Tag: content marketing strategy

  • Tips For Content Optimization by Platform

    Creating content is hard. Between staying true to your brand values, cultivating engagement, and being creative, you’ve got your hands full. Even harder yet is keeping your content fresh across platforms. Why is content optimization so important and how do you do it? Let’s examine!

    Selecting the Right Platforms For Content Optimization

    a person consuming too much content

    Part of the challenge of consistently creating engaging content is selecting the right platforms. You have to not only know who your customers are and what they want but also where they spend their time. The latter part is especially important; you don’t want to be wasting time creating content few people will see or interact with. 

    Selecting the right platforms for your content goes beyond posting on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. It’s choosing the most effective media types to raise brand awareness, drive engagement, and engineer more conversions. That means taking advantage of things like videos, blogs, events, and even interactive content. 

    For example, maybe a blog would help interested customers move closer to making a purchase. But creating and implementing a blog on its own isn’t going to move the needle. What you need is content optimization. That means creating the blog post as part of a series directed at specific customer personas–and supplementing it via other platforms and channels. 

    Content Optimization Tips

    The most important thing to remember about content optimization is that you’re creating content not for your brand but for your audience. That means what you find interesting might be boring to your audience. Know your customers inside and out. That means knowing what they want, why they want it, and who they want to be. You’ll get more people interested in your content, which will ultimately drive more folks through the conversion funnel! 

    an infographic showing the different kinds of digital marketing content across channels like social media and email marketing.

    In terms of content optimization, be sure you’re using the right platform for its intended purpose. For instance, blog posts don’t belong on Twitter. A blog would be better suited to your website, supplemented by links and posts on Facebook or Instagram. The actual copy itself stays on your website.

    Another way to keep your content fresh and interesting is to lead with emotion. Whether that’s humor, empathy, or something in between, getting your customers emotionally involved is the key to creating an effective relationship with your brand. After all, emotion is the most important driver of purchasing decisions! Look to connect with your customers beyond their wallets and create emotionally-driven content. 

    Properly optimized content is effective content. If you plan your content optimization strategy in advance, however, you’ll be able to stick to your calendar to help create an effective plan. For example, you might want to improve website traffic and unique visitors–content optimization will help ensure all the content you create aligns with these goals. 

    Don’t Forget About User-Generated Content!

    The best part about user-generated content is you don’t have to create it yourself. The next best thing is, if properly optimized and implemented, it can be more effective than branded content.

    an infographic displaying the power of word of mouth marketing as a branding tool

    Plus, user-generated content shows that there are others with a connection to your brand. Real customer testimony is many times more likely than any brand messaging to inspire other customers to take action because it’s impartial. Why else would word of mouth advertising be so effective? While customers may doubt the authenticity of branded statements and messages, they’re more likely to believe the objectivity of a random customer who isn’t being paid to create that content. 

    User-generated content captures the attention of both your brand’s followers and the creator’s following, which means it’s a great way to boost your visibility! While you might not be able to nab a big-time influencer to create content on your brand’s behalf, sometimes quantity can trump quality. In other words, if you can create buzz around your brand from average people, it’ll be just as effective as if you landed a celebrity spokesperson!

    No Content is Bad Content

    Your brand can’t survive if your customers aren’t aware you exist. You also can’t expect to build a relationship with customers without having a personality for your brand–a personality you build through effective content marketing. Your content tells your customers not only what you do but who you are and why you do it, both of which are significantly more important than what products or services you offer. 

    Unless your content is out of left field, hypocritical, or contradictory, it’s probably not bad content. But if you can optimize your cross-channel content to drive customers through your conversion funnel, you’ll essentially be automating the sales process and building relationships simultaneously!

  • Five Copywriting Tips to Create Winning Content

    Sometimes writing copy is the toughest part of creating effective content. There’s a lot to balance–using the right language and keywords, selecting the right channels, and keeping it all interesting. Let’s look at five winning copywriting tips to help make your content more effective!

    Copywriting Tip 1: Keep it Simple

    Who is your audience? The average person reads at the 7th to 8th-grade level, which means your long-winded copy is probably going to get skipped. Unless your audience is more educated or verbose, keep your copy simple and direct. Use short sentences, try to use commas instead of periods, and keep the fancy words to a minimum. 

    Even for longer copy, make sure to capitalize on headings, subheadings, and short paragraphs. Before your reader actually reads content, they scan it. If it’s a lot of words, they’ll skip it. If it’s formatted properly and “easy to read”, they’re more likely to give it a go. 

    In most cases, write the same way you talk. Don’t write words you wouldn’t use conversationally. Think of most content as a conversation with your audience. How can you make sure they feel respected and understand your messages?

    Copywriting Tip 2: Don’t Overoptimize

    an SEO infographic

    Remember, your content should be written for humans, not computers. While it’s important to include the proper keywords for SEO purposes, forcing keywords not only makes the copy harder to read, it hurts your SEO efforts. Search engines can pick up when you’re trying to keyword-stuff–and they’ll penalize you for it. 

    Instead, try to incorporate the keyword(s) as often as you can–naturally. It’s okay to break up keywords or phrases with punctuation, articles, or prepositions, especially if it makes the copy read more naturally. Search engines can pick up on this and won’t penalize you for a slight alteration. 

    Titles, tags, and headings are also great places to capitalize on your short and long-tail keywords, so don’t try to stuff it all into the actual copy. This is most helpful for blogs–for longer, more specific keywords, it helps to put the blog title in the actual URL! 

    Copywriting Tip 3: Show What You Can Do For Your Audience

    Your natural instinct might be to boast the accolades and accomplishments of your brand, but how does that help your audience? Rather than write what you’ve done, write what you can do for your audience. People are much more interested in what you can do for them, and in most businesses, past performance is only as good as the customer’s last experience. 

    Be direct in stating how your brand, products, or services can solve real problems and meet your audience’s needs. Instead of “our product is great for X,” try something like “Never deal with X again thanks to our product!” 

    If possible, personalize your copy–especially if it’s interpersonal communications like emails or push notifications. Even taking the time to include your customer’s name goes a long way. 

    Copywriting Tip 4: Start With a Hook

    two people using tools for content creation to create digital marketing content on a computer.

    Scientists theorize that the human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish. Most people can’t pay attention to something for more than nine seconds, especially if they don’t find it interesting. Let’s face it: your customers probably won’t be inherently captivated by your marketing content. If you can hook them with the first sentence, however, they’re more likely to keep reading. 

    Capitalize on direct quotes, stories, statistics, and especially emotion. Copy that makes your reader feel something is more likely to inspire them to take action than something bland or uninspired. Plus, if nothing else, it’ll get them to pay attention! 

    Copywriting Tip 5: Inspire Action

    Before you write any copy, ask yourself what the purpose is. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to raise awareness, build interest, or capture more conversions? Since the goal of your content is to drive action, your copy can make a difference. Always include a call to action and try to create a sense of urgency. Even if your offer isn’t time-sensitive, you don’t want a potential customer to think too long on it. 

    Lead your customers to take the logical next step and act as soon as possible. Otherwise, they’re likely to forget about your offer altogether, and when they finally decide to take action, it might not be with you. 

    Follow These Tips and Start Seeing Results!

    Creating effective copy boils down to a few key components: keeping it simple, direct, and engaging. Hook your audience in the first sentence, keep them hooked by showing how you can improve their lives, and speak to them respectfully–and as a real person would. 

    If you follow these tips, you’ll create more effective copy–and you’ll start seeing more results, like improved engagement, more brand interest, and ultimately, more conversions!

  • How to Build a Successful Content Marketing Campaign

    Creating great content starts with interesting your audience. Building great content marketing campaigns takes it a step further. Not only are you getting folks interested in your product/service offerings, but you’re also building relationships. Let’s examine how to build a successful content marketing campaign from the ground up! 

    Strategy

    a cartoon rendering of a woman sitting on a stack of papers next to a computer showing social media SEO.

    The first part of developing a successful content marketing campaign is figuring out who the content is for. Define your audience and their needs. What are they looking for? Once you know who you’re trying to reach, it’s time to figure out how to reach them. That means selecting a format or medium for your main lead magnet. What’s going to attract people and make them want to be a part of your brand?

    Another way of looking at your content marketing strategy is through three rings inside one another. The outside ring refers to what your brand does. Inside that ring is a smaller ring; that refers to how your brand does what it does differently than everyone else. At the center is the most important ring–the ring that defines why you do what you do differently than everyone else. That’s where the heart of your content marketing campaign strategy comes from. 

    With your lead magnet and audience needs in mind, come up with a strategic and useful content plan to get people interested. Once you’ve got your content marketing campaign all planned out, it’s time to execute. 

    Execution

    Planning and mapping out content is one thing–executing it is another. The best way to execute a successful content marketing campaign is through devoted landing pages. Think of your content as a magnet that attracts people to that landing page. If additional content can inspire them to want/need your product or service, that’s as good as a cross-sell/upsell! 

    a robot and a human, symbolizing automated marketing

    Great execution starts with great research, organization, and copywriting. You have to really know what your audience is looking for. If you want to move folks through the funnel, your content has to be organized properly. In other words, each piece of content should have a specific function, whether it’s to raise awareness, drive interest, convert, solicit feedback, or something else. Finally, your copywriting needs to be on-point. Keep things direct, personal, and interesting!

    Each piece of your digital presence plays an important function in any successful content marketing campaign. For instance, your social media–a preferred channel for content–complements your website, which is subsequently complemented by email marketing, and so on and so forth. The more you take advantage of each channel, the more likely you’ll be to inspire customers to jump on the funnel! 

    Follow Up

    a customer giving digital feedback as part of online reputation management

    Content marketing is essentially a way to put your content to work as a salesperson. Since the customer isn’t being overtly sold to, he or she is more likely to pay attention to the content, and in turn, go through the sales funnel. Like a sales pitch, content marketing needs to follow up with the prospect. 

    However, unlike a sales pitch, your content marketing followup doesn’t involve knocking on the prospect’s door, calling them, or asking for the sale. Instead, the content itself moves them through the funnel. In other words, your follow up typically consists of more content–albeit with a sense of urgency. Let your content tell customers they need to act now. Keep the salespeople at home!

    Content Marketing is an Ongoing Process

    Though a content marketing campaign might be finite, content marketing is an ongoing process. That means one campaign should follow another. To that end, part of what makes content marketing successful is data and analytics. At the conclusion of a campaign, review all available data. What worked? Were you able to get enough leads? How many of those leads were you able to convert?

    As with any successful part of marketing, the more honest feedback you get from your audience, the better. While you can’t directly ask a customer what pieces of content were the most useful in helping them make a purchase, you can review engagement and interaction metrics. Which pieces of content drove the most traffic to your website? Was there a particular medium (text/audio/video/infographic, etc) that got more engagement?

    The most successful content marketing campaigns are data-driven. They take the data from past campaigns and then leverage it to create more effective content in subsequent campaigns. Whether you’re promoting a new product or building brand awareness, the principle is the same: content marketing works!

  • Content Archetypes: Connect With Your Audience

    While there are tons of types of content (videos, blogs, etc.) and even more channels to consume that content, there are really only four content archetypes. Each complements one another to successfully drive customers towards an intended goal. What are these archetypes and how do you use them? Let’s take a look. 

    Content Archetype 1: The Promoter

    a clip art representation of a promoter, meant to symbolize one of the content archetypes: helper

       Most branded content is promoter content because brands love to talk about themselves. While other content archetypes technically promote the brand as well, promoter content is the most persuasive. It’s argumentative content that persuades customers to make a decision–buy a product, sign up for a subscription, or simply click “learn more.”

    The best way to use promoter content is by showing your product or service in action. Persuasive copy and even other customer reviews can only go so far–customers need to be able to see the benefits with their own eyes. 

    The downside of promoter content is that it doesn’t facilitate that all-important human connection. It might make your customers’ lives easier, but it doesn’t give them a reason to care about your brand on a personal level. That’s where the other archetypes come in! 

    Content Archetype 2: The Teacher

    a clip art rendering of a professor, meant to symbolize one of the content archetypes: the teacher

    Here’s where you can start to make connections with your audience. While promoter content shows people the tangible benefits of your brand, teacher content feeds the passions and interests of an already engaged audience. In a nutshell, teacher content shows your audience something new–or something they may have overlooked. 

    A good way to describe teacher content is thought leadership. Teacher content starts conversations and gets folks thinking. That means it often offers a fresh perspective or unique point of view. Because this type of content is immensely valuable to your audience, it lays the building blocks for creating those connections. 

    Unfortunately, teacher content is hard to create. It requires authenticity and dedication but also more effort and planning than the other content archetypes. If you’re going to create teacher content, first make sure you know what you’re talking about. Then, make sure you’re willing to commit to effort in to be an industry authority or thought leader. 

    Content Archetype 3: The Thinker

    a clip art representation of a man thinking, meant to represent one of the content archetypes: the thinker

    This type of content is perfect for brands whose competitors might be perceived as “better.” Thinker content doesn’t profess the creator to be superlative; it instead positions the creator as progressive, unique, or different. Thinker content appeals to your audience for two reasons. One, it differentiates your brand. Two, since its primary tool is emotion, it appeals to your audience in ways the other content archetypes can. Like teacher content, it helps start conversations. 

    Instead of trying to corner the market by being “the best,” change your audience’s parameters for thinking. Thinker content works because it can help your audience uncover truths or insights, which can drastically change the way they think and act. More importantly, it can help position your brand as a thought leader, which means more connections. 

    Like teacher content, thinker content is hard to create. Not only do you have to know your subject matter but you have to think differently. If you want your audience to see things in a new perspective, you have to see that perspective first in order to be able to share it. 

    Content Archetype 4: The Helper

    This type of content drives awareness and engagement for your brand by helping solve problems for your audience. Compared to promoter content, which shows the benefits of your brand, helper content tells the audience why those benefits should matter to them. 

    a clip art representation of hands joined together, meant to symbolize one of the content archetypes: the helper

    On the plus side, compared to the other content archetypes, helper content is fairly straightforward and easier to create. It doesn’t require the immense thinking and planning of teacher content nor the ingenuity of thinker content. However, it’s more complex and not nearly as boastful as promoter content. It’s the sweet spot that shows your audience your brand has a customer-first mindset. 

    Though it’s arguably the most effective type of content for driving customer decisions, the downside of helper content is brands can become too dependent on it. In other words, be wary of creating too much helper content. The key to a successful content marketing strategy is a perfect balance of content archetypes, which work together to create the optimal conversion series.  

    To Recap

    Promote: promote your brand through product-focused, branded content that drives customer actions. 

    Teach: inform your audience through insightful, conversation-starting content that adds value to their everyday lives. 

    Think: show your audience a new way to think about things with creative, refreshing content that appeals to their emotions. 

    Help: prove to your audience your brand has a customer-focused mindset with provocative, problem-solving content that hits on their desires and pain points. 

    If your content doesn’t fit one of these four major archetypes, it might not be worth creating!