If your brand was a star and your audience a stargazer, what would make them look at you over the billions of other stars in the sky?
Content Marketing is a giant black hole in the universe of marketing that if you let it, will suck up all your time and energy. The time we spend coming up with ideas, creating blogs, filming videos, designing inspirational quote cards etc, and publishing these across multiple channels from Facebook to Instagram, LinkedIn to the infamous TikTok, it’s exhausting just to think about. And because there are so many variables and decisions to be made a long the journey, like “what should the CTA be,” and “what time of day should I post this?” you can end up wasting endless hours building content that never achieves its purpose.
Fortunately, there are some basic guidelines that, if used consistently, can help ensure your content is not only seen by the right people, but gets them to take the proper action with your brand. Without further ado, here are my 5 DOs and DON’Ts of Content Marketing.
1. DON'T Promote content before it has been properly formatted and optimized for search engines
Especially for written content, you want to make sure your blog or article has been formatted properly, this includes creating an engaging title, breaking paragraphs into sections with eye catching headers, using images or video where appropriate, using keywords that attract your target audience, and making sure your blog is optimized for mobile viewing.
2. DO take the time to set goals and target a specific audience
If you publish a blog just to have something to show, and then invest money promoting it without a goal, you are not likely to get the outcomes you’re looking for. Make sure your content has a purpose, for example, to educate consumers on your product, or to entertain consumers with a funny anecdote about team culture. Similarly, make sure you are targeting a specific customer group, not trying to reach everyone and anyone. In doing the latter, you will reach no one, because in 2020 consumers demand to be treated as individuals that you care for and have taken the time to get to know on a personal level.
3. DON’T promote without a call-to-action (CTA)
Make sure that when you are boosting a post to clarify the follow-up action you want your readers to take. Do you want readers to subscribe to your newsletter so you have their email address? Do you want them to fill out a form on your website so your sales team can follow up via phone? If the CTA doesn’t match the content, or worse, there is no CTA, you will have trouble seeing the results of your content marketing efforts.
4. DO find ways to measure what’s working and what isn’t
One of the most common ways to do this is create what’s called an A/B Test. This is where you take one piece of content, select one variable to change and then promote both versions to see which one gets better results. For example, a healthcare startup could promote a blog called "Diet trends in 2020" and use two different images, one of a healthy looking dinner and another of two people cooking. The key is to keep every other variable the same (blog title, publishing channel, date/time, audience) so you can be sure it is the image that is making the difference. The results may show that the audience is more likely to click on an image of people than the dinner plate. Then, this may inform their team’s decision to post more blogs with images of people.
5. DON’T neglect your community
Promoting content consistently that only includes you / your team’s content will stifle your reach. Inviting guest bloggers to publish, creating partnerships with other brands, or finding ways to include your customers in your content will increase the number of shares your content gets. We spend so much time focusing on what to say and how to say it, that we forget that social media is still a two way conversation, and it’s important to spend time listening, and asking others to share, not just publishing and promoting our own thoughts and voices.
If you live in San Diego, I’m available to meet in-person or we can schedule a Zoom call over coffee.
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