The past year has been a great time for content-first businesses as Google has rewarded them for giving value to users. The next 12 months don’t look to be any different – those businesses with a focus on creating quality content will thrive online.
There are multiple approaches to your content strategy, however, there are some key points you should nail down.
- Content has to be consistent across all channels – there is no point in treating content creation like your gym membership, it’s not a new years resolution, you have to create a schedule and stick with it to benefit. Put some time aside with your team and determine what’s realistic.
- Remember to distribute content across the relevant channels – if you create a video, upload it to YouTube, Pictures – post them on Instagram. Use relevant hashtags and descriptions and make sure the content adds value.
- If outsourcing content creation – which usually makes more sense in most situations, ensures the agency has a good understanding of your customer and that the content is relevant.
These are a few of the things to consider before you start creating content, because if you do it well the benefits are excellent, however, if you don’t it could result in wasting resources and time.
Try different types of content
There are multiple ways to create content, from video, blogs, audio and much more. It’s always a good idea to test what your audience likes. To do this run A/B testing and compare click-through rates, bounce rates and conversions to determine which content produces the best results.
For example, you could send out an email marketing campaign with an embedded video, or a link to your latest blog post, the important thing is to experiment and measure results to ensure you find out what works.
Answer customer questions
When looking for content ideas, a great place to start is by answering your customer’s questions, this works for several reasons.
Firstly, Google is always looking to display relevant content, so if your website can answer the right questions you will come up higher in search results.
The second reason is if a customer sees you as the authority and the one with the great content, it’s more likely they will choose you as a service provider over another business which has no quality content.
Answering customer questions through content is also a great way to understand what your customer is thinking, meaning you can structure multiple pieces of marketing material and content to meet their needs.
Determine the tone of voice
The way you write content should be consistent across channels, this way customers will get to know your brand and engage better with it.
If for example, you want to stay professional, it’s important to know what that sounds like, so everyone in the business and create content with a consistent tone.
Lets imagine you have someone working in account who writes 50% of the content, and someone in sales writing the other 50%, if they have no clear tone of voice to follow, they will likely create content in their own voices, which will confuse customers and could damage your brand.
