How do you solve a problem like the decline in the consumption of traditional media? If you’re a business, the answer is content marketing.
With information readily available to anyone with access to the web, businesses are now able to benefit from a host of marketing techniques that were never available before.
It is no longer necessary to spend large amounts of money on traditional marketing techniques, like billboards, print media, or television. Instead, you can earn organic traffic with blogs, email, and newsletter campaigns among many other types of content marketing. Your marketing can now create value for customers.
Customers are loyal to brands. And to attract, acquire, and engage those customers, we have to not only create products and services they love but also content that they find valuable.
You want them to find your website and think they've stumbled upon buried treasure.
Here’s why creating useful content is more important than ever, and how to do it.
Valuable content for a better online presence
Content marketing is the practice of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage customers. It is critical for many reasons: it creates opportunities to optimize your site for search, increases web traffic, and creates demand for your products.
But most crucially, content marketing contributes to your online presence. Your website can be more than just virtual proof that your business exists, or a way for potential customers to reach out and contact you. It can help engage your customers by providing them value. Your web content tells prospective customers that you’re an authority in your space and that you can help them solve their problems.
Creating valuable content for your business should be an essential part of your marketing strategy. Valuable content can include blog posts, newsletters, infographics, white papers, eBooks, videos, or podcasts.
Businesses of all shapes and sizes can benefit from content marketing, from startups to established companies. And with the right content marketing strategy, small businesses can compete with much larger brands for the same customers.
How do you create valuable content?
Content marketing is an integral component of all successful digital marketing strategies. But content marketing isn’t just about creating content and hoping for the best. Creating content that isn’t relevant to your audience can result in ineffective marketing tactics and wasted resources.
So, how do you create valuable content?
1. Solve a problem
The first step is aiming to say something useful. Most people skip straight to SEO tactics when they develop new content. They conduct their keyword research, make an SEO keyword plan, and then use that to build their content calendar.
That's all important, but it should come second. The first step is thinking about what your customer needs. Content that performs the best on search engines is the content that is most engaging and useful. Solve your customer's problems, and they will be more likely to buy your product or service.
Here are the following ways how you can create valuable content for your customers.
2. Be authoritative
One of the most important things you have to do to stand out online is to show you’re an authority in your niche. Your audience wants to be able to trust that you know what you’re talking about. To do that, you need to invest resources.
For example, rather than publishing tips for how to collect feature requests, go out and ask some experts how they do it. Then publish what they say. It’s much more useful to your audience to see how others in their field are solving a problem than it is to provide another generic list of tips.
3. Be readable
To create top content, you have to write well. Sure, that means not making grammatical mistakes. But it also means being effective. Being concise and easy to follow.
Use a clear, logical structure. Try to keep your language specific and clear. Aim for an active voice. And don’t try to say too much at once.
4. Share a point of view
One of the most valuable things you can do for your blog is willing to take a stand. Pay attention to what’s going on around you. Look for problems or issues and build content around them. By developing a point of view, you establish a voice that contributes to your brand and attracts customers.
Put value at the centre of your content marketing strategy
Content marketing is all about providing engaging, informative, and resourceful content on a regular basis to attract and retain the attention of consumers.
It’s not hard to regularly pump out blog posts. But not all content is made equal. Quality content is what keeps consumers coming back to your website or YouTube channel, whether that is to buy something or to learn more about your brand.
To get quality content, be customer-centric. Make the needs of your customers the core of your content strategy. Your primary goal should be to provide them value. Make them feel like they've struck gold.
Do that, and you've done the hardest part of creating a successful content marketing strategy.
Author’s Bio
Gemma Hamilton is a marketing professional who originally hails from Southeast Asia. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends by visiting various natural landscapes and hanging out on beautiful beaches. Besides nature-tripping, she’s also very passionate about writing quality content that helps build professional relationships with people and share informative insights to various audiences interested in different types of topics.
Want to create content that sings? Get in touch to find out how Crisp Text can help.