Content marketing is a veritable and viable way to grow your business online and increase the bottom line. So, investing money and quality time to create shareable and linkable content on your blog website and/or guest posting on third party websites is something you have to think of and consider right away.
First off, let’s get started with the fundamentals or basics of this topic so that you’ve a solid foundation to build on.
What is Content?
First and foremost and before I deep dive into content marketing process, I want you to know what content is. It’s simply a piece of text, visual, or both, which you decide to create about a topic idea as an expert in order to satisfy the wants and needs of your intended audience.
It could simply be an answer to your target audience’s frequently asked questions (FAQs), solution to their problems or pain points, or a step by step guide on how to do something or complete a specific task.
Content can come in various formats such as blog post, video, podcast, ebook, white paper, an article, and so on. And having a successful digital marketing strategy in place will involve consistent creation, publication and marketing of high quality content to your target market in order to create and nurture a mutually beneficial relationship.
What is Content Marketing?
In its simplest definition, content marketing is the process of researching keywords which are targeting your potential customers’ pain points, creating content around these search queries, and distributing such content in places where your target audience congregate in order to create brand awareness, generate leads or close sales for your product, service or brand.
As a content marketer, you’ve to understand the customer journey in your niche market or industry so that you can effectively tailor your content to every stage of the buyer persona. Do you know that content marketing is one of the best ways to grow an online business by leaps and bounds?
If you’re able to consistently create and publish high quality content on a timely basis, you stand to benefit immensely from your online marketing campaigns. As a matter of fact, content marketing is a mutually beneficial relationship between the content creator or brand and his intended audience.
Types of Content Marketing
There are different types of content marketing you’ve to learn and master in your digital marketing arsenal. I’ll briefly outline some of them below.
- Ebook
- Video
- Infographic
- Blog post
- Checklist
- Cheat sheet
- White papers
- Email newsletter
- Podcast
- Case study
- Presentation or slide
- Etc
Depending on what you think will resonate with your intended audience, you can effectively use any of the above content formats to market and grow your business online. However, you’ve to bear in mind that unique and high quality content which is timely delivered to your target audience are paramount to your success.
To add to that, you should not forget that variety is the spice of life when it comes to creating and publishing content which will consistently attract your prospects, leads and customers to your website. For instance, you should have an optimal mix of blog posts, videos, ebooks, infographics, email newsletter, etc used by your team to position your brand online as a thought leader.
To get you started so that you can hit the ground running in earnest, you’ve to follow the steps to content marketing which have worked well for me below.
Content Marketing Steps
- Identify a target audience to serve.
- Research pain points of your target audience.
- Write down your content marketing goal for every piece of content you want to create.
- Decide on the best type of content you want to create and publish which will solve the problems identified above.
- Identify the right platform to distribute your content.
- Promote your content.
- Analyze, monitor and improve on your metrics and data.
Now, let me explain how to execute each of the above steps to content marketing which will help you to get the best bang from investing your money, time and efforts in writing content yourself or hiring a freelance writer to do it for you.
Step #1: Identify a Target Audience to Serve
Before you start creating content of any kind, you’ve to know who needs it i.e. who wants to consume your piece. Also, you’ve to know the stage in the customer journey where your potential readers are currently at. Having and understanding this information will help you to specifically tailor your content to the right group of people who are searching for the type of content you’ve to deliver.
For example, if you’re creating a guide for beginners on how to make money with affiliate marketing, you’ve to start from the very basics and move up from there. This is because your target market is beginners or newbies who want to learn how to start affiliate marketing business successfully.
This means you’ve to introduce and write about topics related to affiliate marketing business such as:
- What is affiliate marketing?
- Steps to start affiliate marketing.
- Affiliate marketing tools and resources
- Email marketing for beginners
- How to start a blog and make money
- And so on.
Step #2: Research Pain Points of Your Target Audience
Now that you’ve identified your target audience, it’s time to find out their pain points, challenges or problems which they are currently grappling with and desperate to solve. You may be able to execute this task in a number of ways. First, you can use keyword research tools to discover questions people are asking in your target niche market.
Secondly, you can use reliable email marketing software to build an email list of subscribers and then send your list members questionnaires to fill out about their problems and the type of solution they desire from an expert like you.
Thirdly, you can use third-party websites and tools to spot specific pain points which desperate buyers are searching for solutions on the internet based on their search queries and patterns. Such websites include AnswerThePublic.com, Quora.com, Google Trends, BuzzSumo.com, etc.
The crux of the matter is your ability to spot pain points and create solutions in the form of content. And this is where you’ll have the golden opportunity to monetize your blog content by recommending complementary affiliate products or services or product you own.
Step #3: Write Down Your Content Marketing Goal
At this level, all you need to do is to write down your content marketing goal which will guard and help you to focus on vital areas in your content creation process. What exactly do you want to achieve when you finally publish your blog post, video or ebook? Do you want to use it to build an email list of subscribers from the scratch or create brand awareness for your business?
Or do you want to demonstrate your expertise in your target industry or seen as a thought leader? Having a content goal in mind will help you to create winning content of some kind.
Step #4: Decide on the Best Type of Content to Publish
Now that you’ve a clear goal for your content marketing to pursue, the next step is to decide on the best masterpiece to create and publish. If you’re creating a blog for your business, you can regularly write blog posts around topic ideas and publish on your blog website.
But if you’re building a mailing list, the best option is to write an ebook or create a video to give away for free in exchange for subscribers email addresses. You may have to conduct competitors’ analysis to determine what is resonating with your target audience.
On another note, your potential readers and customer avatar should highly influence how you write your content. Top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU) are distinct stages of the buyer persona which you’ve to consider when creating content for your readers.
Before you write content of any type, you should get familiar with SEO (search engine optimization) and keyword research. These aspects of digital marketing will help you to scale your online business using search engines to generate free targeted traffic to your website.
Targeting long tail keywords have always been the fastest and best way to rank a web page on SERP (search engine results page) if your content is of high quality.
Step #5: Identify the Right Platform to Distribute Your Content
At this point, your content is ready for publication. What next? If you’ve written SEO article targeting a keyword phrase and you own a blog, you can simply turn it to a blog post and publish it. If it’s an ebook, you can upload it to your web hosting server and use it to start building a list of subscribers.
You should look into the option of distributing content on your social media accounts such as Facebook, LinkedIn, PDF sharing sites, and so on. However, for you to be highly successful as a content creator, you’ve to create a blog of your own preferably with self-hosted WordPress CMS platform.
Step #6: Promote Your Content
Unless you actively promote your website content, you may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to cover the costs of running and growing your business online. To this end, you’ve to learn a number of ways to promote your content on the internet. I’ll list some of them below.
- Blogging
- Guest posting
- Creating and sharing videos
- Social media marketing
- List building
- Search engine optimization
- Etc
Mastering the above digital marketing methods will be of immense value to your business especially if you mix it with SEO and keyword research.
Step #7: Analyze, Monitor and Improve on Your Metrics and Data
The last step in our content marketing strategy is analyzing, monitoring and improving on your metrics and data. If you hope to get the best from your online marketing campaigns, you’ve to integrate analytics to measure website traffic and know where to improve on.
The very first step to get you started is to sign up for free Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You’ll be amazed at a number of data you’ll be able to generate about your target audience and how best to serve them with high quality content.
You can start content marketing today for your business and get better results by engaging our digital marketing agency right away. You’ll thank me later!
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