Content Marketing is one of the fundamental sources of keeping your business visible on search queries. Unlike traditional marketing tactics, content marketing requires a definite set of audiences with an attraction towards a particular niche. Though you may have web-space to serve multiple niches, it’s always beneficial to start with one niche if you are a new business owner.
Content marketing never asks or forces the user to purchase a product; rather, it focuses more on engagement and viewership. The prime focus of a strong content marketing strategy remains revolving around gaining customer’s faith and make them a repeated visitor to your online store or portal.
1. What is Content Marketing, and what’s not?
Content marketing is big enough to accommodate just blogging. People do believe that blogging is synonymous with content marketing. Just publishing an article and waiting for it to deliver traffic is not possible. It may come up with some traffic, but that will not justify the ROI. It requires building a strong strategy to gain the amount of traffic that you intend to. With that said, your content piece requires some marketing to gain audiences.
Social media, Google ads, backlinks, etc. are some of the factors that influence your traffic and viewership. Also, the first step to write an article is to research the need for writing one. If people aren’t searching for it, you won’t get the traffic.
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As a marketing goal, an article is supposed to get user influenced and purchase your product or service. However, it doesn’t mean that you keep pitching that throughout your content. Nobody loves reading praises about a random product that they either never used or not interested at all. It should be interesting to read as well as educate your audience with something new that they haven’t had before. That will act as a backbone to your entire sales and leads.
2. How to Build a Content Strategy for Small Businesses?
Content strategy starts with having a base platform to publish your content. Your website should be as intuitive as possible. A blog website is meant to be made to produce consumable content.
Hence, the motive should be to deliver maximum educational content to the user. The primary parameters that a website should comply with include
- Mobile Responsiveness
- SEO Friendliness
- Neither too cluttered, nor too basic design (UI Optimization)
- Easy CMS
Mobile traffic has significantly increased recently and has become the first source of browsing content. It’s noted that, on average, 70% of traffic comes from mobile users. Hence, it is very important to have a mobile responsive website.
The SEO friendliness of a website makes it easy to rank in SERP. It is not limited to the SEO parameters like meta details, URL structures, image optimization; rather the UI makes a lot of sense to it. The user won’t stick to your website if its look and feel are boring and non-engaging.
To abide by the SEO checklist, every page should have proper meta details & follow all search engine recommended guidelines. As a blogger, getting into technicalities and putting meta details in code for every new post isn’t feasible. Hence, the CMS should have certain fields to define your desired meta details.
Building a new website with all these things intact isn’t that easy for a new entrant. It’s better to hire a content marketing agency for this purpose, and you can take over that once the website is ready.
Now, your website is ready; you need content to publish consistently to remain in the race with your competitors. Starting with a well-researched list of topics, you would require a content marketing strategy for quality content that can engage your audience and make them your repeating customers.
3. What’s Quality Content and Key Aspects of Content Marketing Strategy?
Quality content is rich in various aspects required to build traffic. A well-researched content with proper flow gains more attraction. It takes a few parameters, including market research, keywords, language, target group, traffic, social media, UI and navigation, etc.
- Market Research: Effective content strategy starts with thorough research about the topic and finds the demand for such topic in the market. It’s the most important step in your content marketing strategy as it helps you understand the user intent and content already available online for that topic. If you already have a competition, you can surely produce something that they haven’t covered.
- Keyword Research: Check for the best keywords along with long-tail phrases for your article. For this, you can use the Google Keyword Planner or any other online free tool. Keywords decide the reach of your article and your ranking in SERP. It is very important for every new entrant as you won’t be investing much of your funds initially.
- Language: Language is an important aspect when you are targeting a niche audience. If you are creating an article to serve a particular region, it is recommended that you do your article in the regional language. It will give you better traction and people will find it more engaging as well.
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- Target Audience: An article serves the purpose of educating people about a product. Hence, it should reach a proper set or group of audiences who would require that, like selling thermometer to medical practitioners and cooking oils to restaurants, etc. Targeting the wrong audience will neither get you sales nor lead.
- Traffic: Following all the necessary parameters will start building traffic. Also, targeting the proper keywords and keeping the article length appropriate will keep driving traffic. Your website won’t get huge traffic from day one, but it will gain its best if all good practices are duly applied.
- Update the content: To keep your content fresh and updated, you need to update the same regularly. Search engines put more weight to older articles for ranking, and hence, instead of writing a new article on the same topic, updating the older one is much better.
- Social Media Promotions: Though social media marketing is vast in itself and it requires a strategy, promoting your content on these platforms organically can get you better visibility. As a part of the strategy, create your business accounts on all major social media platforms and start building your network and sharing your content. Gradually you’ll create good traffic on your social media pages and website.
4. Medium
Content marketing can be done using different types of content. You aren’t restricted to using just the written content. Rather, you can use other methods as well. Think about your audience and article’s need before starting your blog. Every niche has a definite demand type for content. Let’s discuss different types of content mediums and where they should be used.
- Written
Written content is a no brainer and can be carried out in all types of topics. Make sure your content is original, well researched, carries the required call to actions, and sounds interesting. Your story should flow in a designed manner, and every phrase or paragraph that you write must be linked with the other parts of the write-up. While educating people about your product through your content, there should be some call to actions that can get you leads or sales.
- Infographics
Being one of the most interesting things for user engagement, infographics significantly help in enhancing the viewer’s time on page. They are good to show a process, hierarchy, flow-chart, etc.
Unlike write-ups where the user needs to spend some time in reading the whole stuff, infographics help them understand the scene through visual graphics. One can put flow charts, graphs, sales data, pros, cons, etc. on one single infographic and make it interesting.
There are so many online tools and pre-defined templates where you can create infographics easily with some limitations. Doing this single-handed may sound uneasy to digest; hence, you can hire a good designer or a content marketing agency for this job.
- Videos
With better internet speeds and lower internet rates, people have moved towards watching videos more often than reading the content. Videos often have better chances of reaching maximum people. It takes some effort and a really good idea to make a video go viral.
There have been a lot of video platforms introduced lately for long and short format videos to serve your business. It is a must inclusion for content marketing strategy for small businesses.
Creating video content is different from writing blogs and articles. You would require apparatuses like a camera, tripod, etc. However, what makes video content spread like wildfire is the concept. You would need a lot of research on your topic and analyze it for its final video format to win multiple shares and comments. Keyword optimization can be done in the description and title of your video which adds search traffic to your page.
- Podcasts
A podcast is a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading, typically available as a series, new installments of which can be received by subscribers automatically.
As the lives are getting busier, people have lesser time for reading and even watching a video. With podcasts, they can listen to content anytime, anywhere. It’s like narrating the written content for your audience. Radio and FM are examples of the same.
A podcast is the latest format of content and requires a different strategy than the other mentioned content mediums. A series of videos like episodes or lectures are the best to serve people through podcasts. They act as the best source of engagement for your viewers and keep them stuck to your content.
Conclusion
Content Marketing starts with a well-researched list of topics and an engaging platform to publish your content. The website should be SEO friendly, has a clean UI, and offer various content formats. Research your topics as per the market demand while targeting your niche audience and digging-in the proper list of keywords as well. You can use different mediums for your content that we discussed. Always try to find the best topics in your business niche. It is always a good practice to know the demand for your content in the market before initiating it.
