Can you count how many times have you read „content is king“ in past month or a year? I bet it’s in double digits! Anyone who is doing any kind of online marketing has that sentence deep in their brain, but we still sometimes have to bring it back and point out how important it is.
Unlike a lot of other things in online marketing, content was important 2 years ago, it’s still important today, and will stay important 2 years from now.
Content marketing is growing every day, and trends change almost every year. It was hard being a content marketer in 2016 and it won’t be any easier in 2017. in 2015 there were 2 MILLION new pieces of content published every day, can you imagine what that number is today?
We are living fast lives, with easily accessible information and content can get lost in it all very easy. The goal of a content marketer in 2017 is to create content that will be relevant, reach its target audience and make an impact big enough for them to make a next step – a purchase, a subscription, or just a simple share with their friends. 2017 might be the toughest year yet for content marketers. It’s hard to create content that balances all of the above, and to create it on a regular basis is even harder.
How can a content marketer make their life easier but still deliver what their market is looking for? Sounds impossible, but it definitely isn’t. The best way to start any content marketing campaign is to determine your target audience. After all, they are the reason the campaign is being made in the first place.
Thankfully, just how there’s an increased demand for creating more quality content, the number of resources available to achieve that goal grows as well. Finding the target audience is not as hard as it used to be. We are living in social media era when people are willing to share their opinion and activities online with the whole world, which could be used in creating content marketing campaigns.
By browsing through public social media and Q&A sites, a content marketer can solve a few tasks in creating a content marketing campaign. For example, if we are creating a campaign for a certain brand, we can check out which people are mentioning it online, on social media, in which context, what are their likes and dislikes, what are they sharing on their profiles, and so on. We can also check all of that for competitors as well. This helps determine target audience so we can focus on creating content that will „speak“ to them.
When determining the target audience, it’s important to try and think like them, to figure out their lifestyle and what drives their curiosity, but also what is bothering them and what they need. On question and answer based social networking sites, like Quora, we can easily see what questions people are asking and what are their pain points, which then we can use as topics for blog posts or any other type of content.
Another important thing is a good organization. Going into a big content marketing project without proper preparation and tools is not a good idea. Each content marketer should create an editorial calendar, not only for blogging but for all types of content. We could think of it as the GPS navigation for a content marketing campaign. It helps with organizing ideas and monitoring which audience is being targeted with each idea, and, in the end, it could help producing new ideas.
Yes, new ideas are more important than ever when it comes to creating content. As mentioned before, we are living in a time when there’s an imaginable amount of new content being created every day, with hundreds of pieces going viral every week. It’s definitely not easy to be noticed, and even harder to stay relevant and remembered.
There are only so many ideas out there, and it keeps getting harder and harder to stay original – everyone who’s been involved in marketing knows that.
Therefore, when we run out of ideas, it’s okay to get a little help from the rest of the world. Newsjacking is something that has been growing in popularity over the last few years. Brands and marketing agencies have been using breaking news or politics in campaigns, mostly in a humorous way, but also in raising awareness about something that means a lot to them and is a part of the news.
Of course, there’s no need to use something as big. Search for ideas for creating can start with browsing through popular hashtags on various social media. There, content marketers can see what people are talking about at the moment and customize their content and campaign according to that. It can also be a source of ideas for any future content.
All the suggestions above can also be used for sharing already existing pieces of content. Naturally, that content has to be relevant and valuable, otherwise it won’t be interesting to the audience. Creating quality content is definitely most important part of a content marketing campaign, but promoting said content is more important today than ever.
Once a piece of content, whether it’s a blog post, video, infographic, has been created and published, a new type of tasks emerge, and content marketer’s job isn’t over yet. Every piece of content needs to be promoted on as many channels as possible. Share on social media, promote in newsletters, and try influencer marketing and blogger outreach.
Almost any way of promoting your content is good and welcome. For most of the marketers, sharing their own content on their own social media is a part of daily tasks, but everyone should go a few steps further. As mentioned before, monitoring hashtags related to your content is a great way of finding people that are interested in what you have to offer so share it with them.
We started with „content is king“, went over „quality content is king“, and ending with „quality and promoted content is king“. It’s important to cover all of these three „definitions“. Create content – there’s no online marketing without content. Make sure that content is high quality and always choose to create fewer pieces of high-quality content over more poor quality pieces. And, be proud of the content you created and let people know about it.
A to Z of Content Marketing
- A is for Audience
- B is for Blogger outreach
- C is for Content
- D is for Dynamic Content
- E is for Editorial Calendar
- F is for Facebook/Followers
- G is for Guest Blogging
- H is for # (hashtag)
- I is for Infographic (like mine above)
- J is for Join
- K is for KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
- L is for Lead Magnet
- M is for Marketing Funnel
- N is for Newsjacking
- O is for On-page optimization
- P is for P&P – Publish & Promote and not for Publish & Pray
- Q is for Quora or Q&As sites
- R is for Remarketing / Retargeting
- S is for Social Media Channels
- T is for Tools
- U is for User Experience (UX)
- V is for Video
- W is for Web Analytics
- X is for XML feeds
- Y is for You
- Z is for zZZ (Ok, it’s time for me to go to sleep)
Have you read?
- Effective Content Marketing Tips: The A To Z Guide
- Are You Smarter Than a Smart Machine? Why “old smart” is the new stupid
- Some Common HRM Issues and How HR Software Help Address Them
- The top 18 most valuable technology brands in 2017
- Check out the world’s top 25 beaches according to travellers, 2017
- A to Z of Content Marketing
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