Content marketing for busy business owners

Content Marketing is a blanket (some like to say umbrella) term, that is used to describe a set of tactics, techniques, and strategies that are used to fulfill business goals. For the most part, it will use relevant content that serves the reader to not only attract but also to retain and convert them into customers. Truly successful content marketing will create the very much sought-after positive associations regarding your brand without all those well-known marketing hassles.

The marketplace today is indeed very different. It used to be that a store’s employees and salespeople were considered the experts and that both businesses and brands spent much advertising dollars in order to find folks who were in need of their services.

Chances are good that the tactics that you’re familiar with regarding communicating with prospects and existing clients are pretty much history. The way a customer (or potential one) gets their info these days is very different. You may bow wondering if this ‘content marketing’ is just a fad or a cool sounding buzzword? It is definitely neither, and it’s here to stay.

It’s marketing by providing useful, relevant content about your products and services. Most of the time, the content is in written documents, but it could be in any form from photos to videos and more.

Rather than just telling your potential customers who you are, you can use Content Marketing to actually show them. It’s a fact that Content Marketing really is more than just advertising. The way that a business will interact with their customers has truly transformed. With social media on the rise these days, a brand now has to both interact and genuinely become closer to their customers to gain their trust and loyalty. Today it’s super-important that you not only give out useful information but tell those engaging stories and share some advice as well.

When you give out useful and free information, you will be able to build a well-connected base of customers which will not only remain loyal to your brand but tell others as well. Word of mouth is the absolute best form of advertising. Do you know anyone who doesn’t like free things?

High-quality content is considered gold when it comes to SEO. The days are long-gone when the keyword-loaded copy was the way to go. Search engines will be your friend when truly good and relevant copy is used.

Prospects today have a very strong appetite when it comes to information. They want it fast, and they want it now. Most will research online before actually making that purchase. It’s a well-known fact that for many years, folks would research the features and prices of cars before even thinking about visiting a car dealership showroom. Ah, the good old days before the internet. Today, grocery shoppers will use their mobile phones to find out about the best deals and prices.

The content for a website is much different than the many other types of ‘writing’ out there. Right now, you might be asking yourself “How so”? Fact is that a visitor on the web is basically only going to skim the text. With literally dozens (no wait, I meant millions) of choices right there at their fingertips, if your content doesn’t give them what they’re looking for right then and there, they for sure are going to bolt. Once they leave, chances are better than average that they won’t be back.

There has been much research done on this, and all of it concludes the same thing; that the average viewer/visitor is only going to hang around maybe 10 seconds on a site. There are others in the know that say 5–6 seconds. Regardless of which number you use, the reality is that you only have a short time to grab your visitors’ attention.

Even though many marketers do indeed realize how important content genuinely is, a good amount of them (maybe you?) haven’t yet established a serious marketing strategy.

So how is this done? How do you go and develop a plan that truly makes sense for your business? Here a few key steps that you should use as a framework to guide you as you move forward.

Before you create any content, you should always know who it is you are creating it for in addition to which channels you are going to use to promote it.

It’s best to incorporate this into your marketing plan. Yet still, this is not going to be enough. Think of each and every piece of content as an investment. As you create content that your audience finds engaging and valuable, a dialogue is created. Once this dialogue is created, then you can turn it into business results. The proper content topics will without a doubt produce the best return on investment. (ROI)

This all sounds great, but how do I do this?

List Before you even write down a single topic idea, you need to ask yourself if this content will actually solve anything or answer any questions. If yes, make a list of topics that will support your answer. Then you should give each topic a score for both value and volume.

Yeah yeah, you want to know what exactly each of those is.

Volume = audience reach

Value = the benefit to your business

Gather Get together all supporting data that is related to your topic(s). That will include how many people will actually care about or find both the topic and keywords useful. A few of the various potential sources of this data will include:

Organize Now you can put all of this wonderful data into that magic spreadsheet. You will begin (hopefully) to notice common topics and themes. Simply make a list (love those lists) of these topics and themes including their popularity.

Cut and Prioritize With this step you will be able to identify each of the topic’s reach. From the data that is on this new list, you will be able to determine the number of individuals who care about or actually find a certain topic useful. The higher this number is, the greater the potential reach of the topic. After you prioritize this list, you will be able to further cut it down by keeping the topics that have the greatest revenue potential.

Yes, this process will take some work, but you’ll be happy that you took the time to do this. What you will end up with is a list of topics that is strong and will support both your business and marketing goals. It will also save resources and help keep you on track.

Or laptop & mouse, or whatever you feel comfortable with.

Now that you’ve got a strategy regarding growing your business and the content you will use for doing this in addition to an editorial plan, it’s time to start writing (creating) that content. As we have said; it needs to be not only relevant but engaging. Not all content producers actually consider themselves to be writers. Each and every time you actually create a piece of content, whether it be a podcast, video, or a blog post, you are following the same process which involves organizing your thoughts and ideas along with finding the best words with which to express yourself.

For now, we’ll talk about writing content. Not whether blog posts or written content is better than the other. It’s just a fact that all content begins with the simple written word. Even if you decide to present your thoughts in video form, you still have to begin with the words. Things only change in the production.

Here are six steps that you should use whenever you want to create a piece of content. Most likely you won’t go through them in any special order, but understand this; the truly best content without a doubt has definitely gone through all six of these.

Never ever treat your visitors like academics that enjoy reading those both complicated and challenging texts. Do not be wordy, and never try to show off your ‘maybe extensive vocabulary’.

It’s very possible that you spend much time seeing to it that your content has a good conversion rate and possibly if visitors are sharing it, but are they actually reading it?

Research has found that:

Most people will scan/skim through the content. Scanning can be likened to speed reading, but it is not the same. It’s kind of a triage approach that is used to gather information. A scanner will go through a piece of content and grab as much information as they are able to without reading each and every word. A scanner will not read blog post or article in depth. Not at first at least. Basically, they are on the hunt for very specific info, and they want it now.

If you take the time to understand how a scanner thinks and acts, you’ll have a better idea of how to create content that truly will fit what they need.

Great. People skim. So what do I do?

So here comes the next question. What’s the best way to make and keep the content on your business website sticky so that it keeps those potential customers around long enough to actually understand what the heck it is that you have to offer? There is no exact guaranteed recipe for this, but here are some tips that can be very useful when it comes to keeping a visitor planted when they’re on your website.

Typography (font family, size, weight), layout, color, etc… all affect how your visitors interact with your content. A good designer will do his research and carefully design your content layout to ensure it can capture the visitors’ attention and bring your points across.

Well there you go. Wise is to invest in your content. There are many in the know think that this should be done more than any other medium. A professional Content Writing Service will see to it that your content is indeed written by an experienced copywriter, and also that the work is ideally-optimized for the various search engines. It’s a fact that more valuable than ad placement, is organic search rankings.

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