As the old adage goes, content is king! Without content, there can be no communication. without communication, there is less chance for growth.
If you're trying to decide whether content marketing is right for your business, you need to go to the mirror and ask yourself three key questions:
- Is my business interested in being positioned as an expert and thought leader within our sector?
- Do we want to keep in touch with our audience and generate more leads?
- Do my customers look for more information before they buy?
If the answer to all of the above is yes, then content marketing may well be for you, but it's by no means an easy feat.
content marketing requires time and energy. it requires that your entire team buy into and pitch in with your content strategy. most importantly, it requires budget.
one of the very first things you need to establish within the process of creating content is your overall aims for your content. while this will invariably vary from business to business, some common aims may include:
- telling a story.
- sparking an emotional response.
- leading with a strong hook.
- making your content shareable.
- building your brand.
Brainstorming for content
the all-important first step in designing cracking content is to take a step back and do some research. within your research, you should be making a note of what sort of content is already out there, as well as what's popular and being consumed by your target market.
after conducting some background research it's time to get the cogs whirring and settle into a creative fervor as you brainstorm your content. there are several brainstorming techniques that we recommend to help you yield some really unique results. they include:
- picture association - this involves picking a set of random photos and developing a story around them.
- content funneling - this involves rapid idea generation through brainwriting.
- superhero technique - this entails viewing the task through the eyes of a well-known alter ego and finding a resolution and scaling those ideas down. the goal is to make those ideas realistic and workable.
Planning for content
One of the first steps in shaping your content is to conduct keyword research.
Keyword research and incorporating keywords into your content piece is essential. especially if you want your content to rank highly in Google, acquiring organic traffic.
There are several tools available to you to support you in conducting your keyword research:
- Google ads keyword planner.
- Google suggests.
- Answer the public.
After you've completed your research and possess a list of keywords to incorporate into your content piece, you need to begin creating a skeleton outline for your piece.
A skeleton structure for your content piece would typically be comprised of:
- the hook/title - this can make-or-break in regards to whether people choose to read on or not.
- an intro - you should be starting with a bold statement, encouraging your consumer to read on.
- structure your content chronologically - give thought to how you can take your readers on a journey.
- separate your key points with header tags - these are vital for SEO as well as breaking down your content into manageable chunks.
- use graphs and charts - this is a useful way of illustrating key statistics as well as breaking up large chunks of text.
- conclude - this should feature a quickfire conclusion of the entire piece, allowing skim readers to grasp the point you are making within the piece as aa whole.
Optimisation of your content piece also comes within the planning process. there are a variety of ranking factors to consider within your optimisation. crucially, you should be writing your content for people and then optimising afterwards.
Content promotion
The act of promoting your content should begin before the content is even completed and is a vital aspect of maximising the reach of your content piece. before finishing your piece, you should give thought to:
- seeing if you can access any external contributors for the piece.
- optimise the piece for search engines to increase organic traffic.
- optimise your images to pull in organic traffic from Google images.
- consider how to promote the piece internally on your company website.
After publishing your content piece, there is an assortment of ways to promote it.
In today's day and age, social media is unmistakably going to be invaluable in advancing the scope of your content.
Similarly, an effective outreach strategy can work wonders in promoting content.
Moreover, content syndication on high-domain authority websites can prove to be decisive in content amplification.
