Understanding what content marketing is and knowing how to use it effectively is critical for the success of today’s businesses. Content marketing helps any size local or international business reach their target consumer, increase brand awareness, and establish themselves as trustable and knowledgeable experts.
In this article, you’ll learn all about content marketing, including:
- What is content marketing
- Why it’s important
- How to develop a content marketing strategy
- How to create high-quality content
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing creates and shares “content” (e.g., videos, articles, blog posts, podcasts, and social media posts) to engage readers and viewers in your company’s products or services. Successful content marketing aims to present information related to your company’s offerings to existing and prospective clients to increase its brand awareness, customer base, sales, and online engagement.
Why Content Marketing Is Important
The importance of content marketing comes from directing your target audience to visit your website to view your products and services and to create sales. However, it goes even further by proving to your existing and potential customers that you are a knowledgeable, trustable, and qualified expert for the services or products you provide. By displaying these qualities, you will gain loyalty and sales from your customers.
Therefore, your content should maintain these three qualities:
- Be Valuable: Make sure your content fulfills an unmet need. This can be through a service that people want, reliable information on a topic they are interested in, or providing a resource, tool, or product that helps them accomplish a specific goal.
- Be Relevant: Appeal to your audience. If you write about something that nobody is interested in (besides yourself), your content is not going to reach many people.
- Be Consistent: Writing one article or posting a couple of times on social media a month is not going to gain the attention you need. Make a schedule and share high-quality content consistently.
You might be asking “How do I accomplish this?” The answer lies in your strategy and the quality of your content.
How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy
Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or an entrepreneur starting your first small business, creating your specific content marketing strategy is critical for your success.
This strategy details the type of content you will create and the way you will distribute it to your target audience.
There are nine steps to developing your content marketing strategy:
- Define your audience
- Research your competitors
- Establish your goals
- Choose your platform
- Review your existing content
- Plan your schedule
- Devise a style guide
- Create your content
- Edit and proofread your content
Overall, your content marketing strategy should focus on your target audience. Identify who they are, what platforms they use, and what type of information or service they seek. From there, you can create informative and engaging content and share it on platforms that your target audience regularly uses.
Always be sure to edit your content before publishing it, as low-quality content is viewed as unprofessional and can damage your reputation as a brand. Additionally, it is crucial to review previous content to make sure it follows your current marketing strategy and is up to date.
To learn more about each of these steps in detail, check out How To Develop a Content Marketing Plan In 9 Steps.
How to Create Content
There are many forms of content you can create for your business, for example:
- Blog Posts/Articles
- White Papers
- Emails and Newsletters
- Videos
- Infographics
- How-to Guides
- Podcasts
- Social Media Posts
- Case Studies
While you can use any of these to promote your brand, they all have one thing in common: writing. If you host a podcast, you need to write an enticing description so potential listeners will hit play and follow. If you post a YouTube video or Instagram reel, you need to create a captivating title and description and add the correct tags to attract your audience and gain more subscribers and followers.
Most importantly, you must ensure quality content. This starts with having fundamental writing skills and using a vocabulary that shows your expertise.
Importance of Creating Quality Content
According to The Daily Beast, low-quality writing costs American businesses nearly $400 billion every year. Yes, $400 billion! Therefore, attention to detail and accuracy when creating content is crucial to bringing in new customers and increasing sales. Additionally, you should avoid unspecific filler content just for having something to upload or post online.
Spelling errors, flat writing, and false information are not tolerated by today’s consumers. Be sure to create effective, engaging, and informative content if you want to build awareness and customer loyalty for your brand.
Read our article The Cost of Inefficient Content to learn more about how bad content can cost you money.
SEO and Content Marketing
If your main content is articles or blog posts, which is true for 92% of content marketers, you must be aware of search engine optimization (SEO).
While being able to write excellent blog posts or articles is crucial for any company, you may not bring in the number of readers and customers you strive for if you are not utilizing SEO best practices.
Karan Sharma, CEO of a creative digital agency in Toronto, stated on Forbes that
“SEO without content marketing is like a body without a soul…In order to be successful, both must go hand in hand.”
The backbone of effective SEO is researching and using appropriate keywords in your articles and posts to make sure they rank high on search pages. Additionally, embedding those keywords in quality content will further boost your rankings compared to placing keywords into repetitive, low-quality content.
Summary
Content marketing is the process of creating, sharing, and distributing content to attract readers and viewers to a company’s products or services. Without content marketing, you miss out on creating brand awareness, customer loyalty, increased sales, and online engagement. For effective content marketing, you must have a strategy in place and utilize SEO best practices.
However, the most important part of content marketing is producing and sharing high-quality content. That’s where Proofed can assist you. We’ve helped level up content marketing for thousands of businesses all over the globe. Discover how we can support your team by scheduling a call with us today.
If you are interested in how Proofed has helped many companies improve their content with our expert proofreading and editing services, read this case study: How Lucid Advertising Cut Turnaround Times by 50%.
