In Part 1, we talked about focusing on goals despite all the noise and buzz words that are filling the “airwaves”. Now we are going to outline the 4 benefits of content, and how to engage in content marketing without breaking the bank. And most importantly, how to avoid the noise surrounding the hot topics in your industry.
Too often marketers are distracted by the current hot topic and miss out on talking about the things that really matter most to customers. For example, I could go into a long discussion here about the latest methods of advertising on Facebook. But since so much is unknown and unproven, this would just be me getting caught up in all the noise and hype surrounding this subject. And we can’t do much to help you advertise on Facebook anyway.
So why is your focus on content so important? Good content will:
- Improve your SEO rankings (Google looks at recency, frequency, and relevance of content)
- Increase your brand loyalty
- Initiate engagement and sharing
- Create sales opportunities
As you can see in the report below from b2b Content Engine, site traffic optimization only goes so far. Having a good content strategy creates a much larger jump in site visits due to the SEO benefits it creates.
However, despite the importance of this focus, organizations often tell me that they struggle to develop regular content. So what are some tricks you can use to stay relevant and current?
- For B2B communications: use LinkedIN. If you join a group that has relevance to your market, you will find a wealth of content ideas sitting right there.
- Compelling comments or questions should be leveraged as content to trigger engagement on your blog
- Questions and their associated responses tied together can become great blog articles.
- Find a question and respond to it. Then publish the question and your response to it as your blog entry.
- For B2C communications: Look for user generated comments, good reviews, and good conversations on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and many other review sites.
- Look to your partners and distributors – or look up to your vendor. They all have tons of content, so leverage it.
- There is nothing wrong with leveraging 3rd party content that comes through an RSS feed. If you are good at it, you will become a trusted resource for people who will look at the articles and web sites you point out to them.
These are just a few of the ways to develop your content strategy. Keep yourself focused on the information and dialogs that are most meaningful to your audience. And don’t get distracted by all the other chatter.