1. GET TO KNOW YOUR TARGET
AUDIENCE…. LIKE REALLY KNOW THEM
Most brands barely exist in their
minds when it comes to knowing who their target consumer is. You fall into the
category of "most brands" if you don't use social media, but this is
something you can easily change.
Social media content development
can help you go deeper and gain a more intimate understanding of your clients.
Social media may help you obtain insight into your clients' everyday life in a
way that neither your blog nor your website can. It can provide you a better
understanding of their online activity and inform you of what type of content
they want to see (and which they don't), among other things. To get the most
out of a social media content strategy, you'll need to do more than just post.
Put your detective hat on and come up with answers to the following questions:
What kind of content does your
target audience enjoy? What types of content do they object to? When do your
clients go online the most? Where do your customers spend the most time? What
other brands do they interact with and follow? Use the answers to influence
your content creation and marketing efforts on social media. Perhaps you've
been ordering batches of short articles that touch on several themes, but your
audience is sharing more in-depth pieces from your competitors. Rather than ten
500-word posts each week from your blog service, ask for two longer pieces (at
least 2,000 words each) that go deep into a topic that your audience has
expressed interest in.
2. MAKE SURE YOUR CONTENT IS USEFUL AND INTERESTING.
The trick is finding information
that will ideally be unique and informative for the intended audience in a
world when trends come and go overnight and anyone can look up anything at any
moment. The abbreviation WIIFM, or 'What's In It for Me?' is used in the
Huffington Post essay. Content should be relevant and novel to clients, or at
the very least provide a unique viewpoint on the subject. If there's one thing
we want our customers to get out of sharing our material, it's a sense that
what they're sharing will help them achieve thought leadership and foster
engagement and trust with their customers. Because it drives search engine
results, generates traffic to your page, and identifies your business as an industry
leader, content is just as vital as the design and aesthetics of your website.
In today's content economy, your ability to utilize the content for business
benefits is determined by both quality and quantity. The desire to gloat about
how great your products or services are is strong, which is why so many
marketers use their material to "sell." Stopping this behavior takes
discipline, but it's essential if you want to conduct successful content
marketing. Rather than selling, you should tell the right tales to engage
people in what you and your business are doing.
3. START INVESTING MORE TIME TOWARDS EACH POST
According to the Blogging Survey,
most people spend an average of 3 hours and 57 minutes creating a blog post
before publishing it. That isn't enough unless you've been a specialist in that
sector for the past ten years.
The difficulty with spending only
four hours on a single post is the lack of research.
Conducting impactful (deep)
research, summarising the information, and condensing the main points into
2,000 words in four hours or less is nearly impossible.
The regurgitation of already
published content becomes a typical problem.
Essentially, just Googling the
desired term, extracting tips from top postings, and then calling it “new.”
That isn't unique, and it certainly isn't creative.
4. INCLUDE A CALL-TO-ACTION (CTA)
An instruction to the audience to
prompt an urgent response by utilizing imperative verbs such as 'call now' or
'find out more is classified as a 'call-to-action.' We prefer to address CTAs
in one of two ways. One option is to use a typical CTA, such as the ones shown
above, that invites the viewer to 'click and discover more.' Clever jokes,
questions, or conversation starters are another approach we prefer to persuade
our readers to explore our content. Different ways to engage your followers
with CTAs include an inspiring piece of content that asks, "What is the
magic in your life?" or a top 10 list on how to develop stronger
connections with the caption, "Improve your people skills. “Change things
up by using fun, encouraging CTAs that will stick out among the sea of
impersonal, meaningless CTAs.
CTA is meant to,
Build a customer base: Companies
can increase brand awareness and learn more about their firm and products by
directing consumers to their website.
Make a sale: A CTA is a component
of a sales funnel, which is a digital marketing plan that begins with brand
awareness and interest and ends with a sale. CTAs with a high conversion
rate—the number of unique visitors who do the action requested by the CTA—are
more effective.
CTAs are used by businesses to
identify their target audience and produce leads -people who are interested in
what they have to offer and are likely to become future customers. A business
will construct an email list from this group to market to them directly in the
future.
Create a clear path to the
product: A call to action (CTA) makes it simple for someone to visit your
website. A customer can be at your virtual doorstep with a single click of a
link, ready to make a purchase.
5. START BY LOOKING FOR BACKLINKS GOLDMINES FOR YOUR OWN
For a long time, infographics
have been praised as "linkbait." However, most of them are just too
long, dense, and text-heavy to have much of an impact. Not to mention their
cheesy illustrated images, which we've all seen a million times. Good
infographics are becoming increasingly scarce. In 2015, Hootsuite discussed the
demise of infographics.
And, according to a study
conducted between 2010 and 2015, infographics' use and impact were falling. So,
how do you get legitimate backlinks these days? Ironic, given that I'm writing
an entire piece about an original research study. And it's true: original
research is currently killing it. You'll get comparable results if you plug in
any respectable, informative, relevant, and statistically significant original
research post. Tons of:
·
Links.
·
Keywords.
·
Traffic.
·
Winning.
Why?
Because anybody that writes good
content knows research is critical to making your point stick. Writers need
data to back up claims, and marketers need data-driven strategies to maximize
their budget. Providing original research nails both with precision. According
to the Blogging Statistics and Trends survey, 85% of those publishing original
research report stronger results than traditional blogging.
6. BEGIN DOING WHAT NO ONE ELSE IS DOING
It's tempting to create content
only for the sake of creating stuff. When you go to your blog and see dozens of
long-form pieces, you feel terrific. Content, on the other hand, is a complete
waste of time unless you are actively doing what the majority of people are not
doing. Believe again if you think you can publish a cookie-cutter SEO tip piece
and get decent rankings in today's world. Today's environment is harsh. Even
for the most unusual and infrequently searched keywords. Take a look at the
SERPs for "International SEO," a keyword with only 250 monthly
queries.
Yikes.
Want to rank for it without a
domain authority (DA) of more than 87 and hundreds to thousands of backlinks
accumulated over years?
Two thousand words aren't going
to suffice.
"Long-form" means
nothing unless it differs in some fundamental sense.
You'll need a lot more, and most
people are either too stingy or too lazy to provide it.
That is, however, excellent news.
You'd be caught in the same
situation if everyone did it: unable to outrank the top players.
Thankfully, there are plenty of
tactics that most bloggers, especially the big players, aren't employing.
This gives you a great chance to
capitalize on what your readers (and Google) want to see:
Only 11% of people write posts
that are above 2,000 words long: Increase the length of your piece while
ensuring that the material isn't fluff. Actively pursue subtopics and add
value. Nobody wants to read 5,000 words if they aren't going to be able to
solve a problem.
Only 1% of people work with
influencers: To increase credibility, go out to influencers for quotes. The
advantage here is both credibility and the greater likelihood of these
influencers sharing and linking to the information is a wonderful example of
content marketing.
Only 26% of people utilize video
in their articles, and only 7% use audio, but they have the most impact: You
may outsource video and audio summaries of your articles to freelancers on Up
Work or Fiverr for a few dollars and provide tremendous value to mobile
consumers.
Among 1,000+ bloggers, all of
these strategies are identified as the least prevalent.
They're also the most effective,
which is expected.
Why? Everything else has been
battered to a pulp.
Receptiveness sinks like a rock
as methods become more widespread over time (see: Law of Shitty Click-Throughs)
Do you want better content,
rankings, and engagement?
Invest in what the majority of
content creators overlook.
7. USE HASHTAGS TO IDENTIFY YOUR KEYWORDS
Keyword research isn't as
difficult as it once was because of hashtags. It may even be as easy as
skimming through Twitter. Go through your feed to discover which hashtags your
followers are using to discuss both your industry and their personal lives to
find out what your audience is talking about now. Let's use your fake
landscaping business as an example once more.
#landscape is the most frequent
hashtag used to discuss landscaping, according to Top-Hashtags. However,
because it is the most popular, you should avoid it when creating social media
material. Why? It is widely used. When someone types in #landscape, your
article will appear with thousands of others. Use #LandScapeStyles and
#NatureLandscape, the second and third most popular landscaping hashtags, to
make your post stand out. To ensure that your blog appears in the SERPs for
similar inquiries, ask your blog content writing services to use these terms as
keywords as well.
But don't limit yourself to
hashtags about your sector. Look into what else your audience is discussing. Is
it the summer they're talking about? Consider using the keyword
"summer" as a hashtag.
#Summer #SummerLandscaping #SummerRetreat
8. SOCIAL SHARE BUTTONS SHOULD BE INTEGRATED
Social share buttons are an
afterthought in your entire content marketing plan. While this is a common
reaction to these small icons, social share buttons are one of those things
that can make the difference between a successful blog and one that is
irrelevant.
By including these buttons,
you're encouraging readers to share and discuss the content they enjoy. In
essence, you're asking your readers to create and sell your social network
content for you. And the best sort of marketing is this type of marketing,
which is similar to conventional word-of-mouth.
The good news is that adding
social share buttons to your blog is a quick and easy approach to boost the
effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. We'll leave it to Social Media
Week to explain the "how" of placement, but here are some pointers:
It's all about where you put them
because where you position them can make or break their usefulness.
To make them stand out, use
customized buttons, but don't make them look out of place.
Include share buttons only on
platforms that your target audience utilizes. If they aren't on LinkedIn, don't
bother.
Keep track of how often your
buttons are used. If they aren't being used, try a different position or get
rid of them altogether.
CONCLUSION
Differentiation is the golden
standard in a world where millions of blog entries are produced, revised, and
published every day. If you just remember one item from this article, it should
be this: Do something previous content makers haven't been able to. Increase
the amount of time you spend on each post (more research, more outlining, more
flow development, and more writing). Have several, dedicated third-party
editors review and revise your work. They'll catch errors that you won't be
able to. Start reusing your existing content and stick to it. Your work is far
from done once you hit the publish button.
Begin to create your research
projects. People are fascinated by original research. Is it difficult to
produce? Duh. Is it a time-consuming process? You already have the solution. Is
it worth it? Yes, data shows unequivocally. Invest time and money in strategies
that most content creators overlook, such as video, audio, and influencer
outreach. More than 1,000 blogs can teach us that going the additional mile is
the only way to stand out amid the chaos of today's SERPs.
