Content marketing constitutes more than just the blogging part. It is then important to lay down the groundwork before launching your company blog. In devising your strategy, other aspects of the business also come into play including market research. You need to base your long-term game plan on existing data such as who your customers are (e.g. millennial moms, work-at-home moms, single moms) and where you can reach out to them (e.g. social media, email, offline).
Only when you have gathered and analyzed your company data will you be able to craft a relevant strategy. Still, you can employ some tactics that will help you win customers regardless of the variables. Here are six examples that you can keep coming back to when creating individual content pieces..
Customize information
To cut through the noise, you have to adhere to simplicity. Personalizing information is key to making things simple. For instance, you are selling digital cameras. You cannot just write a blog piece about your products and their specifications. You need to determine who your reader will be. In this case, it should be shoppers who are ready to buy a digital camera. Add existing ratings and reviews applicable to each model you are describing. Likewise, you can craft other articles based on models that are perfect for nature photography, portrait photography, street photography, etc.
Leverage the power of infographics
An infographic is a concise yet full of impact form of visual storytelling that puts text and images together. The most compelling examples yield an emotional power because they prove to deliver the message faster than text alone can. They can “compress time and space”, “illuminate patterns in massive amounts of data”, and “make the abstract convincingly concrete”, according to a Harvard Business Review article.
Capture site visitors with videos
Appeal to both sense of sight and sound. Aside from infographics, you can add videos to your arsenal of content marketing assets. You can post them as standalone content or part of an ad. HubSpot reports that almost half of internet users look for product- or service-related videos before visiting a store. It also cites an Aberdeen 2015 research that says “marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users”.
Take advantage of AMP
Websites that are slow to load can turn customers off. So can pages not optimized for mobile and small screens. To reduce these issues, Google has introduced the Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP) Project. The open source initiative aims to provide end users with “consistently fast, beautiful, and high-performing” websites and ads across devices and distribution channels.
With AMP, you will get a lightweight blog page, which means quicker loading time. Of course, Google gives instructions on how to create your own AMP HTML page. Check out the tutorial here. Google also seems to prioritize the AMP pages in its rankings.
Turn to customers for content
Some managers and marketers may feel iffy about tapping user generated content (UGC). Primarily, this may be because of the existence of influencers who get paid for sharing sponsored content in their personal websites and social networks. The decision makers may lack information on how to deal with this new set of endorsers or not have a strategy in place to leverage UGC.
Know that you do not always have to shell out money on social media. For starters, you just need to look further to find ordinary consumers who are already sharing their love for your products in their profiles. Ask permission to use their content on Instagram, arguably the best platform for UGC to date. Usually, people are willing to let you download Instagram videos and photos without monetary compensation as long as you give them credit for the content.
However, you cannot collect random posts from people. The content should fit a theme or a topic. And Instagram and Facebook should not be your only sources. Why not add a ratings and reviews page to your site and app? It will be a minefield of real thoughts and opinions about your products. You can include this type of UGC not just in your social media marketing but also in your email marketing. Best of all, real reviews are examples of evergreen content. You can repurpose them according to your content needs, like putting them in an ad or a blog piece.
Empower employees with the right tools
Providing your marketers and creatives with the right tools signals that you support their work strongly. However, you should not forget to distribute this kind of support across the organization. In other words, you need to build an arsenal of tools that will make collaboration possible and the flow of information fluid among all teams. Just like designers, developers, marketers, and social media associates, your analysts and researchers should have access to a suite of applications that will make them more effective and efficient on the job.
See the infographic by ReviewsXP below for a complete list of the best management and productivity tools for the different roles in your business.
