From blogs to webinars, there are many content marketing ideas to help establish your brand in your industry. But, this can make deciding which will suit your business best challenging.
So, social media, webinars, newsletters, or podcasts? Which will benefit your business the most?
Consider improving brand awareness and engaging with your target audience to drive traffic and sales. Those are the goals behind all content marketing. This article aims to inspire you to take your content marketing to the next level.
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Blogging is the keystone to many (if not most) content marketing strategies. Recent studies support the need for high-quality content in easy-to-read blog posts. 70% of people prefer to get their information from blog posts (over traditional ads), and How-to articles are the most popular format.
Blogging isn’t the only type of content worth developing as part of your marketing strategy. There are many types of content to explore and experiment with. Let’s start with the basics.
When your brand is new and your content strategy is in its infancy, the goal is simple – grow brand awareness. You want more people to learn about, recognize, and become loyal to your brand.
It’s easier said than done, but with the right content distributed through the right channels, it’s not as impossible as it might seem.
The first step in successful content marketing is knowing your target audience.
How do you manage that?
Research. And buyer personas.
Know your target market
Researching and understanding your target audience can help you tailor your message and approach to better connect with potential customers, boost engagement, and ultimately drive sales. A practical way to do this is by creating buyer personas.
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. You use it to understand their needs, desires, pain points, and motivations.
First, you’ll need to gather customer data, such as demographic data, purchasing habits, online behavior, and interests, to identify common traits. Then, using these traits, you can create a template that includes a name, photo, job title, goals, challenges, and preferred communication channels.
From there, you can develop scenarios for each stage of the buyer’s journey and track their effectiveness to refine them as needed.
You need to have content for your target audience to answer their questions, explain your product or service, and why they should choose you over your competitors. So, you’ll need more than blogs.
Let’s explore the best basic ways for new brands to announce themselves to the world.
Cheat sheets and checklists are short guides with tips, shortcuts, and reminders to help people complete tasks or reach goals. They’re designed to be practical, informative, and easy to use. Their value also makes them effective lead-generation techniques for businesses.
These manuals teach people a new skill or guide them through a task. They’re ideal for customers looking for an actionable solution who appreciate DIY.
A how-to guide usually provides step-by-step instructions for learning a new task. It can sometimes come with visual aids (e.g., sample images, infographics, and videos) to help convey the message.
For instance, it can teach you how to install a new software application or fix something.
A beginner’s guide goes more in-depth into a subject. It’s a comprehensive introduction aimed at people interested in something new. It provides the basics of a topic in clear and straightforward language for readers to understand more easily.
An example of this can be an overview of content marketing analytics for marketers looking to have a more data-driven strategy.
When you log into your email account, there’s an excellent chance you’ll find a newsletter.
Providing both education to entertainment, newsletters are a tried and tested form of digital content. They allow you to share information about your business and get the contact details of potential customers.
Email lead generation can encourage people to sign up using downloadable content like ebooks.
Ebooks can deliver in-depth content, such as how-to guides, industry updates, and market trends. Since it’s digital, it can also feature embedded videos, images, and links to other resources.
Often used in B2B lead generation, white papers, and case studies inform people about a solution or approach a business can provide. These build credibility with ‌readers and help them make informed decisions.
White papers are authoritative content written formally and technically. They’re often used to introduce new products or services, highlight digital marketing industry trends, or propose solutions. They include references to research studies, industry reports, statistics, and statements from industry experts to support technical details and recommendations.
Case studies are like in-depth reviews. They demonstrate the results of using your company’s product or service and usually include metrics and data showing the performance or impact.
With the basics out of the way, you can now explore more creative content marketing ideas. It allows you to compete with other businesses in your niche and establish yourself as a thought leader.
By providing the best “hacks” in your niche, you can attract and engage your audience while showing off your expertise. Templates and tools are resources that help complete a task or process faster and more accurately.
Templates are pre-designed formats or frameworks that help simplify and streamline tasks, such as writing blog posts, social media posts, emails, and developing infographics.
Meanwhile, tools are web-based applications or software that provide a valuable function for users. The most common tools businesses offer include online calculators, keyword research tools, and social media analytics dashboards.
Tools and templates make excellent lead magnets. By gating them, you can collect customer information in exchange for access to the tools or templates.
As a thought leader, you should keep up with the latest trends and updates.
Host webinars or create videos to start a conversation within your niche. It’s also a great way to build your network and benefit from the credibility of the experts and leaders you interact‌ with.
Remember, you’re also an expert in your field. Just ensure your content is accurate, informative, and unbiased. Predict future trends and share them through guest posting or podcasts. You can also do product reviews and comparisons to cement your authority.
Conducting a content gap analysis will help you pick out interesting points you can use. This way, you produce more valuable content than your competitors. It’s all about going a step further for your target audience.
For example, if you’re writing content on real estate for beginners, look up what’s ranking well on SERPs. From there, you can create an outline that provides more insight, such as real-life examples and situations.
People want value and credibility. What’s more trustworthy than actual customers’ experience with your brand? That brings us to the wonderful world of user-generated content (UGC).
Many big-name brands have successfully done UGC campaigns, such as Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign and Starbucks’ #WhiteCupContest.
To encourage your own UGC, tag and highlight people who talk about your brand or do product reviews. And don’t forget to engage your target audience in the comments section of your social media pages. This practice will motivate people to communicate more with your brand and generate more quality content you can use.
A growing trend on social media is influencer marketing. It’s a great way to get social proof on a much larger scale. Just think about it — you’ve probably scrolled through your feed and encountered an influencer who made you want to try something.
Today, people trust influencers more than celebrities. Work with influencers who share your brand values to reach more of your target market on a social media channel!
Pro tip: Consider working with micro-influencers. They have small but fiercely loyal followers.
Around 75% of buyers use social media to find products or services or look up brands. More and more businesses use social media for their marketing efforts.
For instance, there’s a rise in “edutainment” on TikTok, which helps brands make more profound and meaningful connections with their target audience. From its portmanteau, it’s a new content genre for social media marketing that makes learning fun, especially as consumer behaviors shift dramatically.
Content creation is so much more than text. As a content marketer, you’ve got to mix it up with visual content like images and videos. You can also include GIFs, memes, podcasts, and interactive apps to bring your content to life.
One way to engage people is to offer free courses and online contests. Both can be valuable for your audience and your brand. Who doesn’t love a win-win situation?
You can use free courses to educate people about your product, service, or trends in your industry. They can include live or recorded webinars, email courses, and interactive online classes.
You can also generate leads as people register with their contact details. Online contests can also help create more UGC for your brand.
Use contests to encourage your target audience to take a specific action. Choose from formats such as photo, video, and trivia contests.
It’s a fun way to boost engagement and build relationships with potential customers. Make sure that your contests follow applicable laws and enforce data protection and privacy.
“Seasonal” doesn’t just refer to holidays and certain times of the year. It can be cultural or something specific to your niche as well. Examples could be flu season in the health care industry or flea and tick season in the pet care industry.
Seasonal marketing helps you tap into the emotions of your target market and, in a way, personalize your brand message.
Now that we’ve offered the above ideas on going beyond your brand, we’ll also give tips and tricks to fortify your content marketing campaign.
Content marketing goals are just as important as the ideas you work on. In a nutshell, goals significantly streamline your process.
Goals define your purpose and objectives and align them with your resources, time, and other campaign elements. They also give you direction and focus, help measure the success of your campaign, and inform future campaigns.
You can also organize your content creation process by making a content calendar. It plots when you should draft, publish, and promote content.
If you’re handling a team of content creators, this is also a great way to keep track of their work over a specific period.
Maximize your content marketing ideas by repurposing them. It means changing published content into a different format for another channel. For example, taking a screenshot of a tweet from Twitter and posting it on Instagram, or converting a LinkedIn post to a Twitter thread.
This practice gives you the most value from your content by reaching more people without additional cost and effort.
SEO is an integral part of content marketing since it ensures you’re reaching the right audience. With keyword modifiers, you can boost the relevance and visibility of your content in search engine results.
Words or phrases added to the main keyword create a long-tail keyword. This makes the search query more specific to a targeted audience and is usually easier to rank for due to its lower keyword difficulty.
For example, the keyword “virtual assistant services” has a much higher SV and KD than the long-tail (more specific) keyword “real estate virtual assistant services.” Therefore, the long-tail keyword should be easier to rank for in SERPs.
You’ll need all the help you can get to create the best content for your brand.
The right tools can make the process more efficient, improve quality, manage time more effectively, and even track progress. Tools can also provide consistency and boost teamwork if you manage multiple content creators.
Many tools are available online, free to start, and affordable to upgrade. For instance, Monday.com and ClickUp.com are two excellent project management tools that content teams everywhere use and love.
While these won’t create content for you, they will help keep all your projects and team members organized.
Other tools like Grammarly and Writer.com are excellent editing and proofreading tools.
Optimization tools like Frase.io and SurferSEO help outline, create, and optimize your content so your readers will love it, and so will Google.
These tools are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s available for content creators. Explore and find the ones that fit your needs and the needs of your team best.
Content marketing ideas are the foundation of a successful campaign.
Whether you want to generate new leads or amplify your brand presence online, content marketing ideas can help you achieve your goals by driving traffic to your business and boosting sales.
Great ideas start with research, so get to know your target audience so you can deliver relevant and engaging content that aligns with your brand.
Then, get to work!