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15 Content Marketing Strategies You Need to Start Using Right Now
I am sure you will say you have already tried everything: Twitter? Check. Facebook? Check. Building a blog? Check. Tried new optimization tricks? Check. And yet, the results are not showing.
Understanding the mechanics of content marketing can be quite difficult in this fast-paced, ever-changing digital world that requires businesses to reinvent themselves overnight to keep up with the competition.
A strategic content marketing approach with a clear focus on the creation and distribution of consistent, valuable web pieces can help you trigger customer action and keep a well defined audience by your side in the long term. You know that already. But, what are the next steps you are going to take in writing content?
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15 Content Marketing Strategies That You Should Apply in 2016
As you are reshaping your content marketing plan, these questions run through your mind:
Who should you talk to?
Where should you distribute your content pieces?
How could you expand the reach of your articles and blog posts?
How could you put your social connections to good use to fuel your growth?
You can discover the most accurate answers to these questions and sharpen your focus by taking a closer look at the following marketing strategies listed below.
Build Your Audience the Smart Way
Start by getting to know your audience. Surveys and testimonials are only two invaluable resources that could help you understand the needs and expectations of your readers. Next, fuel your organic growth and boost your level of popularity by using one of the many tools designed to support this purpose. For starters, try Narrow.io-you’ll thank us later.
Write Longer High-Quality Posts
Don’t create content for the sake of content, and don’t forget that more is more in content creation-as long as you make every single word count for something. According to a recent article published by the Content Marketing Institute, a longer length ranging from 3,000 words to 10,000 words can help you establish yourself as a trustworthy player in your industry. Moreover, this type of consistency and dedication can also enable you to build authority and consumer trust in the long run.
Explore the Power of Conversational Content
Instead of adopting a very formal tone in your writing (at the risk of sounding overly pretentious), avoid corporate gibberish, and write like a normal human being. Or better yet, write like a friend, share your story with your readers, allow them to discover your strengths and weaknesses, and offer valuable advice-all this in plain language.
Tap into the Magnetic Power of High-Impact Visuals
These days, when amazing videos go viral at the speed of light, articles based solely on endless paragraphs are clearly not your friend. Work harder to achieve a perfect balance between text fragments and appealing visual elements, such as infographics, videos, lists, images and charts, to boost the readability of your piece and make it easier to digest and more entertaining.
Focus on Delivering Shareable Content
Before hitting publish, ask yourself the following question: would you share the piece of content that you’ve just crafted on your Facebook page? If your answer is “no” or “maybe”, consider adjusting it to take it a step up. Make it fun, easy to read, engaging, and most importantly, relevant to your audience, brand and products and truly shareable.
Syndicate Your Content Pieces
By giving others the permission to post a copy of your content on their website (aka syndicating your content) you can benefit from exposure to Other People’s Audiences (OPA), enhance your influence and grow your business effortlessly.
Repurpose Old Writing
Original, well-written content has a long shelf life, and can be reused in countless different ways to support new marketing goals; therefore, don’t hesitate to find clever methods to repurpose your timeless content pieces. For instance, a slideshow can be turned into an infographic; or you could always choose to record and read the information shared through your blog post to create an awesome podcast.
Target Multiple Channels for Content Promotion
Instead of putting all their eggs in the same content marketing basket, good marketers explore different platforms that they could use to promote their brands. In other words, they target a myriad of social media channels and affiliate websites that they could rely on to expand the impact and reach of their web content.
Leverage Your Valuable Connections
Why compete with well-established players on your niche when you could work closely with the best in your industry to reach your marketing goals? Some of the most experienced content strategists count on the endorsement of industry influencers to lift their ideas off the ground. By linking to their published pieces, or by quoting them throughout your articles or blog posts, you could make references to reputable influencers you could boost SEO rankings and build credibility and trust.
Invest in Exceptional Multimedia Content
Multimedia content based on podcasts, videos, images and infographics is easier to assimilate, more likely to be shared by your readers, and thus, more likely to offer you a more significant return on investment.
Rely on Guest Posting
In 2016, guest posting is far from being dead. By creating quality content for another source on a third-party website you could cultivate new mutually beneficial relationships with industry influencers, grow your reader base, and build authority and trust in the process.
Use the Right Tools
It can be very difficult to stay competitive in the content marketing world without using a full set of tools and technologies meant to bring you closer to your audience and help you sell, sell, sell. Therefore, make sure that modern everyday essentials, such as CSM, analytics, and project management software are a part of your arsenal.
Invest in Gated Assets
Gated assets are time-intensive, long-form content pieces that you should consider crafting and sharing to generate contacts or leads. Webinars, research reports and eBooks can be listed in this category, and offer you the chance to surprise your audience with truly useful freebies that put your brand into the spotlight.
Optimize Your Content
Deliver quality content written with both human readers and search engines in mind. By opting for a mix of head terms and long tail terms that you could include into your writing you could make your pages rank higher in search engine results.
Employ the Right People
Last but not least, make sure you hire the right people who could take your content marketing strategies in the right direction. You’ll need at least a blogger, a long-form content creator, a SEO specialist, a designer and a social media manager to get started.
Or better yet, work closely with a cohesive team from a full-service copywriting agency to set the foundation of a solid marketing program centered on the creation, publishing and distribution of quality content focused on the organic growth of your brand.
Annie has 18 years’ experience as an editor and content creator and manager. With work in television and written media, she has dedicated her past 10 years to learning the ropes of online content creation, from writing to editing, from SEO to content management.
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When it comes time to pick a content provider, a bargain isn’t always the best way to go. Content is more than filler; it’s what draws visitors to your site, but inspired content keeps them there. It keeps them coming back. Content is a relationship. It’s your brand. We get it. Furthermore, we can deliver it. Contact us today for a quote.
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