No Shortcuts on the web: It’s all about the Content
For a long time, SEO companies themselves were responsible for promoting the idea that there were shortcuts to succeeding on the web. The web is now the largest bundle of useless, poorly written information the world has ever known, interspersed of course with superb, interesting stuff that’s enriched all our lives, but the balance is currently favouring the former rather than the latter. Thank goodness – as Google’s algorithm has improved – that game is over. Generally speaking, there are no shortcuts to succeeding online, there’s no way to win without becoming the market leader you deserve to be. That means understanding your audience, engaging with them via social media, and mostly focussing on your own website as the very best nexus of information, creativity and ideas you could possibly provide. In short, you need to learn content marketing, a very long winded way of describing how to present information in the most appealing, effective manner for your chosen market.
Research Your Market
No matter what size your company, whether you’re selling frozen peas or custom jets, you need to understand who your market is?
- What’s their demographic, lifestyle, aesthetic preferences, basic needs?
- What’s their path to making a purchase?
- Do they favour tablets or mobiles for their searches?
- Start to profile your buyer persona to uncover specific insights
- Consider market research tools like Ezquestionnaire, KeySurvey, or Survey Monkey
Who are the industry influencers?
Part of the process of content marketing research is to know who the current leaders are and what they’re doing. That means reading industry journals and media sources, profiling the current top ranking sites, and to get in touch with the people behind them where applicable. These individuals (speakers, authors, analysts, bloggers etc) have a profile your target audience will know about, and which can be used to connect your brand with your chosen audience with. Ben from our friends NoStop.net comments: “Their unique point of view and perspective will put the story of your brand across to the larger public, offering a third party validation which is literally priceless. This type of approach is something we recommend to all our clients.”
Conversion Goals: What should the content achieve?
When the buyers are understand, there’s one more thing to understand before you can write the content and that is what action do we wish them to take? This means asking ‘Why are we writing this content?’ Some content is purely informative and thus it’s purpose it’s didactic. Other content is to entertain, to amuse, to titillate. Other content is intended to build credibility or gravitas around your brand. Whatever the purpose of this piece of content marketing, note down and end result such as signing up to an email newsletter, purchasing a product, joining a social media page and so forth. This gives you a quantifiable goal in mind before the business of actually creating the content which you can then measure.
Branding
To compete on a global market, your company has to have a persona of it’s own, a character people can understand and relate to. Any content you create should add to this, which means ideally working with the same writers, or carefully educating new ones so that they understand who you are. As the clothes you wear give passers by an idea of who you are and where you fit in the larger community, a sites written content, pictures, video, logos and font all add to a felt-sense of who and what your brand is, a message delivered in a nano-second and resulting in pure emotional resonance. They say first impressions count: everything about your site must combine to make sure they do. More on that from the Design Council.
Search Engine Optimization Still Matters After All
Although the focus has shifted towards writing for a human audience, the medium is still the internet and that means keeping Google happy. Ensure your content is presented in a way which functions well on the the search engines, is likely to be widely shared, and ties in to a larger internet marketing strategy. That means well labelled images, schema markup, adequate using of headings, no duplicate content and so forth.
Engaging across Multiple Channels and Promoting your Content
So you’ve understood your audience, sourced the best writers and graphics people, and come up with a piece of content so good it literally sizzles. Well, if no one can find it, you’re like a genius in a Parisian garret, likely to be forgotten until well after your time! On the other hand, utilising all the benefits of social media sharing, offering your content to subscribers fans and followers through channels you’ve built up over time, will mean your work of art gets before your chosen audience where it can work it’s magic.
Analyse Results
Content Marketing is an ongoing process of connection and interaction, tied in with real-time feedback versus emails, social media and meeting your customers in the real world. Understanding the process is now easier than it’s ever been so make good use of Google Analytics, great sites like Kissmetrics, or work with a marketing team who can do this for you. Every time you learn something about the process you’ve got the opportunity to do it better next time and that’s how brands become market leaders.
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