Successful brands know the trick to getting their product noticed: make your content count.
The bottom line is that content bulks up your brand presence in the digital and social realms. Although that’s basically a given, it’s incredibly important because you’re meeting your consumers where they spend a majority of their time. You have exclusive access to their shopping habits and your brand has the potential to tap into their vast buying power.
Yet, even more than that, content lends to your brand’s credibility, especially when it resonates with consumers and is produced with a purpose in mind.
This in essence is content marketing which, according to the Content Marketing Institute means, “Instead of pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.”
Content comes in all shapes and sizes. Whether it’s your activity on social platforms like LinkedIn, blogging weekly on your website, or reaching out to prospective clients in an email campaign, the possibilities of utilizing your content effectively and making it count are endless.
And while the possibilities may be endless, we’ve broken down how to make your content count with the following three tips of the trade:
1. Make it Relevant
The forefront of your consumer’s mind is ideally where you always want to be; however, irrelevant or even unnecessary content won’t get you there. Relevance is the foundation to developing content and the key to determining the direction it needs to flow in.
For starters, outline basic goals for the content you will create moving forward. Quiz yourself with the following questions to uncover what action items are more immediate than others:
1. What is the purpose of your brand or product?
2. Are the customers in your ideal target audience the same customers actually purchasing your product?
3. On what platforms do you plan to reach your audience with active content?
Hopefully, those questions were easy enough to answer. Sometimes it’s tempting to fall into the trap of making assumptions about your audience or even your own brand. While different brands should have similar goals for their content, such as driving sales or increasing website traffic, the approach should be unique.
For instance, in the food and beverage world, Grace’s Best Cookies enthusiasts may not make up the same audience as Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce fanatics. So while both brands need to make the sale, they will accomplish that with exclusive content geared to their buyer personas.
When you have a solid understanding of your brand and audience, the content you create will reflect that, leveraging your content to its truest and most useful potential! Plus, content that gets consumers to participate and helps grow your brand passes what we commonly refer to as the “Who Cares” Test.
Take the “Who Cares” Test to assess your brand’s ability to create relevance for consumers
2. Optimize It
If you were to search for your brand or product, where would it show up in search engine results?
If it’s on the first page of Google or Bing, that simply means that the content on your website is highly optimized for searchers to find with ease.
Implementing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics leads users to uncover your content quickly. For example, best practices include incorporating keywords throughout your blog post or landing page copy related to what your audience is searching for, or shortening your site’s URLs to be clear and concise.
Those basics help create a solid foundation that over time will boost your overall search engine ranking.
3. Measure the Results
So, you’ve identified a need for your audience, filled their need with content that’s optimized and relevant to them – what’s next? Now, it’s time to dig through the data and discover how your content approach has made a difference.
Understanding the metrics is vital for making improvements and moving forward with updated content. Avoid the “trial and error” approach to see what is and isn’t working because there are a plethora of data tools at your disposal.
A few user-friendly data tools, such as HubSpot for website tracking, or Hootsuite or Facebook Business Suite for social media scheduling, allow you to see how your content is being used and what actions your audience is taking prior to purchasing.
Based on the data, if your content isn’t garnering any attention or achieving the goals you set for it, you can see exactly where you should make adjustments.
Make your content count.
Developing great content takes more effort than writing a buzzworthy post or article. It has to be consistent, creative and composed with the customer in mind. Start by making it relevant, optimizing its potential, and benefitting from the results.
