Your business has a free, powerful marketing tool – your industry expertise. By disseminating quality content related to your field, you expose your brand to potential customers and reinforce yourself as an authority to existing clientele, all while increasing sales.
Content marketing also improves SEO (Search Engine Optimization), social sharing and targeted traffic. The practice is growing, with 86 percent of B2C (business-to-consumer) companies planning to keep or increase their existing content marketing budget in 2013, the Content Marketing Institute reports. Before you jump into filming YouTube videos or writing white papers you think everyone will love, create a content marketing strategy that will ensure measurable results. Here are the basics:
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Content Hosting
Choose your website platform, such as one by WordPress, and decide whether it will be on-brand or its own entity. Decide which type of content hosting system you’ll use, from iPage hosting to an in-house server. Decide how the new site will relate to your business site — it could get its own vanity URL, it could be a blog section on your main site, or a combination. Set goals for visitors, page views and direct traffic percentage, and install an analytics system, such as Google Analytics, to monitor content performance.
Types of Content
Decide who your target audience is. It may be existing customers, who you hope will share content with potential customers. It might be people who have never heard of your brand, who you’ll target on niche social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon.com. Stephanie Chang, SEO consultant at Distilled, also recommends conducting a competitor analysis and keyword research related to your brand, along with existing user surveys. Determine which parts of your sales funnel need strengthening, and consider targeting content to those areas.
Choose which types of content and media are most appropriate, and create a content schedule that ensures delivery of original, innovative and shareable content. Avoid keyword stuffing (using a search term over and over again) your content as search engines could actually penalize you. Instead, aim for content that your target audience will find useful and informative and will want to share. Decide if the content will be created in-house, by freelancers, by guest bloggers, or a combination.
Be mindful of key dates that might influence content, like holidays, product launches and selling cycles. You may already have engaging content to convert for the web, such as interviews by your CEO or articles you can repurpose. Internet marketing firm Vertical Measures, which has a downloadable free content calendar, suggests including target audience, distribution channels and keywords to optimize distribution. Stan Smith, managing director of Pushing Social, recommends publishing new content at least once a week to ensure your site stays relevant to search engines and keeps readers engaged.
Promote Your Content
Now that you’re producing solid content on a regular basis, share it with followers and industry influencers. Use social media algorithm sites like Klout to find top influencers and pitch them to share your content with their audiences. Offer to return the favor, and build content sharing relationships with social media marketers. Use your own social networks to post your content and encourage discussion. Respond to comments on your content for increased engagement, and revise content strategies based on successful channels and content types.
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