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9 Content Marketing Ideas for Success!

Marketing has evolved over the years, and attempts to woo future customers with traditional self-praising ads are just not adequate. Customers want to know more about your product, interact with you, and see if they are getting value. It is only then, they will become advocates of your brand and buy your products and services. Thus, content marketing is a means of achieving this trust and building a long lasting relationship.

content marketing ideas for success

Make a top 20 list

You can start off by making a ‘Top-20’ listing; search the web for top Bloggers, Tweeters and Instagram influencers, for your particular field. You can provide detailed information about these 20 people and what is so special about them. Let the audience know why you are so interested in their blog. Be genuine and make it interesting. You may also tag these influencers, in your postings. Some of these influencers may even re-tweet you, thus giving a lot of traffic back to your website and even improving its SEO value.

Answer industry specific questions

Content writing is all about providing value. People are always on the lookout for valuable information. You can answer various doubts pertaining to your industry via forums like Quora as well as your own blog. People will thus, get to know you by reading your answers and this helps you gain the reputation of being an expert in your chosen field.

Let the world know your Team

Interview your own team member. Let the audience know what an average day in the office, feels like. Talk about their aspirations, dreams, life and current affairs. Your fans and visitors on social media, as well as your blog, will realize that they are not dealing with machines, but human beings.

Reveal your new products (sneak peek)

Reveal your new products to your audience first! They will feel special by your gesture and love to be the first ones to start the buzz.

Make a tutorial video about your product

Make a video about how your product is used. Not every product needs a tutorial for usage instructions, as people will usually be familiar with them. However, if it is a new and revolutionary product, about to take the market by storm, it doesn’t hurt to show the world how it actually works. And the video will definitely generate a buzz!

Have a 50% OFF sale

Nothing sounds dearer to the human ears than hearing someone say “FREE” OR “50% off”. So capitalize on these magical words, and announce a 50% sale. Also make sure it is for not more than 3 days; create a sense of urgency! Make a nice graphic, put it on your website and watch the magic happen!

Hold a contest

Outside of a 50% sale, the other word which generates an equal amount of interest is “Contest”. Plan a contest for your fans. It may be as simple as taking a ‘Selfie’ with your product and posting it on social media. You may use the services of Gleam, in order to increase the chance of your contest being shared and becoming viral.

Participate at an event and write about it

 People love to hear valuable tips as well as experiences of others in the same field; you may include such topics to make your content writing all the more interesting. For example, if you were at a trade show, you may re-collect your experiences there and write a blog about the whole trade show participation. You may even compose a point wise checklist of the “Do’s and don’ts about trade show participation”.

Share the inspiring story of how you became an entrepreneur

People crave for inspiration, and if it is coming from people of their own field – then there is nothing like it! Share your story and tell the audience about what inspired you to start off on your own. Tell them about the difficulties you faced and how you overcame them to setup your own business. Let them know, what it takes for a business to succeed.

These are the different ways in which you can use content marketing to provide value as well as market your products and services.

The Importance of Content Marketing for any Business

A lot has been said about Content Marketing and how it helps in SEO. So what’s it really about and why do businesses need it?

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People have been watching traditional advertisements over the years, and really lost trust in all those self-aggrandising slogans and punch lines.

The world is now changing, and customers are getting more interactive. They want to know everything about their product, how it looks from different angles. They want to interact with the manufacturer to know more about it, read the customer reviews, and buy them only when all their doubts are satisfied.

All this is possible thanks to digital and social media. Traditional media obviously couldn’t get you all this extra interactivity and information. Speaking of social media, this is used to create an awareness of our product. However, everything cannot be crammed onto social media. One obviously cannot write blogs on one’s social media timeline. What can be done, is, links with pictures can be posted, so that the interested ones can click on the link, visit your website and read through your content, whatever it is about. In fact Google is giving preference to content than other SEO technicalities.

What is Content Marketing?

As the word suggests, content is written by businesses to market their products or services. The primary aim of content marketing is to supply valuable and FREE content to attract an audience and build a following. The type of content you create must impart valuable information and may be indirectly related to your product or field. Thus, people will interact with you, trust you and listen to your take on the subject at hand. Last but not the least, chances are, that they will also be curious about your products and services. And want to know more about it.

Your content can then be used to gradually educate the audience about your product so that they can trust what you are offering. Thus, the FREE and valuable content can convert prospects into clients, and clients into repeat buyers.

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How is it different from Social Media Marketing?

When you are marketing via Social media, you tend to post various text, images, and videos on Facebook. This means that the source of content is within Facebook itself and being used to achieve your ends.

However, when it comes to a content marketing strategy, your website’s blog is the place where all the action happens. The content will be posted on your blog page. Then, you leverage the power of social media by posting a link to the blog article, infographic, video on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google PLUS and other Social Media.

Now that we know what Content marketing is about, why should we go about it, or what are its advantages? So here we go:

  • It builds trust: People do not perceive traditional advertising as seen on TV and newspapers, as trustworthy content. Gone are the days, when the ‘loudest shouter’ on traditional media won more customers! This is where Content Marketing comes into play. In this case, the users themselves share likeable content with their friends. The message is spread by the most trusted media i.e., via ‘word-of-mouth’.
  • Gets you conversions: Content marketing can also help in the generation of quality leads. The more you satisfy a need, more the engagement you will generate. You can write exceptional content. Now there is again two types of content and that is:

 

  • Un-Gated content: This content is readily available as part of your About and Blog pages. This contains all the information the audience wants to know about your company and your product. This information is FREE and readily available on the website.

 

  • Gated content: This can be more specific information related to the subject, written as downloadable PDF. This can be accessed by registering your name and email ID. Depending on the perceived value of the information, you may ask users to give additional details like telephone number, address, occupation among other things. These registered users are your leads. These leads can be converted into customers at the appropriate time.

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  • It builds solid relationships: This is a type of marketing which gives more to the customers instead of asking them to buy products. Customers get a lot in terms of free information and knowledge. The video blogs also provide entertainment as well as the latest trends in the given field. Customers can, in turn, comment on the blog and share with friends if it is interesting. Thus, solid relationships are built with fans, who themselves become your brand ambassadors and propagate your product to friends via social media.

 

  • It can be measured for effectiveness: While is it very difficult to measure the effect of traditional advertising, one can definitely see the results in content marketing. The likes, shares and level of engagement of a given blog posting can easily be ascertained. Steps can be taken to mould future content based this particular response.

 

  • It does multiple tasks: Unlike traditional media, Content marketing can actually serve as a one-man army i.e., it can handle multiple tasks, generate awareness of the product and spread the word to prospective audiences. Once published, it can also initiate dialogue and thus facilitate interactivity.

 

  • Influence people even before they think of buying it: A content marketing strategy begins after a ‘buyer persona identification’, or identification of the target market. In a target market, you may have different personality traits and obviously unique personalities. Once we identify who our market is, we need to find out what they are lacking, and how we can genuinely help them with our product or services. With the help of our content, we can convey this message to the concerned audience and thus develop a rapport, even before they think of buying our product.

 

  • Content is well perceived if it comes with a social message: It will establish you not just as a business, but also someone who stands for human values and does their bit for the society and country as a whole. People would love your human values

 

Thus, we can see how content marketing can be influential, and powerful medium. One can use a solid strategy, convey our message to the intended audience in a subtle and respectful way.