Content marketing is on the tip of every marketing guru’s tongue these days. It stretches far and wide and can do wonders for your business! Especially if you’re an entrepreneur.
Let’s be clear, though if you do decide to add content to your marketing arsenal, it will take work, dedication and commitment; ultimately, you have to weigh up effort vs. return.
But take it from us, it will be totally worth it.
3 Reasons to consider content marketing
#1 Trust, credibility and liking
As you know, people like doing business with companies they trust and like. So, when a company is searching for your product or service, they want to check you and the competition out. If you have more credible and relevant content that educates your target market than your competition, you have a better than even chance of edging them out and winning the business.
#2 Positioning
Relevant content that is useful to your target market helps position you as the go-to expert in your field. Who’d you trust, a company that has three articles and the last one was written in 2012, or a company that has 100s of articles with the last one appearing yesterday? Articles help you build authority.
#3 Improve your Google rankings
It is common knowledge that if your company is not ranked (by keyword) on the first page of Google, it has very little chance of being found by your potential customers.
Google tends to rank websites with good, relevant content (minimum between 300 – 600 words per article) higher. So, if you’re producing more content than your competitors, you have a better chance of ranking higher on Google and of getting noticed by your potential customers.
Now, if you buy the argument that content marketing is worth the effort, as many entrepreneurs have already done, the next question is how you do it.
Below are some pointers to help you on your way:
- Make sure that you create a blog within your current website. If you have a WordPress or other content management system, this is an easy process. If not, your website administrator/developer should be able to help you set up your blog.
- Ensure your blog is the appropriate length based on your objectives. For example, to gain engagement and social shares, a blog post between 200 – 600 words will do. Whereas a lengthy post of about 1 000 – 1 500 words works better for lead conversion and driving organic site traffic. For more guidance on the ideal length for different objectives, check out our cheat sheet.
- A good rule of thumb is to write one blog article once a week (four a month). This is because Google sends in spider bots to check your website, and the more activity it sees on your website, then the more often the spiders visit and, ultimately, the better your Google rankings.
- Leverage your articles by using simple code to send them to your social media properties like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
- Repurpose all your articles. Take an article and put it on SlideShare; video yourself reading it and put it on YouTube; turn it into a podcast or an infographic.
- Have social sharing buttons on all your blog posts so that visitors can engage with your content by liking, sharing and commenting. Every time there is interaction with your article, Google sees this as a social signal of credibility i.e., someone thought it was worthwhile to further reference, distribute or engage with your content. This helps improve your Google rankings.
- Do not neglect design. Powerful and relevant imagery goes a long way in further gripping and engaging your audience
- Create a content marketing calendar for a full year so that you have a sustained content strategy. Plan for 48 articles a year (4 a month) and who’ll write them. If you take 48 blog posts, that’s 48 posts on Facebook, 48 on LinkedIn, 48 tweets, 48 videos on YouTube and 48 slide decks on SlideShare, which equals 288 touch points a year. Not a bad return on effort.
Consider adding content marketing to your marketing strategy and watch your Google rankings, credibility, and authority soar.
For more information on why content marketing is crucial to any business success, every entrepreneur should know, visit our website www.seedacademy.co.za