Even if your marketing department doesn’t have a strict content marketing strategy, you’ve probably at least dabbled in it to gain some exposure. What content marketing actually is will differ depending on what kind of resources are at your disposal — but for most businesses, it means writing newsletters and blog posts, recording video content, and maybe even putting together a podcast.
By engaging your target audience online through your own content, you can gain trust and recognition while bonding with potential or current clients. Informative content that is useful for your particular audience is the best way to catch and maintain online attention and obtain results. Here are a few secrets to ensuring your content marketing is living up to its potential.
Be Yourself
Your authenticity is the best way to keep your audience engaged. Social media platforms have led the public to feel they have a right to know the ins and outs of how businesses operate. By giving your online audience what they want and not holding anything back, you’ll bond with more potential customers and gain their trust.
Being honest about some of the trials you encounter in your industry and how your teams handles them can impress your target audience. This honesty shows the raw and real side of you, your business and your product, so potential and current clients understand the value of your company on a more personal level.
Don’t Be Scared Of Video
Out of all the content marketing mediums, video is the most neglected. It can be intimidating to record a video and face your online audience. However, video is also one of the most popular forms of content marketing because it allows you to connect directly to your audience.
You can explain intricate details of your product, introduce staff members or simply have a conversation to make your followers feel more at home with you and your business through video content. Tutorial videos also add value for potential customers, making them more likely to re-engage with your brand and product.
Collaborate With Influencers
Social media influencers have tons of followers and might be able to help you gain views. Social influencers and micro-influencers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube can provide your brand with exposure for a relatively low price. By collaborating with influencers in your industry, you can help them to add value to their audience while they can help you to increase your following.
Optimize Content For Voice
Consumers are buying millions of Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod devices and nearly 25% of search queries are now voice queries. Your website, content, and keywords need to start reflecting that and optimizing for voice. Keywords will often times be long-tail and conversational instead of a few words. Your writing should reflect how people actually speak, especially how they ask questions and expect answers. This will continue to be a growing trend as these devices become more popular and more advanced. Automobile manufacturers are now starting to include them as built-in features in new cars, so people can do voice searches while they're driving. Make voice a top priority starting now!
I already mentioned video as being crucial content to create, but audio is going to be big as well. Podcasts and audio books will continue to grow in popularity since they are passive mediums and they will be strengthened by more voice searches and technology.
Use Your Human Resources
Your marketing department knows how to gain you exposure and trust online. However, don’t forget about your other teams — they might have something to add to your content that you simply can’t get elsewhere. Your production department knows the details of your products and how each one is made in a way your marketers simply can’t explain. Your sales team knows more about customer’s needs and how to meet them with your products. Customer service knows about all of the potential problems related to your products and services and how to solve them.
Use your staff’s knowledge of business processes and a collaboration of departments to create engaging and useful content for your audience.
Content marketing is an important part of your marketing strategy. Not only is it crucial to engage with your online audience regularly but also to ensure the content you put out is informative, authentic and useful.
By taking these content marketing secrets into consideration, you can provide online content through any medium that’s sure to gain trust and engagement with your followers.
Author Bio: Jodie Shaw is The Alternative Board (TAB)’s Chief Marketing Officer. She brings over 20 years of B2B marketing and 10 years in franchising to the role. Prior to to her work with TAB, Jodie served as the CEO and Global Chief Marketing Officer of an international business coaching franchise, serving more than 50 countries.
I hope you enjoyed this article about best practices for content marketing in 2019 and beyond.
Interested in more articles about content marketing?
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