Content will always be royalty when it comes to marketing. (Even if you don’t like hearing “content is king” because it’s overused!) You can showcase your brand in the right way and maintain a certain amount of control over how you appear to your audience if you create content in the right ways. Now that we are officially into 2019, you should be looking for ways to boost your marketing efforts to have an even better year than last year.
It is beneficial to your business if you can make content work for you. You can have increased website traffic, search engine visibility, increased referral traffic, increased social media engagement, and establish yourself as the go-to expert in your field.
Here are five ways to make content work even better for you in 2019.
#1: Go visual
As the way we consume content shifts towards more video and easily digestible forms of content, the visual aspect of your content strategy is now more important than ever. You should look to incorporate more videos, infographics, imagery, and other visual forms into your strategy. If you write a regular blog (hint: you should!), consider incorporating accompanying graphics and video. This makes your content both easier to consume, but also to share on various platforms.
#2: Think evergreen
Evergreen content is content that is not time sensitive. It can be shared sometimes for years to come (often with minor tweaks!). To incorporate evergreen content into your strategy, create a list of potential evergreen topics that are relevant to your industry – and your audience. You can introduce these topics via your blog, your social channels, your website content, and any place you interact with your audience.
#3: Think across platforms
While you shouldn’t share identical content across all marketing channels, you can utilize certain content to enhance your overall strategy on each channel. For example, your latest blog post can be promoted across all of your channels, but you would utilize different content for each:
- On Facebook, you could create an update that is designed to generate dialogue through its conversational tone and include a link preview.
- On Instagram, you could create a series of images for a multi-image post that highlight the key takeaways and direct people to a link in your bio.
- On Twitter, you could use those key takeaway images from Instagram, but spread them out over a few weeks.
- On LinkedIn, you could include a call to action for business owners to share their frustrations regarding the topic.
People consume content differently on each platform and your strategy should reflect that.
#4: Focus on dialogue, not sales
Whether you are looking at developing a social media strategy or you are looking at other forms of marketing, remember that relationships and dialogue should be the cornerstone of your activities. If you are doing a good job communicating with your target audience, you should be able to easily funnel them through your sales channels without aiming for a hard sell every time.
#5: Listen to your audience
This one might seem obvious, but it can be easy to get stuck in the constant content churn – you know you should be putting out content, so you just keep putting it out blindly whether anyone is reading it or not. At this point, you are just creating noise and not really providing any value. It’s a waste of your time. You should make sure you are writing content that your audience will read and respond to in a way that is beneficial to your overall business goals. To ensure you are providing valuable content, take the time to ask what your audience wants to hear about from you. You can also look at conversations on social media to gain insights.
Content is an important part of your marketing and sales strategy. As you are getting ready to take on 2019, build yourself a content strategy that will give you the best chance at successful growth.
Candace Huntly is Founding Partner at SongBird Marketing Communications, an award-winning agency working to take organizational and individual brands to the next level. With a passion for all things related to creativity and strategy, she specializes in business intelligence, marketing & branding, content strategy & development, media & influencer relations, and social media. Basically, if you need to put your brand, product, or cause in the public eye, she will find a way to do it, while making the approach unique to you.
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