How do you get your business in front of the masses online?
The key is through content marketing: one of the most sustainable ways to leverage your content and attract your key audience. And what exactly is content marketing, you might ask?
Content marketing is the art of creating and distributing valuable content that is relevant to your niche market and the ability to retain your audience. The way you’ll retain your audience is through the value you provide with your content – which is why content is king!
There are a plethora of options for creating your content and getting it out there for your key audience to read, explore, and consume. You don’t have to be a veteran to understand how these keys work.
A rookie or newbie can easily jump into these strategies and make them work for your business.
Let’s dig into ten ways you can market your online content so that you may, ultimately, build your business successfully through content marketing.
1 – Create a business blog
After your beautiful website is designed, starting a company blog is the second best thing you can do to begin bringing niche traffic to your site.
It’s not so much how wonderfully your site is designed (though it does matter) but how often your site receives quality traffic.
One of the best ways you can ensure a steady stream of traffic is to create meaningful content that keeps visitors coming back for more.
According to Hubspot, 53% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority.
There is a reason so many marketers are considering blogging a top priority. The easiest way to ensure quality traffic is by creating a company blog.
2 – Understand your audience
The best way to engage with your audience before you set your marketing goals is to understand who your audience is. You’ve created a beautiful blog, but now it’s time to learn your audience. Who are they and what will they expect from you? How can you best serve them?
After you’ve been established for some time, you may consider using web analytics to allow you insider data on your demographics. This will help you determine your audience engagement and routines and to see how they interact with your site.
As you understand your audience better you will be able to tailor your content to more accurately meet their needs.
3 – Set your marketing goals
When it comes to content you’ll first need to determine the purpose of it:
- Why are you creating content?
- Is it to drive traffic to your blog?
- How can you turn those blog visitors into leads and eventually turn those leads into customers?
Your main goal here is to ensure that every piece of content you create has a distinct purpose that centers around your marketing goals.
First, clearly define your marketing goals in order to understand how each piece of content falls into place according to planned. Each content piece will serve a unique purpose.
You may give some away and you may sell others.
In order to know how each content piece plays into your overall marketing goals you must first create a marketing plan, writing down your goals, and making them a part of your content-creation routine.
4 – Set a content publishing schedule
Once you have your marketing goals and content ideas in place, it’s time to set a publishing schedule.
Keeping a content calendar allows you to plan out your content for the upcoming weeks and months. Keeping your content organized in this fashion allows you to know what you will post and when.
If you are visual person, especially, having a content calendar in front of you will help you to see what content is due and to stay organized.
You can see deadlines and topics all at a glance.
Some content publishing tools will even allow you to set up your assignments and due dates as well as the option to set up publishing dates as well. Keeping a content publishing schedule will allow you to be organized and have your content flowing regularly.
5 – Use the best tools for the job
Content marketing can be cumbersome without the right tools, so you’ll want to make sure you choose helpful tools to assist you. Opt-in forms, email service providers, content calendars, and social media share plugins are all tools that will help you with sharing your content.
You will likely need to dig in and do some research about each tool to see which is a best fit for your business and what you are trying to accomplish.
Be sure to choose tools that benefit you and meet your goals, are easy to use, and that fit your budget.
6 – Make sure content is high quality
This goes without saying, but you should always make sure that you give your best and that your content reflects your business accurately.
It is better to go above and beyond in your offerings and give more than is needed than to hold back and resort to offering poor quality content.
Poor content will not help you build the quality audience that you want, but will instead have a negative impact on your brand. Always give more rather than less. You can never give too much.
Also, it is best to never compromise quality just to churn out loads of content on a regular basis.
Remember to check for spelling and grammar errors and make sure that what you are offering is the best sampling of your business.
You will be represented online not only by the appearance of your design, but by how your content (blog posts, videos, audio, and images) appear.
7 – Outsource when you need to
According to Fronetics, 44% of content writing is being freelanced. Do not hesitate if you need to hire a freelancer to help you churn out your blog content. This will help you to focus on other tasks related to your blog that are just as relevant.
It can often become tedious churning out content on a regular and consistent basis.
It is perfectly okay to outsource these types of jobs to those who don’t mind creating the content for you.
Creative professionals such as ghost writers, designers, and artists can be just the key to helping you keep up with your content marketing plans. Add these creatives into your online business strategy by delegating much of your content creation work to them.
It’s a win-win situation for you both.
Content creation is definitely key to growing and sustaining your online presence, so if you need to outsource, just know that you are in good company, and that there are many other smart business owners who are doing the exact same thing.
8 – Re-purpose your content
It can often be difficult to come up with new content for your blog.
One way of getting around reinventing the wheel is to re-purpose your content. You can refurbish content by thinking of various ways to present the same content.
Turning a blog post into an infographic or into a mini-article for a newsletter allows the same content to go a long way. You might also consider using multimedia, such as the use of video and images.
For every piece of content you create, consider ways you can re-use your content to develop new content so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
This strategy will save you much time and energy in your content creation in the future.
9 – Use rich images, video, and audio
Images, video, and audio have a way of retaining your audience’s attention for much longer and helps you to convey your message in a different format.
Any type of multimedia you choose to use will help to retain your users and help them to stay more interested in your offerings.
Using a variety of formats to engage your readers will also help to connect with users who have different learning styles. Some people enjoy watching videos while others prefer listening to an audio.
Still, others enjoy reading their content briefly, or viewing an at-a-glance image.
By providing a variety of ways to consume your content you are offering your user high-quality, engaging content that they can personally connect with.
It is quite likely you will gain their loyalty because they enjoy your content so deeply when you meet them on their engagement level.
10 – Reach out to influencers
One way to increase your reach is to become a guest blogger or make a guest appearance on someone’s podcast. Influencer reach should definitely be a part of your digital and content marketing strategy.
Take time to engage with your site users and reach out to those who have the right platforms and that are a great connection for your own audience. Once you’ve connected with potential influencers, it’s time to reach out to them and see how you can gain their trust.
Gaining their endorsements and willingness to promote you can go a long way in leveraging your content as it is quite likely to get shared more often.
There are plenty of ways to build your audience and your business online.
Content marketing is perhaps the key that will help you build an online audience with very little startup except your motivation and a strategy for how to create and promote your content.
These ten tips are just the tip of the iceberg and if you follow these, they can help you get started on a path to successful content marketing.
Feel free to post your comment below. An email address is required but it will not be shared with anyone, put on any list, or used for any kind of marketing, just to alert you if there are any replies. Thanks and happy hunting!
PlanetBizOp.com
->Steven
Updated: Originally published May 5th 2018
Hey,
This is a great article that will help me to work better to get my blog known by my audience.
I already knew about some points I should work on my marketing plan, but your article talks about some point I didn’t know and I’m sure these points will help me to get more readers to my blog.
I am glad you got some good information out of the article.
Thanks for the comment Alejandra!
Hey Steven
This is very interesting.
When it comes to video production, can you recommend any software for this? I want to add some videos to my own website and I’m not quite sure how to get started.
I have created a YouTube page but is it best to save the videos directly on to your website?
Thanks
It wouldn’t be wise to post video to be viewed directly from your website. Your bandwidth would get bogged down. Use YouTube if you’re ok with ads preceding your content. If not, use Vimeo or a similar service, but, they aren’t free.
As for software, that depends on the type of video you intend to make, live action, whiteboard, or 2d explainer videos. Each has its own software and they vary in price. Video does require a little bit of investment but is worth it if done correctly.
Try searching Google on how to make the type of video that interests you and you’ll find mentions of the type of software needed to do the job and the costs involved.
Thanks for the comment Daniel!
Hi Steven,
Thanks for creating and sharing this article with us all. In my opinion and experience content marketing is a (very) important part of an all-round marketing strategy for the big boys (read: Multinationals) and especially for the little guys like us!. Free organic traffic and increasing our bottom line is the end product of a good content marketing strategy.
For outsourcing, a good recruitment strategy and policy is important. Start slow, on a trial and increase the amount of articles required slowly and giving the writers different writing tasks (reviews, comments, general articles, long form articles and guest posting). Never rely on just one or two writers have several you can call upon (this was a big mistake of mine!).
Outsourced writers can be unpredictable so diversifying in that area is wise. You’re also right about starting slow and ramping up over time with a new writer. Keep it sane and manageable.
Thanks for the wise comment Derek!
Hi Steven, thanks for sharing!
I have some questions:
1. What is precisely a company blog?
2. How can I reach out to influencers? Is there a specific way to do it? It seems like they’re not interested in connecting with you, even if you comment on their post.
Or maybe I am doing it the wrong way.
3. Is it possible to see on google analytics also the gender and age of my readers? I haven’t found this option.
Sorry for all these questions, but I’m still at the beginning:)
A blog is simply a site you publish helpful and valuable information usually in the form of articles. If you monetize it with affiliate links it becomes content marketing.
Reaching out to influencers can be tough. Most get lots of email every day. I don’t know of any specific technique to get their attention, sorry. Keep trying, or, maybe search Google for information on methods to contact them that helps get their attention.
You can see age and gender information in Analytics by going to Audience->Demographics in the menu on the left side of the page.
Thanks for the comment Marta!
I think I needed a wonderful information such as this. In this article I’ve got important ideas of getting my content on the top of everyone else and as I’ve always been learning here is that content is ‘key’ when it comes to ranking.
I wonder if you have any suggestions on any tools that could help me in typing. My day job is too involving but am willing to go an extra mile in building my content. I really run short of time but I have the ideas in me that needs to be typed. What solution can you offer me to keep up with regular creation of content on my website despite my busy schedule?
Looking forward to getting assistance from you.
Much blessings
Paul.
There is speech-to-text software out there. Basically, you speak into a microphone and the software converts it to text in a work processor. I don’t use software like this personally and don’t have any specific recommendations. Look on Google for open source software that does this, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t something free out there for this purpose. I know there is commercial software that accomplishes this task, not for free though.
If you can find it, software like this could have you producing content in record time!
Thanks for the comment Paul!