5 Tips for Jumping Straight Into Content Marketing

FacebookTwitterLinkedInEmailPinterest

The world of content marketing has many uses when it comes to business but many don't utilize it themselves. In that case, you can start your own content marketing business, whether in an office with like-minded and talented individuals or on your own as a freelancer. There are many facets to content marketing and while some people mistakenly believe it relates to advertising, ads are indeed a part of the overall strategy.

When used correctly, content marketing and all it entails is extremely powerful. For online businesses, marketing has the potential to increase leads and conversions, generate sales, and drive website traffic. From a consumer perspective, content marketing also provides opportunities to interactively engage with an audience in a way that wasn't possible just over a decade ago. Social media can play a crucial role in establishing a brand, building trust, and maintaining loyalty.  

Some important steps include: 

• Get Set Up with Hardware and Software
• Learn SEO and Apply it Properly
• Create Content Relevant to Customer and Audience
• Learn How to Leverage Analytics Software

Adequate computers and software are the first steps to developing content marketing learning SEO and how to use it properly are vital. To develop a solid strategy you will need to appeal to your customer’s audience while taking their needs into account and this can be extended across social media and advertising. Social media can also be used to stay actively engaged with audiences and using various analytical tools for trend identification.

Get Set Up with Hardware and Software

Before you begin any work, it is important that you first set up an adequate IT infrastructure that can be used for your content marketing strategy. The power of PCs is changing all the time and surpassed the theory of Moore's Law years ago. With each installment of necessary software, the hardware requirements for running it usually increase. With that in mind, your years old PC or laptop might not be capable or fast enough for running a smooth content marketing campaign.

Multimedia PCs with adequately fast memory and processing power are expensive but computers can be leased. This is a great option where finances are initially a concern and PC, laptop and iPad rental is becoming a popular choice for both short-term and long-term projects. In addition, an adequate internet connection is vital for reliable communication, uploading of assets, and accessing cloud-based SaaS applications such as Monday and ContentCal and specialist apps such as Photoshop and Premier also require adequately powerful CPUs.

Learn SEO and Apply it Properly

The foundation of modern online content marketing is search engine optimization (SEO) which helps drive traffic towards a site via organic search from platforms such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Traffic such as this is attained by ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) where the goal is to rank as close to the top of the list as possible for a given search term known as a keyphrase. This is because users generally won’t click results in the lower half of the first page or any subsequent page that is presented to them following a query.

There are multiple types of SEO:

On-Page SEO

This relates to SEO on a page of your site and includes what is known as meta content. Meta content refers to the page title and description as well as keywords you aim to rank for and image-related keywords. 

Off-Page SEO

Items that aren’t present on your site yet relate to your site or a specific page in terms of SEO are known as off-page. These mostly include links known as backlinks which are inbound links to your site from reputable sources and relevant off-site pages. 

Technical SEO

Technical optimization is coded SEO items that can help your site to rank without keywords, metadata, or backlinks. These include items such as speed optimizations, mobile-friendly responsiveness, and maintaining a consistent site structure. 

Local SEO

This type of SEO is often overlooked or underused yet it remains a very powerful tool. Local SEO can direct users to your real-world business based on the location from or for which they are searching, and the business will appear in Google Maps. 

Any one of these types of SEO alone is powerful enough to accelerate a marketing campaign but when used in conjunction with each other in the correct manner has the potential to ensure potentially top-ranking SERPs. The free and natural traffic generated by correct SEO implementation effectively negates the need for expensive advertising at the beginning of a campaign, allowing you to get a client site up and running quickly and efficiently.

Create Content Relevant to Customer and Audience

Studying requirements and constraints is essential to running a successful marketing campaign. While it’s very easy to focus on what the audience wants it is easy to forget about the client’s requirements as well. Both are equally important but developing content for the consumer base should be the primary concern. 

This can be tricky at first but once the ball is rolling you can utilize various data points to develop a more efficient strategy moving forward. Analytics tools can provide excellent data if you know how to read it, but simply engaging on social media by setting up polls or browsing and answering comments can offer unique insights directly from your audience.

Learn How to Leverage Analytics Software

Google provides analytics tools for free as part of Google Console, which is effective at monitoring overall data related to a site. Social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube provide data tools as well. Most of them are very similar and allow you to make data-driven decisions based on interpretation. 

There are also private analytics programs for statistics and data modeling such as HubSpot, Buffer, and Moz. Most of the best platforms provide all-in-one solutions for extracting and interpreting data within given datasets as well as Customer Relationship Management tools. CRM systems essentially provide the means to organize and interact with large amounts of customer data.

Getting started in content marketing isn’t an easy affair. Before you begin, you will need at least a good computer and a fast internet connection. The real first step lies with implementing SEO and while just one type is good, utilizing multiple SEO techniques can be extremely powerful.

Of course, content is key and relevancy is how you will rank for keywords and metadata. It can be difficult to know which content to create at first but with the correct analytics tools and active engagement, you can make data-driven decisions about where to go next.