Content creation can help any digital marketing strategy take off. If you’ve found your digital marketing efforts haven’t brought in as many new customers or promoted as many sales as you like, it might be time to take a look at your content. Creating content can sometimes be as simple as using photoshop to create a meme or writing engaging blogs that help customers learn.
No matter how they create content, successful businesses agree that content is crucial to their marketing success. So here’s how you can start creating better content right now.
Write for People First
SEO is one of the most beneficial digital marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes. However, content creation shouldn’t be about getting Google or other search engines to rank your content. Instead, you should write for your target audience, not Google, and then worry about SEO once you’ve written an informative blog post or web page.
While SEO is an effective strategy to get your business in front of more prospects while increasing brand awareness, you can start writing content without worrying about SEO. Unless you’re an SEO professional or have hired an SEO agency, you shouldn’t worry yourself about the hundreds of ranking factors that will affect where you appear on search engine results pages.
By writing content for your customers, you can provide them with a better experience on your website and build trust, which can help boost your SEO without putting all of your time and energy into it. For example, suppose you need to market your employment background screening company. In that case, you would write blog content for business owners who need to learn more about HR, hiring, and recruiting.
That being said, SEO is effective, so you shouldn’t put off SEO for too long. If you have the resources to immediately begin SEO and want to watch your web pages crawl up the pages of Google, then there should be nothing holding you back. However, if you don’t have the resources to fund SEO right now, consider waiting until you can hire an agency that can truly help you.
Consider FAQs
Content is meant to be helpful for your prospects and customers. If you’re not sure what to write about, consider starting with your customers’ frequently asked questions. You can go through a list of customer FAQs and begin writing short blog posts on those topics to answer their questions and start building trust.
Consistently Create Content
There’s no need to follow a strict content schedule, but you should always consistently publish content. Small businesses just starting may benefit from a fixed schedule that will keep them moving forward, but it’s not going to make or break your digital marketing efforts.
If you don’t have a team helping you, consider starting small and creating content once per week. Once you’re done with the content, you can schedule it to be published and start working on the next piece of content.
By getting into a groove, you can develop the habit of consistently writing content.
Consider SEO General Rules
Once you’ve gotten into the habit of writing engaging content, you might want to consider going back and optimizing your content so more people can find it online. While there are over two hundred ranking factors, there are small steps you can take to improve your content’s SEO, including:
- Frequently posting new content
- Writing at least 300 words
- Correctly formatting blogs and web copy
- Linking to other resources
Of course, these are only SEO baby steps. If you truly want to maximize your budget, you’ll need to work with an experienced SEO agency.
Don’t Forget Visuals
Visuals are content, too, and they are often more engaging than text on a page alone. You should always use images and/or videos to enhance your content. However, videos and images are types of content that can stand up well on their own.
If you’ve recently written a blog about a FAQ, consider finding ways to add a visual aspect to the blog to break up long blocks of text. You can do anything from creating videos to infographics. Then, make sure to share those visuals on social media to make people want to stop scrolling to click on a link to your blog post.
Repurpose Content
As you may now realize, there are many different types of content, including images, videos, blogs, and presentations. Consider repurposing old content and turning it into something new that can help you leverage the information you already have while presenting it in another way.
Repurposing content can also help you maintain your content calendar without worrying about finding a new topic to write about every week. Instead, you can make one article into a video and infographic that can be shared on your social media to engage your audience.
Consider Distribution
If you’re already doing SEO, then you won’t have to work as hard to distribute your content. As your blogs rise the ranks of Google and other search engines, your content will be distributed to people who are already searching for more information about the topics your blogs cover.
Whether or not you’re doing SEO, you should also consider other types of content distribution, including social media and email. After all, if you’re creating great content, you want as many people to see it as possible.
So make sure you send all of your new content on a schedule to your email subscribers while also posting it organically on social media. If you want to truly get more eyes on your article, consider creating a sponsored post on Facebook, Instagram, or even LinkedIn.
Get Help
If you can’t seem to keep up with your content schedule, then it might mean you need to hire a content creator that can write articles and work with designers to create visuals to supplement the articles. Of course, you can also hire a content marketing agency that can do everything for you so all you have to do is sit back and focus on running your business.
Matt Casadona
Matt Casadona has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Psychology. Matt is passionate about marketing and business strategy and enjoys San Diego life, traveling, and music.