5 Essential Steps to Create Great Marketing Content
In the era of digitization, companies are leveraging content as a medium of reaching their target audience. Content has become a great way to tell brand stories and product descriptions.
In the era of digitization, companies are leveraging content as a medium of reaching their target audience. Content has become a great way to tell brand stories and product descriptions. Besides, content marketing is acting as a bridge between organizations and customers to maintain communication and build mutual trust.
Considering the growing significance, marketers are focusing to create great marketing content for purpose of promoting the brand.
In such case, fewer insights regarding an excellent marketing content are a hurdle in the path of marketing success.
As per a report published by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs, 63% of businesses do not have a well-established marketing strategy.
Thus, to dive into the field of marketing or say, content marketing planning to create great marketing content is the first step in the direction. Curating a plan requires a lot of research, and creative ideas to begin with.
Further, a lot of marketers approaching the method to generate more leads; resulting in a bottle-neck situation. Hence, to stay front in the line of interface between the organizations and audience, a high level of professionalization is required in the content.
If you are in a group of people who are trying to decode how to create great marketing content, you are reading the right blog.
Here is a curated list of 5 essential steps towards creating great marketing content-
1. Plan and research your topic: This is the first step in direction of creating meaningful content. Further, you can use keyword tools such as keyword planner to find out widely searched keywords by people. Use these keywords in your blog post to maximize the chances of clicks.
Further, one can select a trending topic from Twitter based on the selected keyword. Doing so will help in getting retweets and favorites on the post.
2. Write Compelling Content: In order to write compelling content on the selected topic, read extensively from different sources. However, it is advisable to use data from some authentic sources. While reading from different sources, ensure to make a list of major points to be included in the content piece.
While creating great marketing content, always focus on writing an attention-grabbing headline. As per David Ogilvy, “Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”.
If the headline is not attractive enough, it may not attract enough topic as the article deserves. As per SEO parameters, the headline character should not go beyond 60 characters (with space).
Talking of the body of the content, short paragraphs are recommended to enhance the readability while maintaining the interest of the reader. Moreover, split the paragraph into 2-3 lines, each containing 75-100 words. The concept behind the idea is to make the content piece scannable and readable in less time.
To make the content piece more scannable, try adding bullet points in the body. Also, the bullets are search-engine friendly.
Once the content is completed, ensure to run a thorough spell-check. A grammatically sophisticated, and error-free content is the primary stage to create great marketing content.
3. Optimize Content: Creating content and optimization go hand-in-hand. Optimization of the content broadens the reach of the article to the right audience. Hence, it is always recommended to create a content piece around a keyword. Place the keyword in the blog title (also referred to as title tag) and at least once in the H2 header.
The size of the blog post plays a vital role in the optimization of the blog. As per the research conducted by serpIQ, content with a word count of 1000-1500 words is considered a ‘sweet spot’ of a few search engines including Google.
Further, links to other resources boost the visibility of the website. Thereby, it is suggested to provide a link to your own published article or article from another website to provide more information to the reader. The aim behind providing the link to other websites is to benefit the readers most. This, in turn, will boost the credibility of your website.
4. Include Images: As the quote says- “A picture is worth a thousand words”. The saying is applicable for blogs and marketing content as well. The use of infographics empowers marketers to convey the message vividly. The infographic can be in the form of a screenshot, video, presentation, or link to the published white paper.
Going with customized infographics is the best idea to make content more appealing. Though make sure to provide relevant insights and statistics.
You can also create a custom graphic for your title. It helps in boosting the number of shares across various social media channels. There are various tools available for free to create appealing graphics.
5. Promote on Different Platforms: Once the content is articulated and optimized, make sure to share it on various platforms. Doing so will boost the number of readers.
To make the content shareable, create clickable links to tweet quotes or statistics. The click can be used in the body to fuel the number of shares across different platforms.
Nowadays, the blog can be shared among multiple social media channels. Some of them include- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, and many others. While sharing it on Facebook and G+ communities, read the guidelines beforehand.
You can also install a social plug-in on your platform. The plugin will facilitate a direct share from the blog, instead of manual sharing.
Also, consider sharing the content on niche forums such as Reddit sub-forums. Pin your blog post to relevant pinboards on Pinterest. However, the content should be specific to the boards you are pinning it to. Ensure that the featured image is appealing and an optimized one to get high click-through rates.
You can also use content syndication i.e. publishing content on a third-party platform to gain more visibility.
Nowadays, marketers are also using email marketing to promote the blog by sending an update to the email list.
Conclusion: These were the few tips to get you going. Initially, it might seem a bit overwhelming but once you get the grip on it then everything is easy. It is just a matter of experiments. You can always improve by experimenting more and more. Keep applying the above-mentioned tips and produce high-quality content.