Success in online marketing now calls for more than traditional SEO tactics and the creation of run-of-the-mill content. Dynamic, original and engaging content is what the marketplace demands for nearly all industries. The quality and social capital of content is now playing a major role in marketing industry discourse. To achieve a highly trafficked website and increased new business, you must get on board with the essential goal of creating relevant, valuable, engaging, impactful, information-rich and highly shareable online content. Achieving high rates of social content curation-social sharing-is becoming increasingly vital to SEO and the ranking of search engine results pages. To improve SEO, increase website traffic, garner more lead conversions and ramp up new business, you need to find a way to distinguish yourself and your company via content marketing-to stand out from your competitors. Become content royalty with these five best practices.
5 Content Marketing Best Practices
According to a MarketingProfs survey, 37% of B2B marketers cite content, which is not provocative or engaging, as a barrier to effective lead generation. To avoid falling into that 37%, you must find a way to create provocative, engaging content. Strategic and effective content creation is the way to achieve greater business lead generation and inbound marketing success.
1. Foster Trust
Relationships matter. After conducting online research, prospects do business with the companies who have earned their trust. Ensure that your content writers are highly knowledgeable about their subject matter and have them create educational, information-rich content that speaks to the needs of your prospects and provides valuable insight and solutions. Such expert content fosters trust, proves your company's expertise and helps you become known as an information resource for your industry, which is critical in the current knowledge economy.
2. Conduct Keyword Research
Conduct extensive keyword research, so you can create content, which targets relevant keywords and niche keyword phrases-complete with inbound links. Strategic SEO tactics will enable to draw in highly qualified prospects. In speaking to the needs of your audience in their own language, you will attract the very people who would be most interested in your content and the products or services that your company provides. Relevant keywords and keyword phrases can greatly improve the reach of your content.
3. Increase Visibility
Sharing your content on syndication sites like Business 2 Community and Social Media Today can help you reach a much larger captive audience. You should also be sharing your original content on all the major social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, and popular social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us. These sites can be a great source of website traffic, backlinks and increased readership. Before sharing your content on Twitter, be sure to shorten URLs on websites like TinyURL or Bit.ly; doing so will leave you more room to create an enticing or insightful comment.
4. Focus on Verticals
Craft detailed buyer personas, and then create content that uniquely appeals to each of your vertical markets. Make frequently asked questions and various industry trends a focus on your blog. This will position you as a trusted and credible resource in your target markets, attract new blog subscribers and keep your current readers coming back for more.
5. Include Calls-to-Action
Always include a call-to-action (CTA) in your content. When you create a new blog post, choose a premium offer that is most relevant to your chosen topic. Add a call-to-action button to the bottom of your blog post, complete with a link to the landing page for your offer. Informational offers, such as ebooks, whitepapers and webinars, function well, since prospects reading your blog are likely to be interested in receiving more free information from you. Making strategic choices about CTAs, offers and landing pages can greatly improve lead generation and conversion.
Create valuable, high-impact content full of relevant insight and solutions, and then work to promote it. Casting a wide net across the internet will enable you to generate more interest in your content, your company and yourself as an industry thought leader. Employing the best practices described above can help you expand your reach and incite increased traffic, higher lead generation and more new business. Excellent content creation is a difficult and time-consuming endeavor, and virtually all companies are trying to do it. However, if you are dedicated and strategic in your efforts, you may end up being crowned as content royalty.