40 Content Marketing Tips You Can't Afford to Ignore

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40 Content Marketing Tips You Can't Afford to Ignore

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Content marketing is a tool that any business can use (large or small) to reach their audience. When performed and executed properly, any business can leverage content marketing to converse with their customers, prospects, partners and even competitors. The fact is you do not even require a large budget to be successful with content marketing. You just need to understand what you want to communicate, when and to whom.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating and promoting relevant content to an audience that is searching for information. It can be used to simply convey a process, describe a product, share an opinion or communicate some new information. Content marketing can even be used to remind an audience about a product, service or experience.

It is important to remember that content marketing is not just the creation of the relevant content, but the promotion of this content to your desired audience. In addition content marketing is not effective when used as a sole strategy. An effective content marketing strategy should leverage search and social marketing as well. In essence, while you can create some remarkable content, you still need people to find it, to engage with it ans to share it.

Content marketing is really an ongoing process that involves a series of actions. In fact, a typical content marketing process would go through the following steps:

Establishing the overall content development strategy
Researching what information your target market is actively consuming (and where). This would also include researching which keywords that you should be focusing on.
Content creation
Content Optimization
Launching the content
Content Promotion
Content Distribution
Content engagement (which may include obtaining quality inbound links, and social shares)
Measuring progress
Revisiting any of the previous steps to ensure that your content marketing efforts are effective.

Content marketing at times can be trial and error, after all your target audience is ever changing as is the means by which they consume information. Using the following content marketing tips can help ensure that your content marketing efforts are not going to waste.

40 Content Marketing Tips You Cannot Afford to Ignore

Always have a plan
Make sure you create an editorial calendar - even if you do not have a content team, an editorial calendar is a must to keep you on track.
Understand that people consume information in different manners
Understand that people in the digital age use online to:

learn
socialize
express opinions
to shop
for entertainment
to promote their business

Everyone is social (either online or offline)
Be unique - understand what content already exists out there and do not try to rehash what is already available.
Leverage testimonials (good and bad)
Incorporate images with your content
Consider leveraging rich media such as video to share information
Remember, every page on your website should be somewhat unique and be an authority on a given topic.
Learn how the search engines engage with your content.
Leverage an HTML sitemap
Leverage an XML sitemap
Leverage microformats for information that can offer more information about your business, products or services (think: addresses, menus, events etc.)
Evaluate what is working for your competitors
Pay attention to trending topics
Learn how to "optimize" for search engines and social networks
Become a master at keyword research
Develop an on-going keyword research process
Establish content goals from a traffic perspective
Establish content goals from an engagement perspective
Don't be afraid to experiment
Tell a story when necessary
See #6
Take inventory of your existing content
Try to optimize your pages for a single topic
Do not use somebody else's content on your web properties
Repurpose (or remove old/outdated) content - focus on quality.
Remember it is not about the number of pages your site has, it is about the quality of those pages.
Leverage blogging for the purposes of sharing content quickly and in a timely manner
Take a stand - a little controversy can be a good thing
Be creative - don't use infographics because everyone else is using them. Think outside of the box when it comes to sharing content and how you will display it on your web properties.
Be consistent with your offline content - oh boy, how many times have you seen a brand with confusing messaging on their website when compared to another form of advertising medium that they have used? Strive to have you offline and online content compliment each other.
Perform periodic reviews of your content - to ensure that users are engaging with it.
Update your content regularly
Monitor your top performing content and more importantly your poorest performing content via analytics. Look for patterns and trends to ensure more consistent optimization across your website.
Do not over optimize or over-SEO your content
Facebook is not going away, use it.
Monitor the links to your content to get an idea of which pages are more popular than others.
Make your content available - do not hide it behind a login.

If you leverage the majority of these tips, you should experience success with your content marketing strategy. Just how much success is up to you. If you are in the business of being a directory, your days might just be numbered and you really are going to need to take a long hard look at your business model or at least at you content model to see if you are truly the authority you think you are. For scrapers, article spammers and syndicators you too might want to revisit your approach with content marketing. Quality content will always be more engaging with the user and with the search engine crawlers. Developing a plan for your content marketing efforts may just help you engage with your customers like never before. In this digital age, we are all publishers and as marketers we cannot afford to ignore the importance of content marketing.

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Labels: content marketing