Content marketing is so mainstream these days that far from being innovative, it’s pretty much standard practice, no matter which industry you work in or how big your company is. The question is no longer whether your company takes advantage of digital marketing and social networking – it’s how you’re going to cut through the noise and attract the clicks and the attention that your content deserves.
There are the usual suspects to consider, of course – keyword research and SEO, digital advertising and social media marketing. The problem is that while these are all valid sources of traffic, they won’t work wonders. It’s a bit like attaching a rocket to a car – it might make you go faster, but it won’t be much good without wheels and a steering wheel.
It might sound like a bit of a cliché, but there’s no substitute for creating quality content. That means that the best way to get people to keep coming back for your content is to keep on creating the kind of stuff that people can’t find anywhere else. It’s not enough to simply create text that passes plagiarism checks – you need to identify subjects that no one has covered and ultimately think more like journalists and publishers than like marketers.
To series or not to series
One way to keep people coming back is to create a series of posts that build on each other. The idea is that if you create a series of different but interrelated blog posts, people who liked one of them might come back to take a look at another one. The problem with this is that it’s a double-edged sword, and you run the risk of people starting to tire of the series and no longer checking in with it. It’s a bit like when a TV show that you love jumps the shark but keeps on going.
As with most things, your best bet here is to keep your eye on the metrics and to use them to figure out when it’s best just to cut your losses and to give up on a series and move on. The same is true of any of your standalone articles – if you keep your eye on how the posts are performing then you can identify specific topics that are working better than others and do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
The good news is that it doesn’t really matter whether you’re writing standalone posts or series, because the same general concepts will apply. For example, you’ll always want to structure your articles with a beginning, a middle and an end with a call-to-action to tell people what to do next. If you’re writing a series, that call-to-action might be to read the next post or to sign up to receive email updates. Or you can stick with a more general call-to-action such as to get in touch or to make a purchase.
Conclusion
Content marketing is and will continue to be an excellent source of lead generation and engagement for businesses of all shapes and sizes for the years to come. The difference is that it’s now more difficult than ever before to cut through the noise and to get your voice heard, especially when you consider that every single one of us is a content creator in this day and age. The companies that stand out will be those who display a little creativity. Good luck.
Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.