Having strong content is one of the best ways to build your brand and get eyes on your business. Content marketing is one of the best methods for spreading brand awareness, attracting new customers and building an audience of loyal supporters. Take this blog, for example, this is part of OUR content marketing strategy here at Entrepreneurs Collective. I know it’s strange, you’re reading content about content marketing which is part of our content marketing strategy, but look, you’re reading it – so I think it might be working…
“That multi-tiered engagement attracts and retains your clearly defined audience, which will almost certainly lead to an increase in customer action…”
Content marketing helps you engage with your audience on multiple levels; whether it’s through blogs, infographics, videos, pictures or just simple and consistent social media posts. That multi-tiered engagement attracts and retains your clearly defined audience. This will almost certainly lead to an increase in customer action and profits. Are you sold yet? Well, without further ado, here are 5 ways to supercharge your content marketing. And, give your business the online boost it needs:
Know your audience
Before you start creating content, you have to know who you’re creating it for. There’s no point doing anything until you know who you’re audience is going to be. Create the perfect persona of who should see the content you’re creating. Who are they? How old are they? Where do they live? What channels do they use to view content? How much content do they like? All these questions are important so that you can create that persona. Without knowing your audience, you risk your content having no identity, and not appealing to anyone in the future. So to recap – do your research, create a persona and define their identity. Army Dating Site Forces Pen Pals is a great example of this focusing on breaking military news that keeps the community engaged and encouraging sharing.
Identify relatable content
Okay so this could be part of the first tip, but I feel the type of content you want to create is so important it should have its own section. Think about your created persona, the target audience if you will, and research their key interests. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask what would keep you coming back for more content. Doing this may require competitor research, looking at what your audience is sharing and maybe even focus grouping to really get inside the heads of your proposed audience. This may sound long-winded and boring, but if you can nail this part, it makes the actual content creation so much easier because you already know what you’re creating is on point.
Create a schedule and publishing plan
Scheduled content that consistently delivers for your audience helps maintain interest in your brand, and encourage followers to come back and share the content on their own social channels. Utilising a content calendar will enable you to be accountable for delivering the content across all your channels. A visual overview of the next months worth of content will help define your brand vision and progress. It’s a really easy and efficient way to keep all your content ideas in one place and allows for collaboration with the team. Using Google Sheets is a great place to start, where you can create a scheduling plan that all your colleagues can view and update the upcoming content.
Be consistent
Your schedule is going to be a huge help here! Consistency is key with content. (I’m going to say the dreaded A word so be warned.) The Algorithm’s, from Google to LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook etc., love consistency. One of the biggest benefits of consistency with content marketing is improved search engine optimisation. If you’re consistently publishing new and relevant content on your website – whether that’s pages, blog posts or landing pages – Google will crawl and index your website more often. Furthermore, once you have a dedicated audience, they’ll be waiting for your content on a specific day. It becomes like clockwork and if you start alternating, they won’t know when to look, and ultimately, they’ll stop coming back. If the milkman (I’ve just made up this analogy so bear with me) delivered every Monday all the time without question, you’d say he was a good milkman. If every week he changed days, without warning, you’d probably get annoyed not knowing when the milk was coming. I’m still not sure if that analogy works, even so, it was a nice little break from all this business talk. Hopefully, you caught my drift. Anyway, back to it.
Variety
Right, I know – variety and consistency are polar opposites. But, they refer to different things. As mentioned above, you should be consistent when you post however what you post should be full of variety. I know that we’re guilty here at EC of not doing enough of a variety of content (I promise, infographics, videos and alike will be coming soon). But believe me, variety is essential. It can also afford you the opportunity to rehash old pieces of content. By repurposing an old blog post into an infographic. And, even a video will then give you 3 pieces of content to share with your audience. One becomes three – it’s simple maths! A company like Best Dating does this brilliantly, offering a range of content on its website, with blogs, a glossary, infographics and quizzes that entice its audience to keep interacting with them.
Use new tools and tech
Using new tools and tech is, generally, one of the best tips for entrepreneurs. Content creation isn’t the easiest thing in the world. There are many things that you need to think about and get right to ensure your content delivers good results. From when you post, to the titles you use and the general SEO of your content, there are so many things that could go wrong. Luckily there are a number of tools you can use that can help optimise these tasks. And, make content marketing a bit more of a walk in the proverbial park. One of our favourites at Entrepreneurs Collective is Hubspot. It helps businesses transform their inbound and outbound strategies. By focusing on getting their business found in natural and organic ways online. A brilliant tool for content marketers – and you get 6 months free as an EC member!
Here at Entrepreneurs Collective, we want you to become the most successful founder you can be. And, we want to help your startup become the best it can be. Content marketing is a great, fun, creative way to do that. Building strong content and a solid brand is one of the most important tips for entrepreneurs – especially one entering a saturated market. If you need any more help and guidance with this, we’d be more than happy to put you in touch with one of our partners or fellow founders to help you with your marketing. Just get in touch today.