So you have your business up and running and your website created now all you need is a flow of visitors to turn into customers. How do you achieve this? Well, one way is adding content marketing to your marketing strategy. However, there is more to content marketing than just spewing out a couple of hundred words and posting it on your blog. To help you get started we have come up with this guide, so read on.
Throughout this guide, we will go over the following aspects:
- What content marketing is;
- Using evergreen content;
- Long-tailed keywords;
- Variety in content;
- Infographics;
- Pictures;
- Video;
- How good content can benefit your business;
- Top tips for content marketing.
What is content marketing?
First, let’s begin by explaining what content marketing is. Having good content on your blog or website is essential to SEO. It is a way to get across to Google what you are offering by way of keywords. It is also a way to engage with your audience and communicate with them, hopefully turning them into customers.
Implementing evergreen content
When considering writing blog posts and articles for your content you should implement evergreen content.
Evergreen content is written content that doesn’t date or which dates very slowly. This means it is relevant all the time and continues to offer traffic growth and leads, along with it being valuable for sharing over a long period. This makes it excellent for SEO and it boosts the chance of websites providing you with valuable backlinks.
The name “Evergreen content” comes from the type of trees which keep their leaves year-round and remain fresh. The same applies to content. You can implement evergreen content in your blog through:
- Making lists;
- Offering tips and tricks;
- Tutorials;
- Guides – such as this one;
- Reviews on products;
- FAQs;
There are numerous advantages to writing evergreen content and these include:
- The content never needs updating, it is timeless and always relevant;
- It drives in organic traffic regularly;
- It ranks high in search engines such as Google;
- It remains interesting year after year;
- It increases the chance of getting quality backlinks;
- It can help to lower the bounce rate as it keeps visitors on the site for longer.
Use long-tailed keywords in written content
The whole idea of content marketing is to attract visitors to your site and gain customers. One way of doing this is by using long-tailed keywords in your content.
Some keywords can be hard to target to get a high ranking on search engines, particularly if you have many competitors out there.
Keywords are one or two words used in articles and posts to let search engines and those searching know what products and services you are selling. Long-tail keywords are longer, more like phrases, and they can be used effectively in SEO. In fact, these long-tail keywords or phrases make up 70% of all searches on the internet and many consider them to be the holy grail of SEO.
Generally, four or five-word phrases gain more search volume than just one or two-word keywords.
The key to successful content marketing is the variety
In the first instance, content marketing consists of writing and publishing an article to get readers to react, such as make a purchase. However, it is more complex than just writing words, the key to successful content marketing is variety.
This helps in keeping your readers enthralled and obtaining a better ranking on Google. By variety, we are talking about including pictures, infographics, video and such. Pictures and videos help to get what you are saying in your blog post across and make the post attractive and memorable; they catch the eye and engage visitors.
Add infographics into your content
Infographics can be used as standalone content or added into a blog post to catch the eye and embellish on whatever you are trying to get across to readers and customers.
Many times people cannot be bothered to read word after word. Breaking up your content into small sentences and paragraphs will help to keep readers on the page but breaking written content up with infographics really helps.
Visual marketing is engaging and helps to get your message across clearly. Visuals pop out from the page and tend to be processed by the reader 60,000 times faster than them reading lengthy text.
As more and more people use websites and are reading blog posts on smartphones on tablets infographics are a must.
A picture is worth a thousand words
You might have heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” and when it comes to content marketing it is true.
Visitors to websites don’t want to have to read and scroll through thousands of words of text. If you do have to write thousands of words to get your message across, split it up with pictures.
Of course, not just any pictures. The pictures have to relate to whatever you are talking about in the article. Funny pictures and cartoons always bring a smile to the face of readers, as do animated gif pictures.
Engage customers with video content
Why have your customers read thousands of words when you can engage them better using video?
Write small chunks of content and break it up with a video showing what you have just described in writing. The use of videos in content is becoming extremely popular. In fact, a visitor will spend around 88% more time on a site or blog that has video content. Around 64% then go on to make a purchase. We are not talking about making a lengthy movie, just a brief video, straight and to the point.
Google search engine ranks video content high, as does Facebook, and are excellent ways to retain reader and customer interest.
The key to successful video content marketing is providing useful content which is engaging, interesting and entertaining and all the while encouraging visitors to engage further, such as making a purchase or signing up for something.
There are many different ways of using video content including:
- Branding – introducing your business and products;
- Entertaining visitors;
- Educating and explaining;
- Email;
- Showing off products or services.
Reach out to millions of YouTube viewers
Video content is said to gain better traffic and higher rates of engagement and conversions. YouTube is an excellent example of video content marketing and there are plenty of people on the channel waiting to promote products, many with millions of subscribers and views each month. You can even have your own YouTube business account.
How content marketing benefits your business
You now have a good idea of what content marketing is, so now we will explain how it can benefit your business. The main points to take away from this are:
- It helps to generate awareness of your business, your products and/or services;
- It educates visitors and provides answers to their questions;
- It goes towards swaying visitors to choose you over your competition.
It makes your brand stand out and be noticed
One of the biggest benefits of undertaking content marketing is making your brand and products/services stand out and get noticed.
You might have the most wonderful products out there that beat all your competitors but if nobody knows about them, they are useless.
Content marketing helps get your brand out there. Good content gives those visiting your site or blog something to talk about and if one person is impressed, they are more likely to share it with friends.
Before you know it, people are talking about your products or services on social media and word gets spread around which sees an influx of visitors and hopefully purchases.
It helps to bring in more traffic
Traffic to your website is the ultimate goal and content marketing can help to do just this.
Of course, the quality of content is key so it has to be interesting, relevant and to the point. It is better to have a couple of hundred words of compelling and relevant information than fluffing it out with irrelevant and boring content just to make a longer post.
Your brand gains trust
Content marketing can help to build trust and respect. By using content, you can prove how knowledgeable you are about your products or services, which leads to trust.
Depending on the products or services you offer, you could provide content that explains how to use the products or services to get the best from them. It shows you care about customers, which again builds respect and trust.
SEO is improved
Content helps greatly with SEO, aka search engine optimisation. If you post good relative content on your blog, it attracts editorial links. When you gain editorial links Google realises you have authority and realises your site is important.
With relevant content, Google also gets a better understanding of what your site is offering, which in turn means it shows your site higher in rankings for queries.
Don’t expect immediate results
One word of warning when entering into content marketing is that you should not expect results to be immediate. Marketing works, but it takes time.
As with many things, you do have to be patient but do not get discouraged when you don’t see things changing immediately. Content marketing will work and it has been proven time and time again.
Our 5 top tips for successful content marketing
We will complete this guide by taking a look at some of our top tips for successful content marketing that you might want to consider implementing in your strategy.
Give answers to complex questions in content
One way of engaging with visitors is to provide the valuable information and answers they are looking for. Providing answers to complex questions that people search for provides a big payoff, such as the content appearing in a Google featured snippet. This is the most coveted spot on Google search engine and if Google trusts your expertise, it boosts the chances of potential buyers trusting you over the competition.
Take advice from professional content writers
Not everyone is born to be a writer and as any content you use for your marketing efforts has to be the best possible, you might want to consider handing it over to the experts. Experts, otherwise known as professional content writers or SEO experts can work magic with your written content.
Be consistent with your content
Consistency is the key to successful content marketing. Of course, while you need to keep writing and uploading content, it has to remain your best work, relevant, interesting and informative. It is no good writing and publishing four or five posts a week that are short and full of useless information or fluff. One or two excellent posts would be better.
Reusing your content
If you have superb content, particularly evergreen content, and it performed well, you might want to consider reusing it. Perhaps you wrote an evergreen article that went down well with visitors. You could turn it into a guide and offer it for download. You might use a post in email marketing or a webinar; perhaps use good headlines from articles in PPC ads or on Facebook, if it’s good why not reuse it.
Speak your mind honestly
There is a lot of content out there that you will have to compete with from other businesses and you need to stand your head above the crowd. One way of doing so is to be bold and speak your mind honestly. Even if it means you have to flirt with controversy do it, don’t be afraid to be open, but of course, don’t mean to offend, there may be a fine line. Many people will appreciate your honesty and it can help you to stand out.
In summary
So throughout this guide, we have explained to you what content marketing is, how to use it, how to provide variety, the benefits it has and even given you some of our best tips.
This should be more enough to get you started on your marketing campaign to help your company to gain better rankings on Google, which in turn brings more visitors to your site and turn those visitors into customers.
Of course, writing the perfect content and implementing the best SEO practices is not an easy task so we are here to help if you require professional assistance.
