By | Lillie Jenkins
Content marketing is one of the most widely used and effective types of digital marketing which is why almost every organization now wants to use it. That being said, there are certain practices and techniques that will make your content marketing campaigns more successful. Without further ado, here are the top secrets of a successful content marketing strategy.
#1 Get Inspired by Trends
It goes without saying that being up to date with the latest industry trends (both in marketing and in your niche) is important. But being up to date with them doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be copying every single trend – rather you should get ideas and inspiration from them.
For instance, subverting a trend could be a way to stand out from the crowd. When everyone else is following the trend and you subvert it in a smart way, it makes you look original and unique. Whether it means covering a topic from an unexpected point of view or using a format in an unconventional way, it could be the best way to use a new trend.
#2 Solve Relevant Problems
All the content you create needs to have a purpose, and usually, it should be either informative or educational or entertaining. In the case of informative or educational content, you need to be solving relevant problems that your target audience is concerned about.
When you solve problems, you are creating content that will be valuable and useful to your target audience. This way, you can both show your concern over what matters to your readers and viewers and successfully promote your organization with the help of content marketing.
#3 Reuse and Repurpose
While you should definitely create a lot of new and high-quality content, you shouldn’t shy away from reusing and repurposing content either. Reusing old content can help you save time and money because you will already have content that you will simply use in a new way.
Repurposing content is also a way to save time and money. In addition to that, it is a way to explore new content formats and make your content more accessible for different types of audience members. For example, by making a video based on one of your old articles, you can get viewers interested, including those who wouldn’t have read the article.
#4 Curate User-Generated Content
UGC or user-generated content is the content created by the members of your target audience. Most of the time, these are customer reviews that people post on social media and different review sites. You can repost such reviews on your own social media profiles, publish them on your website, and use them in promotional materials.
By curating user-generated content this way, you can reduce the amount of original content you have to post to keep up a certain frequency of content publishing. You can also bring more attention to the UGC that truly matters and interact with your audience in a more meaningful way.
#5 Outsource When Necessary
One more technique you can use to reduce the time and money you spend on content creation is outsourcing. If you don’t have enough resources to create the amount of content you want to create in a specific period of time, you can outsource some of your content creation by hiring different professionals.
#6 Balance Emotions and Rationality
Some people will love content that appeals to emotions. They want to feel happy or surprised or scared depending on the content. Other people will enjoy “rational” content more. In this case, facts and statistics will work much better.
Of course, you can’t appeal to both types of people at the same time. However, you can still aim to balance emotions and rationality in your content. You can either create content that uses emotions and facts at the same time or you can create some content that uses emotions and other content that uses facts.
#7 Utilize Multi-Platform Promotion
Rather than using just one platform for your content marketing, it’s best to use multiple platforms and distribute content more effectively and to a wider audience. You can use email marketing, social media marketing, guest blogging, and more tactics.
Such multi-platform promotion will help you reach more potential customers. However, you don’t need to start big right away. You can first start using just one or two platforms before you add more marketing channels to your strategy. For example, you can first create brand accounts on Instagram and Facebook, then on Twitter, and then on other social media platforms.
#8 Publish at the Right Time
As mentioned earlier, you will want to keep up a certain frequency when creating and publishing content. This is precisely why you need a content calendar. It will help you stay on track while also publishing content at the right time.
But what is the “right” time? This is when your audience is most likely to see and interact with your content. This includes both the day of the week and the time of the day. Make sure to analyze the performance of your content on different platforms and create a content calendar that will take these insights into account.
#9 Communicate with Your Audience
Last but not least, make sure to communicate with your audience by responding to comments, creating polls and quizzes, launching giveaways and contests, and so on. You can even get feedback from your audience and use it to improve your content marketing.
For example, if you ask your audience which topics are the most interesting, you can start creating more content specifically covering those topics. Such content will be more appealing and valuable to your target readers and viewers.
Final Thoughts
All in all, content marketing can be quite effective and efficient when utilized correctly. Use the principles and techniques described in this article to help you promote your organization more successfully.
Author Bio:
Lillie Jenkins is a creative copywriter and content writer. She has worked as a copywriter since graduating school, so her writing skills are well-honed. She works as a copywriter at the popular writing center All Top Reviews and as a proofreader at the custom writing company Trust My Paper. She writes publications in such fields as marketing, business, education, and personal life. More than writing Lillie loves to travel and read professional literature.
