Content marketing has played an important role in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in these days.
Smarter online marketers study customer wants and needs. To acquire new customers or increase business from existing customers, online marketers find out what people want and then build related content for them. The content or information they build can be displayed in various formats or types, which develop the key content marketing strategies addressed in the following paragraphs.
Strategy 1: create information your customers care
Obviously, your customers don’t care about you, your products, and your services, etc. What they actually care about is themselves, their desires and needs. Creating interesting contents by addressing a specific need of your audiences can make your site stand out and attract attention.
Social media sites make it much easier for us to get closer and know about your potential or existing customers. Google Plus lets you to share the information with your potential customers in Circles. Twitter lets you to get real-time updates on the things that interest your customers.
Strategy 2: write an ebook
If you are ambitious enough to position yourself as an expert in your field, then write an eBook, a great strategy for the content marketing.
With a convincing and intuitive eBook, you can build trust and relationships with your audience. Also, an interesting eBook can support all your other online marketing strategies. For example, you can offer free download of your eBook to inspire audience to sign up newsletter on your site.
Strategy 3: create top 10 lists
Audience love lists, because they are easy to read and skim. Bloggers love lists, because they are faster to write and easier to tweet.
What is the best, the most important things in your field? That kind of information interests your audience.
Strategy 4: create a survey
Survey is a good tool that helps you maintain interaction with your audience. When your audiences have the chance to share their viewpoints, you obtain valuable feedback that helps you make your marketing more relevant.
You can create surveys in various ways on your site. You can create a poll to address a specific question you want to ask your audience or create a customer satisfaction survey to get feedback from your audience.
Strategy 5: include images in your blog
A picture is worth a thousand words. A complicated idea can be expressed with just a single static image. Articles with images get 90% more total views.
In addition, with the rise of some social media sites, images have become more interactive. For example, Pinterest can let people easily share and visual bookmark (called “pin”) their photos of their favorite events.
Strategy 6: apply audio on your site
The apply of audio on a website is really controversial topic. Some people don’t like sound of any kind on the web documents. Some others may like it as long as they are able to control it and turn it off.
From my point of view, I like audio applied on a website for two reasons.
First, audio can add human touch to your site. For example, a short welcome message played by an audio can add human feeling and catch audience attention.
Second, adding audio to your website can help people spend more time engaging with your content with their mobile devices.
Strategy 7: add video to your site
Another content marketing strategy is to create videos. A recent study indicates that video content helps convince 70% of consumers to buy a product or service. A video can turn a cold web page into a dynamic one that attracts and keeps visitors.
You can apply video to your site in various ways. You can use video to demonstrate a products or service. You can use explainer video to explain who you are and what you do. You also can use video to share your know-how.
In summery
Content marketing has become an indispensible part in online marketing strategies. It is the art that communicates with your audience by understanding their wants and needs. Although implementing these content marketing strategies can be a bit different for different companies or organizations, the ideas outlined here are suitable to any online marketers, especially to those who just start out with a content marketing strategy.
