Everything you should know when using content marketing
Posted by Andres Aguerrevere on
For those in this incredible world of marketing, you are already aware of how important is content marketing in these days, even though it is not the only manner through which it is possible to do marketing and sale it is, in fact, one of the most effective ones in the actual market.
The content marketing is a very versatile and wide technique that is compound by multiple factors such as: written content, images, audio, videos, jokes, press, and some others methods in which marketers make useful information their allies to invite people to buy a product or service based on the interest the information caused on them.
Different from traditional marketing, content marketing is not focused on the product itself but it uses valuable information in order to help people and let them know how practical and useful the product or service they are selling is.
Actually, the main purpose of content marketing is to appeal to people’s emotions in order to make them feel like that product or service will definitely make their lives easier, or maybe they will be happier after getting that product, etc.
Moreover, advertising is not an easy process, it takes a lot of study, time and dedication and when it is done in the right way, it can be very beneficial for businesses, especially for those small businesses that are trying to stand out of the crowd.
The art of content marketing
Yes, creating content capable of engaging people, making them aware of your brand, calling them act, leading potential customers to take that final decision and buy from you, among many other things content does is a real art.
Even though not all the target markets want the same, content has the enormous power of being extremely versatile, you can write about literally anything and lead your brand to those topics your audience is interested in.
From blogs to emails, newsletters, images, GIF’s, videos, live streaming, social media posts, infographics, the options for content marketing are much and varied, there is no reason why a small business seeking for growth may not invest in content marketing. Actually, if you are not investing in content marketing, your competitors are already winning.
Moreover, there is something almost every type of content marketing have in common: words! Yes, including those types of content that are more visual, based on images or videos, they also include words on them, even if you, as a customer, are not able to see them in cases like scripts for videos.
In fact, words are both amazing and necessary in almost every aspect of our lives, not only in business, words are wonderful, they allow us to communicate every single idea we want to express to the world.
Which one should I use?
Even though all the tools we mentioned before are very clever and extremely helpful for business, some of them may work better for some type of brands while some others work perfectly in almost any kind of businesses.
That second group is the one when we find blog posts; it is true that some people consider them to be outdated and old fashioned but it is not real; actually, having a blog linked with your website is one of the most effective techniques to drive traffic to your site, create awareness, and increase sales.
Blog posts are extremely easy to find, as videos are only seen in social media, or newsletters only arrive through email -to mention some examples-, it is possible to get into a blog post through many different ways.
By clicking on a link from a social media post, looking for certain keywords in a search engine, by an outbound link from a guest posting article, from the main website of the brand or maybe by an inbound link from another article, the possibilities are wide which means this tool is very effective.
The perfect blog post
Writing a good quality blog post is a half of theory and a half of intuition; no matter how much you read about doing it, you will not develop your skills after you do it by yourself. Also, there are many things that vary depending on the type of business you have, the audience who is going to see your content, the level of formality your content requires, among other factors.
It is important to keep in mind that people reading on the Internet get bored so quickly that there are high chances of them not finishing up your article if it is not appealing enough; in order to avoid people getting bored with your content and clicking the X bottom, it is vital to create a very interesting, original, and interactive content.
As we care about you and your business growing, we have compiled a short but powerful list of how to create the perfect blog post in only five steps:
Planning, everything is about planning
If you do not have a plan and start writing without a schedule, set goals, and purposes your blog is very likable to fail. Having a structured plan will help you to organize your time, ideas, and achieve goals easier. In addition, it is very helpful to measure how the process is going on.
Set everything before you start writing, define who is your desired market and find out the topics they are interested in (those that are related to your brand or what you are selling). Let’s put an example, if you sell shoes, your topics should be about fashion, outfits, shoe care, health tips for feet, etc.
In addition, in a blog post words are not the only important thing. A blog post has a myriad of elements that work together to create that page we see as visitors, it includes an appealing headline that must be able to catch the attention from viewers, accompanied with an interesting image, the right group of keywords, and SEO techniques in order to increase the traffic.
Make yourself a guru
The worst thing a person who is trying to bring a business to live through it blog post can do is lie in its content. Lies come in many sizes and shapes, not all of them are made up intentional, there are some lies that came out from unknowing something and it can be a mistake difficult to solve.
What you need to do is write about things you truly know, your expert area, as people who are going to read your content may have information about it and if they find your content not only boring but inaccurate, lacking of facts, and full of fake information they will not trust in you.
For a brand, the customer’s trust is one of the most important things; hard to gain and easy to lose, do not put your brand on risk by writing about things you are not sure.
There you have two options, study a lot about a certain topic until you become a guru on that and feel confident enough to share information with others or contacting a professional writer to do the hard job for you.
The writing part
So, the time has come, it is all set, both the audience and the topic and it is time to let the imagination run free and start writing down. Moreover, it is important to remember that writing has 50% of art and 50% of science too.
Especially in these types of texts wherein they are not only made to inform people but also to increase the traffic and sales of a brand, it is necessary to be careful and clever when writing your blog posts.
As we have been telling the entire article, people on the Internet get bored really easy, if they click on your blog and the first thing they see is a 3000 word article separated in paragraphs of 15 lines each, without any image and plain titles, the chances of getting those views are almost zero.
Our very best advice is to follow the K.I.S.S rule, do not have an idea of what K.I.S.S. means? Well, it is an acronym often used by writers, a kind of grial that means Keep It Short (and) Simple.
Keep the sentences as short as possible, avoid the exaggerated use of adjectives; do the same with the paragraphs, between two and fine lines are going to be perfect! (Do you want an example? Count the lines of each paragraph from this article!).
Optimize… everything!
A good quality equals nothing if users are not able to find it quickly. Just as we do that type something on any search engine and then select the first option as our choice, we want that to happen with our blog post.
In order to achieve that positioning, there are certain methods we must apply to optimize our article. Using Keywords related to the topic of the blog, using both inbound and outbound links to other posts you have published, or another page you just checked.
Including original images that cannot be found in any other website; in addition, images can help to make a hard topic easier to understand, they also are very helpful to add extra information in another format which is really good to break the pattern of only having paragraphs.
Images serve as pauses from the lecture and they also can add valuable information to the article. Do not forget to add Optimized images to your blog posts to have the full package!
Let it rest for a while
Last but not least, this step is as important as the other ones; once you think you are done with your article, the right topic, the right headline, the perfect body, accompanied with appealing images and clever keywords but, it is not finished at all.
Actually, this a technique you should apply not only when writing blog posts but in every type of composition. By letting the post rest for a while before posting it allows us to realize several things:
- Correct misspellings and errors: when we are writing something, we get so into it that we can miss some typos and mistakes, but letting pass some hours or even days and reading it again will allow you to see some errors you were not aware they exist.
- See coherence and cohesion: these are two very important aspects of each text, having a group of words that do not make sense between them is not having a good-quality product. Reading it again after some time will help you to correct those sentences that do not sound so good.
- Have a preview of the article. this step is really good as it will help you to have a clear idea of how the article will look when published on your website. It will also let you see how the disposition of images, headlines, and text will be set on the website and correct every aspect you think does not look well.
