Why content is king, and other valuable lessons we’ve learnt since the dawn of marketing
27,000,000 pieces of content are shared everyday.
That can be good and bad news for content marketers. It’s great news because it means content circulation is in full swing, and adapting this strategy for your business is an intelligent idea. In fact, 9 out of 10 business are now doing the same, because it’s so effective. But it’s bad news because, well, that’s 27 million pieces of content that you now have to compete with. How do you stand out?
Focus on the niche.
Yup, to compete with everyone, focus on the specifics. Don’t widen the audience for which you write your content. Get specific. Focus on your buyer persona — who is it that is most likely to search information regarding your product or business?
Write content that can be the answers to their questions. Write content that will be useful to them, and they will do the rest: share it, use it, and link back to it as a useful source. By writing content that shoots for the niche audience, you will build a community that is more likely to come back to your website/blog as a resource.
Timing matters.
When do you post on Facebook? Twitter? Are you sure your users are online when you are?
Timing is everything.
You wouldn’t call someone in the middle of the night, so why would you post your content then? Facebook posts are best posted between 1–4pm, late into the week and on the weekends, while Twitter posts do better at night. Consumer promotions sent via email are most likely to be opened after dinner. Schedule your content using the right methods to get your business the best coverage.
Diction is key.
Are you using the right language to communicate with your target audience? The tone and vocabulary of the language you use in your distributed content and social media matters. If you are a B2B specialist, using vocabulary related to the software and audience you are marketing can be a good strategy, but don’t forget to keep it simple.
Leverage the use of colloquial language when posting on social media or talking to younger demographics.
Learn to talk in a way that lets your consumers know you care about building meaningful relationships with your audience.
Don’t let your blog post die alone.
Creating content is an extensive process: coming up with an idea, researching it, writing the content, and then promoting it. It takes a lot of time and involves different individuals with different fields of expertise at every stage. A lot of people mistake the posting of the content on their blog as the final step — but that’s not fair to your content. Posting your content on only one channel is a surefire way of ensuring that the content never reaches enough people — the probability of content reaching a consumer to whom it could make a difference is much smaller.
Here’s an in-depth answer I wrote on Quora detailing how you can repurpose content to make sure it reaches audiences on a wide variety of platforms. Remember to ask yourself what kind of content you’d fine engaging on the different social media platforms you use, and repurpose accordingly!
These are the most important pointers for content marketing in today’s cutthroat environment. Use these to up your content marketing game!
This is an adaptation of my article that was recently published on Entrepreneur magazine. Read it here!
