It’s all about content. If you want your business to gain exposure, customers, fans, credibility, and perhaps most importantly, a top spot in the search engines, you must offer content – and great content at that. Content marketing is the key to promoting your business and impressing Google, but it isn’t easy. Not all content is created equally. If you want your content marketing efforts to succeed, here are five tips you must keep in mind.
Quality over Quantity
If you want your content marketing to benefit your company, your content needs to be good. Too many businesses make the mistake of focusing on quantity, thinking that the more links and more content is best. It’s just not the case. You’ll always experience more success with high-quality content, even if you put out less of it. Focus on making sure every piece of content you produce meets high standards for information, writing style, grammar, spelling, relevance, and even design.
Content that Lasts
“Evergreen” content is also the best way to go. Evergreen content means that the information is timeless. It isn’t dependent on current events, statistics or facts that will change, a date, etc. It will benefit your business the most because it will be indefinitely relevant and useful. This doesn’t mean you should never post material that’s timelier. It’s perfectly fine to put out content that’s relevant just now, however, for the most part you should focus on the evergreen.
Diversity
There are so many different forms of content; it’d be very difficult to name them all. Don’t put all your efforts into one type. While the majority of your content might take one form, such as blog posts, you’ll benefit more when you experiment with others. Consider newsletters, forum posts, lists, infographics, videos, webcasts, and more. Not only will it make your entire content marketing campaign a success, you’ll also be able to test out different approaches to see what works (and what doesn’t).
Pay Attention to Distribution
Similar to the way quality is better than quantity, not all distribution channels are equal. For example, one piece of content on a popular and well-respected website is more beneficial than fifty pieces of content on fifty little-known websites. Concentrate on getting your content distributed via the sources with the furthest reach and most authority. While those small sites may still help put your content in front of more viewers, they should not be a priority. In addition, placing content somewhere that doesn’t have a good reputation will hurt you more than help.
Watch and Learn
Once your content is released, never forget about it. Perhaps the most important part about content marketing is analyzing your results. Look closely at the details, such as number of page views, comments, shares, downloads, etc. The data will help you figure out where your strengths and weaknesses are so you can use that information to improve. To this end, it helps to define your specific content marketing goals beforehand, and to revise and readjust them along the way.
Charlie Adams is a marketing professional and entrepreneur who loves to give advice on various marketing strategies and tactics.
