What is Content? A brief overview for Newbies starting out
What is content?
Content is the gasoline that runs the businesses around the world. Content provides the context of what you are selling to your target customers.
Goods & services don’t just show up in the market out of nowhere. There is a strategic process that is followed. Each process is translated through content.
Without content How would you sell or market your goods/services? ??
Content allows consumers to learn about your Unique Selling Proposition.
With a perfect content strategy in place, you can actually initiate your marketing & sales funnel by strategically planning & publishing content that pulls your ideal customers into the funnel to eventually become your satisfied customers.
“What I love about content is it has the power to change people’s lives for a second or for a day or forever. Great content creates space for people to pause and reflect, and that space is where transformation happens.â€
– Jolie Miller
Content Marketing best practices
#1 It is highly advisable to align your content with your niche.
It doesn’t make sense for a fitness blog to post content about Technology because doing so it loses relevancy & reliability. People follow you for what you stand for, hence you need to maintain consistency.
People who have subscribed to blog’s newsletter would be excited to receive blog updates about health. For technology, they may be reading other prominent blogs like TechCrunch or TheVerge.
#2 Create content for the users, not algorithms
The number #1 mistake that people make in content marketing is tweaking with the algorithm to gain traction.
Sure you might get those incremental views, reach and engagement, but that isn’t your qualified audience & doing so you’re sabotaging your rapport with your authentic followers. It’s called click-bait which leads to abandonment rate which drastically affects the website bounce rate.
#3 Reward your loyal fan-base
Build your tribe strategically. Engage with your followers as an when you get that opportunity, get to know them. You can do plenty of consumer research by engaging with your audience every once in a while. When someone leaves a thoughtful comment on your content don’t just thank them, rather engage with them. Give them a reason to come back. Build everlasting relationships with them.
In the hindsight even if they never convert or qualify as a lead, treating them well would be beneficial. Reward them & they will give you word-of-mouth.
‘Content is the King’
The buzziest phrase in the Digital Marketing industry is “Content is Kingâ€
Bill Gates was the one who coined it on 1996 in an essay.
Recommended Read: This is how Digital Marketers are implementing strategies using Quora
Let’s decode why Content is the King
Business without content is like a smartphone with front camera.
The content that you pump needs to have a definitive goal. The goals could be Brand Awareness, Lead Generation or Sales right away. Your content needs to resonate around that goal.
Let’s say your goal is to drive sales for your products. so naturally your content needs to showcase your products, it’s features, usability & the problem that it is going to solve.
If your content is extremely good, then that does a lot of organic reach for you. You don’t have to spend on paid promotions. ‘Good Content’ possesses specific traits that make it so good.
Those Traits are
- Niche-specific
- Of utmost value to your target audience
- Trendier
- Catchy
- Relatable
- Resourceful
For example, Moz’s revenue generation model is through their SaaS solution tool i.e Open Site Explorer Link Explorer. It’s a Search Engine Optimization tool.
Hence content on Moz’s website can be found about search engine optimization, in fact, they are having a tab titled “learn Seo†dedicated entirely to SEO.
This is Moz’s content strategy through which they generate awareness, leads, & makes conversions.
They are reflecting presence directly to their dedicated target audience.
Tools for Content Marketing
BuzzSumo is a great tool to do thorough research beforehand. With the help of this tool, you can find the buzziest content from the keyword that you search. For example, using its research tool you can search “Digital+Marketing†and it will enlist content making the buzz containing that keyword, you can also search for phrases. Buzz as in social media engagement, shares, backlinks. You can filter out the results.
Medium: Medium is a publishing platform, somewhat similar to LinkedIn.
In Medium you can create content from scratch and have it posted and shared OR you can import your already published blogs to get extra views. As for engagement, in Medium you get applause and comments.
Canva: Canva is a great easy-to-use tool to create beautiful social media graphical images with prepopulated templates, themes, stock photos, & calligraphy.
This tool is so profound that I will dedicate an article to Canva in future.
Quick Recap!
- Content gives context to people to whom you wanna sell
- Adhere to best practices so as to not derail from the definitive goals
- Make use of tools that enhance the productivity & efficiency necessary to revamp your content marketing strategy
Recommended read:
Information Overload is hampering your growth in Digital Marketing
Blogging isn’t just a hobby, It’s an industry of expression