates content marketing from SEO. And while they have points of differentiation, you still can not separate the two entirely.

One key contrast: SEO is narrower and more technical whereas content marketing is broader and more holistic.

1) Audience

Any type of content should always be created with your target audience in mind - this is an elementary rule. This means that your writeup, graphics, and formats should be designed to suit your viewers best. Always try optimizing the pages you host your content on, but do so in a way that doesn’t detract from the content that you post.

SEO, on the other hand, requires in-depth knowledge about search engines and their crawlers. In fact, search engines weigh keywords, title tags, headers, and other code-related elements much more heavily than your average visitor.

2) Approach

As a result of these different audiences or end-users, the approaches taken toward content marketing and SEO are slightly different. When doing SEO for your site, you should take an analytical approach to all changes you commit to the website. Use tools like Google Analytics to dig into the hard data, and research keywords to determine new opportunities for growing your traffic and rankings. You need to concentrate on a data-based strategy when it comes to SEO.

There’s no proven formula for success with content marketing, in other words, there are no hard data and facts available to work as a baseline. But if you are a creative individual, it could be a great opportunity to experiment with new topics and formats.

3) Value

This should come as no surprise, but content marketing and SEO each have their own way of adding value to your website and marketing strategy. SEO primarily attracts qualified traffic to your website and relates to the ways in which you reach new visitors. Whereas content marketing has more to do with keeping those visitors engaged and interested once they arrive on your website, and moving them closer to becoming customers.

Wrapping up

Overall, it is essential to keep up with Google’s latest updates and ensure your website is relevant to both Google and your customers. Though there are frequent search algorithm changes every year, the bottom line is that valuable, authentic content always wins. You create content to meet your content marketing objectives. As content marketing is becoming increasingly relevant, it is vital for a website to provide quality, informational content regularly. And SEO is intimately tied to content marketing. Remember a simple formula

How Content Marketing Can Help You

Do you ever hear your colleagues or friends or someone in your family talking about content marketing and try to understand what all the hype is about? If so, you’ve landed on the right page.
Content marketing is now both at the top of priorities of marketing and experts, and virtually everyone in the business world.

There were times when marketing was all about direct sales, telemarketing, email marketing, and so forth. But we’ve evolved, and so has marketing. Sure, we receive marketing emails, and we aren’t ashamed of calling them spam, because that’s how many view it.

But why spam? They are trying to sell their goods and services, which could be helpful for us. They could be selling us the one vacuum cleaner we’d always wanted. They could be about giving us a credit card that fulfills all our needs. But it is the very nature of these telecalls and marketing emails that makes us wanna ignore them.

Just when presumably these marketing strategies were about to collapse, and experts could think of nothing else, they remembered how video-based advertisements helped in marketing and sales.
What do some advertisements make us not want to skip them? We have post-five-second-skipper ads running before most Youtube videos, and we skip all but a few. Those advertisements have some ‘value’ to offer. In the world of content and content marketing, this ‘value’ word is of utmost importance.

The value we are discussing - whether emotional, sentimental, informational or, for that matter, whatever else - gives us, the viewers, an incentive to watch the full advertisement. The whole video-advertising scenario opened the door to content marketing.

Defining Content Marketing

You know that if you want to market something, you need to generate leads. So, when you want to sell your goods and services by creating or producing content that holds some value, congratulations: you have landed in the world of content marketing.

You can develop all kinds of content - video, audio, written, infographic, webpages, and even books - you just have to strategize and plan how you’re going to do it.

Content strategy plays a significant role here. Strategists plan the content, the content type, and the goals of the content.

This content is consumed by prospects and creates awareness, after which, if they find your product or service useful enough, you can make them convert. When your firm’s goals are met by your content campaigns, your content is said to be performing well.

Content Marketing In-Depth

Assume that I am a producer of high-quality, ultra-smooth fountain pens that are liked by one and all. Imagine that you are a writer, and you have your personal collection of the best pens in the world. I live in the East, and you in the West. How on earth are you ever going to find the world-class pens that I’m producing?

Now, imagine that I start calling as well as sending you multiple emails to spread awareness about my pens. Is this going to entice you to buy? Or you’ll instead recommend to others not buy anything from me at all. Not good.

Now, suppose that I didn’t do what I wrote in the last paragraph, but I start blogging or vlogging or podcasting about pens, generate an audience at the same time. You start looking up good quality pens on Google and come across my content. You will be more inclined to learn more about pens, and more likely to visit the page where I sell my pens too. I think you’ll probably end up buying a pen.
This is the ‘it’ about content marketing.

Content marketers may or may not produce content around the products and services they’re selling. It all depends on who they are selling to, and why they’re campaigning or producing content.

Types Of Content

Like I’ve already told you, content can be of any type. Let’s discuss some types with examples:

Blogs/Webpages

Not all blogs and webpages are built to sell products or services. People blog and create websites for their own interests and passions. For example, The Beginner’s Guide To SEO by Moz is a blog that’s written to generate awareness about their SEO tools and services. Anybody looking up SEO-related stuff can land on this page to learn about SEO. This will in turn lead them to learn about their service, which they may or may not be interested in. But, in case the blog didn’t exist, finding their services on the ocean that is the internet would be close to impossible.

Simply Stacie is a lifestyle blogger who writes about everything that she wants to, like books she reads, household stuff, family & personal life, and recipes. Her motivation may or may not be to sell things, but her website is just a blog that people visit to read. And you won’t find a page where she asks you to buy her products or services.

Videos/Vlogs

Do you have access to YouTube? Do you like to check out what’s trending and randomly watch a video that’s recommended to you?

Now, take for example The Best Ever Food Review Show, they have close to 3M subscribers and get millions of views every day. The man created the channel because of his passion for traveling and eating foods from multiple cultures and cuisines. They aren’t promoting anything. Though they are making money, the channel isn’t producing content to sell.

On the other hand, Gary Vaynerchuk started his YouTube channel to promote his family’s wine shop. Through his videos and other online marketing tactics, he grew a $45M empire.

Videos and podcasts are historically a less preferred form of content marketing because they are thought to be hard and expensive to produce. Now that the cost of professional-grade equipment is falling, creating high-quality video/audio content isn’t as difficult anymore.

Simple video content marketing has been used in launching new dental products, blenders, and marketing Hong Kong visa consulting services.

You can create video content to sell your products in a similar manner too. You don’t have to worry about spending thousands of dollars on online and offline promotions either.

Infographics

Typically long, vertical graphics that have statistics, charts and/or other information are a great source of content marketing. If you want to go through some infographics on content marketing, you can click here. These 197 infographics have been curated by Michael Schmitz, the head of Content Lab at Publicis in Munich.

Infographics are effective, mostly attractive, and are small files that can be shared on social media and posted on websites for long periods.

You can also get professionally designed infographic by firms like Visua.ly. A decent infographic usually costs at least $1,000 for designing, but if you hire a contractor or agency to strategize and plan, the cost may increase by thousands.

The other thing is that you’ll also have to promote the infographic to bloggers and the media. You can also set up a board on Pinterest and curate infographics related to your business. That is also a sort of content marketing that costs nothing but time - and it worked for Michael.

Podcasts

Videos and blogs are still considered doable by most of the people, but the concept of podcasts is relatively new.

Michael Hyatt, author of the best-seller Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, can be a good example for you. His podcast This is Your Life is downloaded around 250,000 times every month. He gives valuable information and advice in his podcast for absolutely no cost, but his podcast’s popularity leads to increased sales of his books, invites for him as a speaker and signups for his multiple courses.

Books

This could be considered an expensive affair. But savvy marketers sell books as marketing tools.
Michael Port wrote the sales manual Book Yourself Solid for entrepreneurs, marketers and salespeople, but his book is actually a marketing tool for leading readers to his speaking and coaching services.

You can self-publish your marketing-book, and if you don’t find customers, you will still be called the author of your book!

Other examples of content marketing may include ebooks, white papers, presentations, newsletters, and public speaking too. You can find entire books written on each of these to get deep into the world of content marketing.

The Entire Purpose of Content Marketing

When you want to sell your products or services, what do you need to generate first?

The first thing is need. A customer has to have a need that a marketer can cater to. Once they need something, they require a solution to fulfill that need.

The second requirement is awareness. The customer needs to be aware that there is a solution to fulfill their needs.

The next thing is research. The customer will research where they can find the solution. Your content plays the main part here. If they land upon your content and learn that you have the solution too, they’ll compare you with other sellers.

The customer will finally buy the product or service from either you or someone they find better according to your content because the content is what pulled or drove them.

Build awareness: through content, you can raise awareness of the solutions that exist in the market. Consumers usually get to know different products by interesting, engaging content, rather than learning about them from friends or on social media.

The main thing to focus on is the ‘value,’ whether your content is giving the consumer or audience the value that they are looking for or not. Someone who’s looking to buy lipstick could be looking for a smooth matte, but if your content doesn’t seem to mention matte even if you’re selling it, the consumer may move on. Your content may also add other value points like how that lipstick would help someone with low self-esteem. Such ‘value’ has a positive influence on consumers, which can directly generate sales.

Traditional sales tactics are often highly pressurized and ineffective. Through content, you’ve already built up the trust that you would build when you tell the customer voluntarily. Your well-performing content has already raised awareness and most probably converted regular visitors into your customers.
It is important to strategize and plan carefully and tactically to have exponential returns on investment (ROI).

Content marketing provides additional benefits as it supports other digital marketing platforms. Content marketing is directly related to better social media marketing and contributes to search engine optimization (SEO) by giving natural inbound links and buildup of quality content on your website that can get phenomenal search ranks.

It is also true that many companies put most of their SEO efforts on their content.

Getting Started

The easiest way to get started in the world of content marketing is blogging. What could be easier or simpler?

To know how to start and get tips for writing your blogs, you can go to Copyblogger.

But your content marketing journey doesn’t end there. When you want to actually get to the point of marketing your product, you have to be extremely good at the content you produce.

Quality Content

Recall every time you couldn’t watch a video or read a piece of content any further because it was just terrible? That is what most would call lousy marketing.

When you’re producing content that your company’s income depends on, you have to be extra good at it. So much so, that people should be willing to pay to read or watch your superb content on its own merits. It is a double bounty as you’ll also be generating leads through your content apart from earning traffic from your content.

Consider The Lego Movie. You may not have noticed, but it is one of the best and greatest examples of content marketing ever! Should I tell you now that the 100-minute movie was just an extended toy commercial? It couldn’t be a mere coincidence that Lego overtook Mattel to become the largest toy-selling company in the whole world!

You don’t need to have such a big budget to get through your content marketing strategy, but you can come with amazing ideas to sell your products by giving your prospects valuable, and in many cases, fun information.

The Recipe to Success

The only recipe to success in this vast content marketing world, as I’ve already said repeatedly, is value. Add value to your content. Nothing else will make up for it if your content lacks in value.
The attractive graphics and videos add nothing to your content if there’s just no value for the consumer.

Also, remember that this ‘value’ is highly subjective and relative. You can find value in content pieces that I may call garbage, because our interests are different.

I might like to read or watch about fashion or why the earth is round, whereas you may be interested in only cars. A video that talks about various car-parts may be valuable to you, a blog that tells me where I can buy the most trending clothes is valuable to me.

Whether your content generates sales or it under-performs depends largely on the strategy. You need to exactly understand who your customers are, what they are interested in, and how varied their interests can be. Someone searching for bags may be interested in traveling, so you can create content around travelling too. Someone looking up for frying pan could be interested in cooking, and you can sell your frying pans by posting recipes.

Content Strategy

Finally, your strategy has to be based on your goals.

What are your goals? Why are you creating content? What are the mission and vision of your company?
Are you generating content just to raise awareness about risks associated with pollution, or do you have a solution for it too? Do you want to know what your consumers' needs are, do you want them to land on your landing page and give you the information you need, or do you want them to buy your products and services?

There are designated content strategists for this purpose who strategize all the content that has to go online. If everything is confusing to you, you can rely on them for help.

But remember that your performance will depend on your content, and your content ultimately depends on your goals.

Content Marketing Offers These 12 Incredible Benefits To Your Business

Since you’re searching about benefits, I assume that you’ve already read and understood what content marketing is all about.

Traditional marketing practices used to push most of their prospects into not buying their products (or services) merely because they were irritating. However, content marketing has created opportunities to pull customers to the brand by providing quality content.
Customers no longer have to be contacted to sample the products; they can test and review the product themselves.

So let's take a look at the benefits of content marketing:

1. Quality Content = Higher Conversions

When you observe higher conversions for your product or service, you know that your content has succeeded in doing its job. Quality content first generates awareness about your brand, and ultimately leads to conversions.

Research demonstrates that brands who consistently utilize content marketing had six times higher conversions than competitors who didn’t.

You may have been able to work out by now that content marketing is a combination of monetary investment, time and effort if the campaign has to be successful.

This is also because customers go through a full process of buying before they finally make a purchase. They research, make themselves aware, and then compare different brands eventually. For smaller products, the process is quick, whereas, for bigger products, the process is fairly long. Content makes it easier for customers to make a thoughtful decision.

2. Content marketing makes it easier for you to participate in the buying process.

Producing content is one of the greatest ways of building up a one-way conversation with your potential customers. Someone looking for, say, a mobile phone, may be looking for some information related to mobile phone features and trends. You can actively take part in their research process by producing content related to that. Your vlogs/blogs/podcasts can help them buy a phone that could be better than they were looking for. Even better if they purchase the phone from your site. Even if they don’t make that move, and purchase from some other site through your reference, your content still left an impact on them and they may revisit your website some time and eventually buy something from you.

3. Content marketing increases brand awareness and credibility and builds trust

Your content marketing strategies can help you create a positive brand image and raise awareness. Not only does your content generate general awareness, but it also educates your customers and prospects related to your products and services, which can also create a positive image of your brand.
Increased brand awareness is directly related to increased sales, as it is an inbound process: customers visit your brand's digital assets, which creates an opportunity to connect with them.

Content marketing looks like a one-way process, but it is actually not. When you look into it, you set up a conversation with your potential customers that they may or may not actively participate in. But the content you produce, if it is authentic, factual and high quality, consumers will start trusting your brand long before they convert into loyal customers.

4. Content marketing drives more traffic to your website

Imagine the number of people looking up “benefits of using an air-fryer” on Google right now. I am not going to mention a number because I’m afraid that I’d be underestimating it. But it’s going to be huge, right?

Imagine you sell air-fryers, and you want people to buy the appliance from you, and you write a blog or make a video on its benefits and put it online. People with that search query will have chances of landing on your blog/video based on your blog’s rank (which is based on your content quality and several other things like SEO). Now, people will know the benefits, and if you’ve been able to convince them, they’ll buy an air-fryer too.

The people searching will have greater chances of landing on your blog, and eventually your website. Content marketing indirectly increases the traffic on your website.

5. Content marketing gives your website a better search ranking.

Google, the biggest search engine in the world, loves content. Quality content, which is engaging, fascinating, informative, and valuable to content consumers, is ranked higher by Google and preferred to be given the top ranks.

If your content ranks higher, this means that your website does too. This automatically generates more traffic, as we discussed in #4.

6. Content marketing enables you to target and group your consumers.

You can specifically target your potential customers by creating targeted content. If you have expertise in selling some of the finest wines in the world, you want your content to go only to the people who consume alcohol, as the people who don’t drink are of no use for you. This specific targeting makes it easier for you to know what to expect from your campaign.

For example, if I create content for both the people who drink alcohol and those who don’t, the maximum conversions I can expect is only 50 percent even if I produce the best content and the best wine. Targeting can also reduce my costs and increase conversions.

7. Content marketing is effective for every industry.

There’s no industry that wouldn’t benefit from content marketing. The simplest and most common way, blogging, can be utilized by any industry and reap the same benefits. In fact, we get to know about many industries through their blogs. For example, I didn’t know a thing about trousseau packaging but got to know of it in a blog post I read.

There are so many other industries that we aren’t yet aware of, but if all those industries make content that is engaging, attracting and shareable, we’ll be able to buy products and services we aren’t anyway aware of.

8. Content marketing isn’t as expensive as traditional marketing.

Content marketing is cost-effective. It is easier to start with and can generate a huge audience base. This reduces the amount of money that marketers have to spend to engage leads and customers.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing costs about 62 percent less than outbound marketing practices, while also generating leads more than three times of it.

9. Content is shareable.

Content can be shared, while traditional marketing techniques cannot. Traditional marketing techniques are also very irritating, and people generally don’t like to spend even a second of their busy lives on stupid phone calls or emails. Most of us have ad-blockers on, on both our computers and phones and can’t stand such useless ads.

What if your ad is your content? And, an interesting piece of content is shared by one and all. Not only does this increase your website traffic and brand awareness, but also leads and conversions.

10. Content marketing syncs with SEO.

Everything that you’ve read so far is relatable - this is too.
Content marketing can up your SEO game through the use of proper keywords in the content. Earlier, people would stuff keywords and dupe search engines like Google into ranking their webpages higher. But now that Google has advanced algorithms, it can differentiate between quality content and content that has keywords stuffed into it.

So, if you’re consistent with your content quality and frequency, you will hit Google’s algorithm at the right place to rank your pieces higher in search results.

11. Content marketing increases the time spent by visitors.

Content marketing is a clever trick. It involves almost every media format and subject, and if you do it right, doesn’t leave even a small window open from where visitors will want to leave your site.

You make several pages to upload your content, and in turn, you are giving a visitor a big list of pages to visit from. This increases the time spent by a visitor on your site, which is taken as a positive by search engines, and your website may gain in ranking.

12. Content marketing builds better in-person relationships with customers and prospects.

You want to build better personal relationships with your potential and existing customers. But you can’t go and visit everyone to tell them that you care about their demands and challenges. Your content can communicate your point of view and connect with your consumers and people and those who are not yet ready to make purchases.

By providing quality, consistent content, you also make sure that people enjoy consuming your content even if they aren’t buying anything from you. If they trust your content, they will trust your brand.
If you sell flowers, producing content around flowers like “the uses and benefits of flowers” will be consumed by everyone alike. Whether the consumers buy flowers at the moment or not, they’ll definitely remember you because you gave them valuable information. And if they’re able to recall you, they will make up their mind to buy flowers from you.

Content Marketing Can Work For You

If you don’t want to annoy your prospects by showing them irritating ad displays anywhere and everywhere, want to impress them by your products or services without spoiling your relationships with them or spending extra bucks, you can employ the content marketing technique to your promotional tools.

Content marketing can help you educate people and create your brand’s awareness while also increasing traffic to your website, resulting in more leads and sales. This approach also works in parallel with your SEO program in enhancing and giving you higher ranks in search results.