Content marketing may look and sound easy enough, but when it comes right down to actually sitting down and churning out relevant and relatable articles the task can seem downright daunting to most.
Before we dive into the do’s and don’ts of publishing your own content marketing, let’s take a step backwards and define what content marketing is.
“Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.”
What does content marketing actually mean for your business? And what makes it different than how you are already marketing your products or services?
Content Marketing vs Copywriting
You might think of them as being very similar pieces of work, however they are certainly different.
Content marketers primarily uses blogs, podcasts, video, and social media sites as a vehicle, while Copywriters pen alluring headlines, inspiring landing pages, and conversion-driven emails.
Content marketing is being used by almost 90% of businesses today, however effective content marketing is a little harder to locate.
Effectively Harness the Persuasive Power of CopyWriting
When you put pen to paper (well fingers to keyboard) and effectively harness the proven techniques of copywriting within your content you will soon find that your readers will not only happily subscribe to your content but they will also more than likely share it with others.
Rinse and repeat to continue to build a loyal audience.
It’s like the magic slot machine, find the right formula to stand out and keep on growing.
The Basics
The following is a checklist of basic fundamental items that any savvy content marketer should include in each and every piece.
- Headline – Before your audience every reads your content they are going to either be wow’d by your headline or bored / disinterested and leave. Put everything you have into your headline, think copy: make it pop, lure, and entice your readers to want more.
- Content Structure – The best way to structure your content is to use the classic inverted pyramid format. This is the same format that most newspaper and magazine articles use. The most important information is presented right away, followed by pertinent details, lastly adding in the background information.The format is a winning one because it puts the most important and compelling information right at the beginning, drawing in the reader.
- SEO – Now don’t let those three letters scare you off. Page optimization doesn’t have to be your worst nightmare. Optimizing your page will help improve your page’s visibility and Google ranking. Not to mention getting the right kind of readers to your site.
- Call to Action – Sure if you are writing a “Dear Diary” kind of post, I doubt you will need a call to action. But my guess is that you are writing content to get closer to some sort of end result – Lead gen and/or Conversion. In order to let your reader know that is your intention, it’s important to add a call to action to your content piece. It could be as simple as “Follow us on social media,” or it can be more promotional, such as “Click here to purchase this product that provides a solution to the problem.”
Let us know in the comments below how you are using content marketing in your own business to increase sales, leads, etc.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
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