Relatively speaking, digital content marketing is a new advertorial practice. While it’s true that brands have been producing favorable brochures, magazines and tutorials for decades, what was once of a traditional nature is currently undergoing an extreme transformation.
In order for you and your clients to avoid the haze of confusion that often surrounds industry-wide adaptation, you’ll want to streamline your content marketing process. With years of experience under our proverbial belts, we’ve got a few helpful suggestions for those who find themselves confused by the complex process:
1) In-Depth Research
If anything meaningful is to be produced, in-depth research is going to be required. Initially, seeing as how nearly all digital marketing endeavors fall under the canopying service of search engine optimization (SEO), be sure to use Google Keyword Planner or any other SEO-driven program to discover relevant keywords and phrases for effective content production.
Though you’re certainly not well-versed in all fields and your clients’ respective areas of expertise may vary greatly, it’s the job of any well-seasoned content marketer to make certain that his or her content-guided research corresponds appropriately with groundbreaking happenings. Through Twitter or Google News, trending topics, newsworthy articles and reliable sources can all be discovered.
2) Creative Writing
The most important skill for any successful content marketer is creativity. With that in mind, however, it’s key that a series of rudimentary bullet points be checked off as written content makes it’s way down the production line.
First and foremost, paragraphs should break every two to three lines or every 75 to 100 words. If appropriate, use subheadings to allow for easier readability. Truthfully, much of your audience wants nothing more than to consume specific bits of information as quickly as possible. Subheadings make the skim all the more easy.
Additionally, look to scatter images in an organized manner throughout the body each piece. Lastly, each informative article, compelling story or enlightening how-to post must come with a compelling headline, about 55 characters in length.
3) Search Engine Optimization
As previously mentioned, a sound SEO strategy should always be at the forefront of any content marketing scheme. While the powers of top-notch PR publications and a wide variety of content hosting sites are wonderful for link-building, Google’s recently placed a great deal of emphasis on owned media; this means that booming blogs are now the real stuff of content marketing genius.
With respect to the specifics, blog posts should almost always be between 1,000 and 1,500 words in length. Remember that “compelling headline” of which was previously made mention? Well, an SEO keyword should be placed in a piece’s featured title. Finally, add an SEO keyword in at least one H2 header. If possible, include keywords near the front of titles.
4) Shareable Formatting
Obviously, in this—the digital age of communication—social media has taken the Internet by storm. In order to fully take advantage of what social media can do to boost content marketing’s product- or service-pushing capabilities, accompanying custom-made images, infographics or SlidShare presentations make social shareability skyrocket. Also, make social share buttons easily accessible at the bottom of a post.
5) Proper Promotion
While content marketing’s SEO value is innate, the power of embedded links is further enhanced when information is consumed, liked, shared, retweeted or anything else of the sort. After a link has been formally established, consider pushing said links on popular social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+.
Furthermore, call upon the help of social sharing plugins like Digg Digg or Flare. You can even go as far as funneling your clients’ links through reputable sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg or any forum/online community which your target audience might frequent.
Regardless of whether you’ve spent years working in content marketing or merely a handful of weeks, there’s always room for improvement. When followed closely, and augmented with a bit of marketing ingenuity, the aforementioned steps are guaranteed to produce real, concrete content marketing results.
