Why do we need content marketing?
Because sales are going down and marketing initiatives like cold calling no
longer works, which is why you need more inbound marketing tactics.
What is content marketing? It’s
about understanding what information your customers need to know about your
products and services. After this, you need to give them relevant content and
educational content that persuades them that you are an expert in your field.
Why do you need quality content?
- It
develops trust
- Drives
traffic to your web traffic
- Educates
and informs
The Panda update focused on ensuring
that sits that are given high SERP’s are actually relevant. It penalizes a
site’s poor quality content, which are usually used to farm back links. The
quantity of links isn’t important; it’s all about the quality. You need to
write good quality content and you need natural links.
If you aren’t on social media and
you don’t have the social share buttons on your website, you’re not giving your
content the opportunity to be shared and distributed online.
Content audit
- Analyze
your current content efforts
- Size
up the competition
- Observe
the social climate
- Determine
the gaps
What are your social efforts?
- How well
are you using social technologies?
- Website
- LinkedIn
- Blog
- Twitter
- Facebook
- YouTube
- Pinterest
How personas can improve your SEO
- Help find
the right keywords for target audience
- Identify
target for link building
- Help create the right content
A good way to write relevant content
is to keep an eye out on the news and relate it to your business. Another thing
you can do is follow the thought leaders – find the CEO’s, the people who are
breaking news etc.
You should never refer to your
“Facebook strategy” or your “LinkedIn strategy” – it’s all a conversation
strategy.
Web property strategy
You need to own all your website
properties, such as a Facebook fan page, Twitter accounts, a LinkedIn company
page and so forth. Your social strategy needs to engage, inform, participate
and provide behind the scenes info.
Ask yourself: Do I know what my
customers are saying about me through the socialsphere? You can do a keyword
search to find out where you are being mentioned, what the sentiment is and who
is talking about you.
These should be your goals:
- Listen
and learn about our customers: Set up alerts on Google, Twitter, Blog.
Create rivers of information.
- Grow
community to 5,000: Develop targeted campaigns to encourage sharing of
content on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook Pinterest
- Website
integration: Integrate social properties with website properties
- Reach new
markets: Grow the LinkedIn group to 250+ members
- Become a
resource authority: Build up your website & company’s authority and
trust, both on and off-site
Openness & Transparency
Society is moving more towards full
transparency as a sign of truth and trust. That goes for corporations and
individuals. You need to be transparent – if you talk a big talk, but people
can’t find you online, it becomes risky to do business with you.
When you optimize a website, your
home page has to be optimized for your company as a whole, not individual
products. When doing keyword research, you need to move away from single
keyword phrases like ‘carpet cleaning’ at some point. Do keyword research that
includes questions like ‘why’ to get to the top of the funnel. Try
Ubersuggest.com to broaden your results.
The content funnel
Awareness
Creating your voice. Increase
knowledge, understanding & awareness of your company. E.g:
- Blog
Posts
- Social
Media Updates
- Infographics
- Press
release
Consideration
Make people think about the value
proposition of your products & services. E.g:
- EBooks
- White
papers
- Webinars
- How to
- Presentations
Decision
Create confidence, purpose &
conclusion around your brand. E.g:
- Case
studies
- Products
- Brochure
- buy now
- services
- free demo
- loyalty
scheme; packages; methodology
Written by: Francois Muscat
