How to bring your content marketing game to next level

Content is always the main protagonist in a marketing campaign. Without effective content, marketing campaigns lose their sharpness and relevance. Campaigns are driven by emotions and emotions are driven by content. You need to offer strong content to your audience to generate engagement. This is the reason why creating valuable and informative content is so necessary. Content drives the whole campaign and is one of the primary reasons for the success of any marketing strategy. Here we list down few thumb rule to create valuable and informative content.

1. Your content should be audience-focused: Never write generic content or content that is meant to appeal to everyone. It may get you visitors but not leads who can transform themselves into customers. Having a narrow audience that can be converted is much better than a large generic audience who don’t care in the slightest about what your business is all about. Therefore, the first course of action that you must take is to know who your reader is. This means that you should – among other things – understand their reading habits and figure out the best course of action that can be taken to strike a conversation with them. What are the problems they are going through and how can you help them? When you give proper time to ponder upon all these questions, you put yourself on the path of creating emphatic and engaging content.
2. Make the content searchable: Try to use only one H1 and multiple H2 tags on your page because they help immensely in improving the search engine ranking and maintaining an appropriate flow. Use H3 tags only if necessary, but remember that they won’t give you the same results in SEO as H1 and H2 tags will. Update all the elements of your meta description such as the title, keywords, and description text so that it flows in accordance with your keyword research. Next, adding links of other pages on your site to increase value that the web spiders assign to your page. Include relevant alt descriptions to your images so they are included in Google image searches. Incorporate the correct use of these options to make sure that the audience finds your content.
3. Always check SEO: The importance of Search Engine Optimization cannot be stressed enough. It helps Google in figuring out what each page is really about and how it can be useful to users. Each article should meet the objectives of an SEO strategy. Do proper research about the keywords you are using and compare them with your competitors’ keywords using tools like BuzzSumo or SpyFu.
4. Keep upgrading yourself and your content- Keep reading, keep your research mode on, and always strive hard to put better content on your content platform. In this way, your audience will see you growing and will stay connected with you as people always prefer fresh content over stale content. Moreover, change is necessary to adapt to the mood and interests of the audience. Videos are a hot commodity at the present time and will continue to be because of their emotional aspect and ability to connect with users – more so than any other form of content. 

Make goals and stay dedicated towards them- You need to know the purpose of doing content marketing. Like Simon Sinek says, one needs to figure out the why before they venture or commit into doing anything. You need to know the end goal or the impact you want to create through that piece of content. This helps you in writing a content piece in a much better and effective manner.

1. Get interactive: Sometimes well thought of, long, and composed articles are not enough to attract a wide audience. Including interactive content like infographics, videos, sliding galleries, and on-site calculators and navigation is a great way to grab the attention of many readers. This compels them to engage, participate, and share your content. This non-traditional content also leads to increasing brand visibility and exposure.
2. Broaden your page reach: Partnering with other pages and sharing each other’s content is a great way to reach a larger audience. Try to stay active on social media and interact with your users, thought-leaders, and partners.
3. Have a content plan- Not having a content plan is a big roadblock to creating good informative content. You should have a content plan in place so that you have ample time to do the necessary research on creating said content. Proper research and a clear-cut thought process can improve your content visibility to a great extent. Your content plan can help you address specific days in your niche in an effective and productive manner. If you own a company that sells flowers, your content should be highly engaging during the Valentine Week. Having a content plan helps you do your research well and create content that adds meaning to these days. Creating different forms of content is important as well.
4. Balance quality and quantity- Good content will always win over the audience. Creating generic content pieces and posting for the sake of posting and stuffing your articles with unnecessary keywords are unhealthy content practices and should be avoided at all times. So, it’s in the best interest of a business to create good, clean content that is devoid of grammar errors and silly language mistakes. Your readers will respect you once you stamp your authority in a particular niche.
5. Feeding Google: To create the content of the highest value, you have to keep in mind what Google wants. Your definition of high quality differs from Google’s definition of it and so, you need to be familiarized with Google Quality Rater Guidelines which will help you craft good-quality content. These guidelines offer incredible insights, along with the kind of pages they serve at the top of the results.

In content marketing, valuable and informative content is as important as oxygen is for humans. Content is an integral part of any marketing strategy, and without good content, great marketing doesn’t exist.

This article was originally published in Marketing in Asia!