Content marketing is a proven marketing tactic that when done well can have a major impact on your organization’s bottom line. Great content builds trust in your brand and positions your company for long-term success.
Here are ten expert tips for using content marketing to build your brand:
- Know your audience
When creating a content marketing strategy, the most important thing to start with is understanding the basic question: who’s it for? By conducting basic research into your target audience, you can begin to uncover what values they hold and better understand the challenges they face. Many companies and organizations make the mistake of trying to sell themselves with their content marketing. A more useful approach is to create content that educates and inspires, shedding light into how you can be a trusted resource in their journey. This approach builds trust, and trust is the most important factor in growing your business.
2. Understand your core purpose
What is the problem you are helping your audience solve? Your content marketing should be built around helping your audience understand this problem and provide timely advice for each stage of their journey to resolve it. Do not fear that you are giving away ‘secret’ information others can use for their own benefit. Be the generous beacon of light that leads your clients and customers into solving their own challenges, and they will be far more likely to work with you.
3. Do the unexpected
When creating your businesses content marketing strategy, it is helpful to take stock of what your competition is doing. But don’t simply copy your competitors’ content marketing framework. Instead, build your strategy around gaps in the market and offer better quality content that makes you stand out. Align your content with your vision, mission and values, and offer something different. After all, if you are exactly the same as your competition, why would anyone choose to work with you?
4. Use quality images and video
Every social media post, webpage or blog you create sends a message about who you are and what you stand for. What message is behind the image? Make sure that your images and video assets reflect the quality of your brand and inspires the audience to want more. Ensure that whoever is capturing the visual assets for your content is capable of producing professional quality images and video. Your audience expects nothing less.
5. Write in the active voice
Too often, website copy is dull and boring. And the best way to make a story dull and boring is to use the passive voice. Instead, learn to write in the active voice and you will be amazed with how much better it sounds. When in doubt, hire a professional copywriter to craft your website content. Your audience will thank you for it. Here are some active voice examples from Purdue Writing Lab.
6. Be relevant
The most important question to ask yourself when creating new content is ‘so what?’. Every asset you create must serve a purpose, and the purpose is the message you are sending. Before starting a new piece of content, plan out the key messages you want to communicate and craft your content strategy around those key messages.
7. Plan your content
When creating a content strategy, be realistic in terms of the types of content you can create and plan out how and when you are going to publish it. Try to align your content with some type of content calendar to help you plan ahead and ensure you are releasing timely content on a consistent basis. Tools like Hootsuite can greatly simplify the process, with the added benefit of additional features and collaborative workflows across teams.
8. Inspire action
Before releasing a piece of content, ask yourself what action you want to audience to take to lead them further along the buyer’s journey. Use calls to action to inform the audience what they should do next, and inspire them to take action. Calls to action can be as simple as asking them to click on a website link, or provide their comment on the post. The goal is to engage the audience and delight them every step of the way.
9. Track KPI’s
Too often, organizations and businesses fail to track their progress. Without tracking key performance indicators, you have no chance of making things better. Develop a set of KPI’s to monitor progress, see what type of content is performing best, and what to avoid. Over time, this is a powerful way to consistently produce better content and continually improve on the results of your efforts.
10. Recalibrate
Taking KPI’s a step further, analyze them periodically and report on your findings to help you set realistic goals. You may find that certain types of posts are creating much more engagement than others. Focus on improving the ones that are working best and keep testing new content ideas to help drive your business forward.
What content strategies have helped your business build trust and stand apart from the competition? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
