When we hear the term ‘content marketing’ many of us make the mistake of believing that this aspect of marketing is all about writing. If you think you can just add a blog page to your website, churn out lots of articles, and call it a day for your content marketing efforts, then you’re not going to reap the benefits. A lot more goes into effective content marketing than writing blog posts.

We’re tackling five ways that great content marketing is more than just writing and how having a proper content plan can enhance your brand’s presence.

1. It’s about knowing your audience

Before you begin crafting content, one of the most important questions you need to answer is ‘who is it for?’.

Producing content without knowing who you intend to consume it is like getting dressed in the dark. Without a clear understanding of your target audience, how can you create content that they want?

Good content marketing is born out of a deep understanding of the target audience you want to reach.

– So, who is your audience?

Start by crafting a detailed buyer persona through research, surveys, interviews, diving into your social and website analytics. A buyer persona is essentially an avatar for your target customer based on market research and your existing data.

When building this persona, you’ll want to take into account demographic information such as age and location, as well as interests, motivations, goals, challenges, and income. Include as much detail as possible.

Defining a target audience helps you to produce content that will resonate with them, that they will engage with and share. You could create the most amazing blog posts on health, but if your target audience is interested in travel rather than health issues, your hard work won’t go anywhere.

Knowing your audience also allows you to make better decisions regarding the channels you use to promote your content.

2. Content marketing is all about strategy

Perhaps even more important than the content you create is the strategy behind it.

Your brand will not maximise the benefits of content without a sound strategy driving your creation and promotion efforts.

Ask yourself this: ‘What is the goal of your content?’

Let us take HubSpot an example. If their goal was to become an authority in all things digital marketing, they’ve accomplished it. Through its useful blog posts, free guides, and courses, HubSpot has become a thought-leader in the industry. When it comes time for a business that has engaged with their content to purchase certain services, HubSpot is likely to be a frontrunner.

Here are some other questions that must be considered when creating a content marketing strategy:

– Who is my target audience?

– What are their interests and pain points?

– How can my company or product help?

A good strategy provides a framework to create compelling, valuable content that’s relevant to your audience. It guides how you create, what you create, where you share it, and the metrics you’ll use to measure its performance. Content may be king, but strategy is queen.

If you want to know more about developing a content marketing strategy, check out our article on the topic.

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Related: Seven questions you need to answer to launch a successful digital marketing campaign

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3. Is all content written? No, it’s not.

Blogging is often part of a content marketing plan, and it offers many benefits.

– Sharing content consistently is good for your website’s SEO. Publishing well-optimised blog content regularly helps your site get indexed by Google for more pages, allowing your brand to rank for more keywords. Research has shown that sites with a blog get 55% more visitors than websites without one. Consistent blogging brings more traffic, and potential leads to your site.  

– When a visitor finds your content useful, they’re likely to spend more time on the page. Higher on-page time indicates to Google that the content is of value and has a positive impact on your ranking in search results.

– These days we’re all researchers. We hop on Google to research just about every purchase or buying decision. Informative, engaging blog content can sway a customer’s opinion and play a factor in a purchase decision. According to research shared by Content Marketing Institute, 61% of consumers in the US decided to make a purchase after reading a recommendation on a blog.

However, blog posts are just one type of content. Content marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of content types, including video, social media, podcasts, and webinars. A good content marketing plan uses a mix of mediums to bring value to its audience.

– Let’s talk about videos

Online video consumption increases year after year. By 2021, it’s estimated that the average person will watch 100 minutes of online videos per day. Additionally, statistics show that you’re 53 times more likely to land on Google’s first page when you add video to your site.

Furthermore, audiences are more likely to engage with and share video content than articles or static social media posts.

People are consuming videos, so why should your content marketing efforts stop at blog posts?

– Social media is part of content marketing too

Social media is one of the best ways to connect with customers and to humanise your brand. People connect with people more so than brands, and connection encourages loyalty. Research from Sprout Social showed that when customers feel connected to a brand, 57% spend more with that brand, and 76% would buy from them instead of a competitor.

You can show off your company culture, how you’re helping your community, behind-the-scenes of your office, etc. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, surveys conducted by Twitter indicated that 80% of respondents believed brands should show how they were supporting employees.

An effective content strategy uses a variety of forms to build a stronger relationship with your audience, capture attention, engagement, and improve brand recall.

4. There’s a technical side

Even writing a blog post as part of your content marketing plans is more complicated than just the words you’ve put down.

You need to make sure that whatever you’ve produced is SEO-optimised. Have you included relevant long-tail keywords? What about backlinking and internal linking?

The same goes for videos. Is the company’s YouTube channel optimised? Are you ensuring that the correct keywords are in your title and description?

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Related: Why your business should consider investing in podcasting

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5. It’s all about being relevant

Relevant is an important word to keep in mind. Content marketing requires you to be on the pulse of what’s going on.

What is happening in your industry that you can capitalise on? What’s going on in your country or globally that people are interested in?

To ensure you’re creating relevant content, you should always pay attention to what’s happening in your industry and beyond.

You can use social listening to help you figure out what content the people are talking about and consuming. Social listening reveals what types of content matters most to consumers right now. Your brand can identify and capitalise on rising trends in your industry, as well as key moments in pop culture, or trending issues in local/international news to pinpoint conversation topics that resonate.

Being aware of what’s happening socially can help your company avoid making a damaging misstep and appearing tone-deaf by sharing the wrong content at the wrong time.

2020 has highlighted how important it is for brands to ‘read the room’ and be sensitive with what they’re sharing.

Good content, in all its forms, from written to video and in-between, offers a lot of value for businesses. There’s a growing distrust of ads and the ‘hard sell’, but globally our love of content is only growing. Effective content marketing can reach your audience when ads can’t, forge lasting connections, and position your brand as a resource and thought leader.

Sources: Sprout Social, Persuasion Nation, Social Media Today, Content Marketing Institute, Marketing Week, Vidyard, Marketing Charts, Impact BND, Search Engine Journal, and Social Media Examiner