Create a content marketing strategy that will grow your business

Content marketing is more than creating and sharing valuable, relevant and consistent content that will engage your customers, generate leads and improve your SEO.

It is a strategy we have to carefully consider and implement because it has a direct link to our sales funnel.

Creating and sharing valuable and relevant content is key to your content marketing strategy because it creates engagement. The better your content can resonate with your customers, the better the engagement and in turn, the conversion.

Not all content engagement is the same.

Outbound content marketing is short, snappy and has very easily digestible content. It disrupts the reader and quickly offers them value that they probably weren’t even looking for.

Inbound content marketing, is where you can create content gold that wins consumers and keeps them coming for more.

Consistently giving consumers valuable and relevant content when they are actively seeking it and have dedicated time to read and learn is when you begin to drive traffic and generate leads for your business.

Here are four steps you can take towards creating valuable, relevant and consistent content:

1. Define your content marketing strategy

Before you do anything else, you need to have very clear and measurable content goals in place. Knowing where you are and where you want to be will give you a clear sense of direction. Once you know where you want to be, you can create a content schedule.

2. Create only good content

The competition for good content is tough out there! To stand apart from the masses you have to know what consumers in your niche want to know. Every bit of content you produce needs to hinge on being: valuable and relevant. Raise awareness and educate consumers and they’ll soon begin to see the value you bring to them.

For example, if you have an online store, a product landing page can serve as an excellent content marketing tool that will quickly translate into conversions. The content here needs to be entirely customer focused - what they would like to know and see. Keep it relevant and give them content around what the product is, what problem it will solve for them, how it will transform then and what they can do next. Clear call to action, folks!

How-to-videos that show how the particular product can be used or worn are highly valuable and relevant content. Your customers will watch the videos to better understand the product and learn how it can transform them. Be sure to use subtitles if you can. According to a survey of US consumers, 83% watch videos with the sound off.

Product reviews have a lot of mileage. Before we buy anything we want to know if it works and actually does what it claims to and one way to do that is to read the reviews. Amazon claims that over 90% of people read reviews before buying products.

FAQs are a great way to engage your customers with valuable and relevant questions. You can build this content by preempting what you think your customers will want to know as well as include what questions your customers have already about that product. Take careful note of the questions your customers are asking and what they care about. Creating content around their questions will make bring greater engagement.

3. Be Committed to your content schedule

With strategic content marketing you are playing the long game and in time your content schedule will add to the success of your organic searches and lead generation.

Commitment and consistency are key.

4. Be deliberate about distributing content

Don't create content for the sake of it and definitely don’t create content with fingers crossed, hoping it will get noticed by someone. You have to be deliberate and intentional about distributing content in the right forms and onto the right platforms so that it can be noticed by the right people. You want the intended audience to engage with it.

It may seem daunting to think how on earth you're supposed to find the time to create content in so many forms and distribute on just as many channels. But I bring good news! You don't have to create lots of different content. The trick is to use one piece of content and splice and dice it in different ways for distribution across the different channels.

Getting the content right is vital for driving traffic to your site and generating leads because it builds trust in your brand.