7 ways to improve your content marketing
We’re constantly inundated with content to read, videos to watch, memes to laugh at, podcasts to listen to, reports to download, infographics to view, and so on. It can be exhausting scanning through all that content so that’s why it’s so important that your brand’s content sticks out from the crowd!
We’re lucky to live in a time where content has evolved and we can have fun with the format and the brand’s voice behind it, instead of sticking with more traditional forms of marketing and advertising. But that doesn’t mean we can take it easy when it comes to content creation and promotion.
If you want to show your content marketing strategy a little love and try something new, check out these seven tips!
Improve your content marketing with these 7 tips
1. Know your fans
Be authentic to your fans and followers and give them content they’ll enjoy on a topic they care about! Take the time to dive into your analytics – both website and social media – to find out what’s popular among your fans and how they engage with your content. Finding quick 30-second videos are popular? Make more of those and repurpose old content into a new video.
You can even include your followers in the content planning process by polling or surveying them. Ask them directly what they want more of and be sure to deliver it. As content marketers we often get bogged down in the past of what worked well and sticking to tried-and-true tactics and ignoring the data that shows what our followers really want. Ask them! I promise they’ll deliver.
2. Flaunt your brand’s personality
We don’t read content to be bored so don’t produce boring content. Add some personality, humor, and liveliness to your content. Show your followers why they should love your brand and want to be a part of your brand’s story instead of your competitor’s.
One of the best ways to show how unique your brand is is to create behind-the-scenes content and give your followers access to things they don’t normally get to see. You can also show off the personalities of the people that work for the brand by making them mini influencers in your industry’s space.
3. Plan year-round content
You may have on/off seasons or busier times of the year but that doesn’t mean you should only be promoting content then! Plan ahead for these slow seasons by repurposing or reviving older content – just make sure it’s still relevant and engaging. No one wants to follow a brand that goes silent for four months and then bombards them with blogs, videos, and social media posts. Keep a steady stream of new content coming all year long.
4. Collaborate
Take some of the burden of creating fresh, new content off yourself by collaborating with an influencer or content creator. Be transparent about the collaboration and have fun with it. As long as the content is of quality, most won’t care that it’s sponsored.
Another way you can collaborate without paying influencers is to collaborate with your current followers and customers. This approach can be a great segway into bigger collaborations while retaining a more authentic approach. A collaboration with a customer could be an interview, a customer success story, a video of them using your product or service, or even a contest.
5. Get the most out of events
Events are great for content marketing as you can create multiple online assets for hyping up the event, during the event, and after it’s concluded.
Perhaps you create two blogs, one announcing your attendance and one with key takeaways, a series of social media posts promoting it and then posting live from the show, and then a podcast where you talk with others who attended the event and share the highs and lows of it.
6. Get it to the right people
Obviously you’re not just creating all this content so it can sit on your website. Have a plan in place on how you’ll use all your available channels to promote your new content.
From automated drip campaigns to social media ads, there is a lot of opportunity for content promotion. Also make sure your website’s content is optimized for social sharing, whether it’s you sharing it or a fan.
7. Share the love
After reading a great piece of content on your site, your audience should be pointed towards other related content or even followed around online through remarketing campaigns to come back to your site. If you do mostly video based content, use cards or embedding options on YouTube to keep your audience engaged and consuming more of your content.
What tactics do you use to improve your content marketing? Tell me in the comments below or on Twitter!
