Content marketing has become a frequently used term to describe a business’s efforts to distribute influential information to their target audience in the hopes of generating leads and converting sales. But before you can start marketing your content, you need to create it first. This is a step that causes problems for a lot of business.
If you’re one of those people who have a hard time trying to figure out what exactly constitutes as content, don’t worry. Content has become an industry buzzword for anything and everything sent out by business to influence their customers. What I wanted to do in my blog today was try and clear up some content confusion and explain three ways you can create content and have it engage with your target audience.
Blog Posts
Just like the one you’re reading right now, blogs are a great and inexpensive resource for you to increase your reach and express the voice of your business to potential customers. Here are just a few benefits of writing frequent blogs for your business.
- Boost SEO – By blogging consistently, you give Google and other search engines new content to index. You create opportunities to plug in those all-important keywords to increase your visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
- Develop Relationships with New Customers – Blogging allows you to connect with your site visitors. This can be accomplished by asking your reader’s questions at the end of your posts to get the conversation going or by simply allowing comments and feedback.
- Become an Industry Leader – No matter how small your business is, you can build trust and clout within your industry by providing valuable, expert information in your blog posts. Over time, you become a “go to” resource for helpful, informative content, which can ultimately lead to higher customer conversion rates.
Blog Examples:
Affordable Advertising on Facebook
No matter the size of your business, advertising should be on your mind. How are you going to let people know about your products or services? For small to midsize businesses it can be easy to image the average advertising campaign to be somewhat intimidating.Trying to decide which tactics you should allocate more of your budget to in order to get the most return for your investment can be challenging when you don’t understand all of your options. […] Read More »
Mobile Advertising in 2016
In the world of 2016, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that smartphone have become a part of our daily lives. We rely on our mobile devices for more of our daily actives than ever before. They are our way of staying in contact with calls, texts, and emails. We use apps that tell us where to go, find out how much money we have, and where we can catch a ride. […] Read More »
Whitepapers
Think of whitepapers as epic blog posts. They take the informative and educational tone of blog posts and convert it into a valuable piece of content for customers looking for a more in depth topic of interest regarding your business. Whitepapers are a great way to encourage potential customers to move forward down the sales funnel. Here are a couple things to keep in mind when creating a whitepaper.
- They need to look good. Be clear about what you’re trying to explain. If you’re whitepaper is step-by-step instruction list on how to complete a task, make sure the instructions are easy to follow and formatted to make sense to the reader.
- Make them downloadable. Unlike blog posts, customers should have to download whitepapers. This way you’ll be able to harvest email addresses of potential customers and reach out to them with future sales material.
Whitepaper example:
Videos
Our world is becoming more visual every day. A picture speaks a thousand words, and videos speak even louder. A Hubspot study found that using videos increase click-through rates by as much as 65%. Think about these tips when looking into creating video content.
- If you’re just starting out, start small. Take the time to learn and get it right. If you have the budget, there are options to contract video specialist to produce a quality video highlighting your business.
- Keep is quick. Videos aren’t supposed to be long. Keep your videos around two to three minutes in length.
Video Example:
Summing Up
Keep in mind that these are just a few options when it comes to producing content. Infographics, interviews, podcasts, and reports are some more examples of engaging content that you can look into creating. Creating the right piece of content for your business is the result of figuring out what your target audience wants to see. Don’t waste your time producing all of these different pieces of content just to blast them all over the internet; instead, take the time to figure what content will voice your business’s personality the best.