With 46% of businesses increasing their content creation spending this year, Content Marketing is undoubtedly a business asset.
While content marketing has risen in companies, its top goal remains brand awareness.
80% of marketers report success in achieving brand awareness, with 75% say it builds credibility/trust and 70% say their content marketing educates audiences.
In this article, we show you how to understand the rules of Content Marketing to use it as a growth tool for your business.
Content Marketing is: “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”
By this definition, understand that content Marketing should not be used to sell but instead it is a chance to build your credibility.
What you should look at when starting your Marketing strategy to grow your business:
1. Choose your platform wisely
2.Be data-driven
3.Create quality content, not for SEO
4.Build your community
Start by researching where your audience across channels is to understand their behavior. It’s only through starting with the audience that you can identify who you want to target, how you reach them, and what you want to say to them. Only then you can become part of their everyday scrolling routine.
Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Website, Email, are some of the platforms you can use to distribute your content to talk to your audience.
When it comes to creating content for those different platforms, you need to take a close look at how users are engaging with each platform and tailor the content accordingly. So you can’t put the same post on LinkedIn that you’ve put on Instagram without tweaking it to suit Linkedin’s best practices.
Also those channels can have different approaches. For example, some companies use Instagram to showcase their company culture and post pictures of the teams, but use their Linkedin to engage on more industry related topics.
There are numerous analytical tools that you can use for free to start analyzing your data. This data shows what your audience wants to read, what they like, and should be considered each step of the way to adapt your strategy over time.
Don’t be scared to try things - when analyzing your data, this is when you will see if what you said had an impact, and if not you can shift your strategy and adapt your content.
Basic analytics you should pay attention to:
Social: Audience growth rate, post reach, and engagement.
When it comes to social media, you can view a number of analytics in one place with Hootsuite. Hootsuite is also great for planning out social media posts and publishing on different platforms.
SEO: Keyword rankings, domain authority, and backlinks.
For quick keyword research: Ubersuggest is a good tool.
Website: Bounce rate, traffic, and top traffic sources.
If you are starting with website analytics, Hotjar is super-easy to understand even for non-techy users and more user friendly than Google Analytics and is often described as one of the best tools to analyze user behavior.
Email: pen rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate.
I’m sure the names of Mailchimp or Hubspot ring a bell. They are perfect tools to start with your Email Marketing campaigns to produce cost-effective campaigns and grow your contact lists.
Once you’ve got data, take a closer look at the content that performs well. Focus on things like the style, format, imagery, emotional appeal, and the call to action of successful posts so you can implement those success factors in your future content.
"People can smell a transaction from a mile away. They don’t want to be a lead. They want to be human."
According to reports, the pandemic has forced marketers to be more empathetic. And that is good news to see the general approach of content marketing has evolved.
Talking to your audience and treating them as real people, not just users that can buy your product, is key to building trust with your brand and creates better experiences. You will see the return on investment will be greater and your audience more receptive.
You can create content that impacts your audience by:
-Listening to what problems they’re having
-What they want to learn about
-What kind of content they enjoy most (with analytics)
In a previous article - Fuel your Partnerships with Community Marketing, we talked about how building communities around your brand is a successful driver for creating conversations between your company and your audience. This fits very well with content marketing.
Communities enhance communication, exchange of values, create mutual meaning and loyalty. It requires starting conversations, establishing opportunities and creating meaningful habits.
Furthermore, content gets created by itself in community spaces. And the good news is, you can’t go wrong with authentic content generated by your audience. If you let your members feel like they’re an important part of your brand they’ll start feeling loyal to you.
To make a community space that relates to your business, this can be as simple as creating a Linkedin group.
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