Content is king when it comes to your online media presence. Making your own unique content is critically important for brand awareness, increasing sales conversations and overall successful marketing campaigns.
For example, do you post customized, branded content on your social media pages? According to Sprout Social, 22% of the world’s population uses Facebook, more than 450 million LinkedIn profiles exist and 93% of Pinterest users access their account to make purchases. These platforms are a fantastic way to reach potential customers.
Effective social media and marketing campaigns are now fully dependent on engaging content and how well you can use the various content creation tools at your disposal. Successful content marketers use blogs, podcasts, videos and social media sites to promote themselves and their businesses. However, some companies are not creating their own content and are losing out on all of the benefits of this strategy.
This article will fully cover why your business needs to invest in content creation by reviewing why and how it is an effective strategy.
What is Content Creation?
According to Uhuru Network, “Content marketing is a marketing strategy that revolves around the creation, publication and distribution of content to a target audience in order to bring new traffic (and therefore new customers) to your business.”
Switch on business to success with content
According to the online marketing institute, there are several psychological triggers that inspire people to share content. These triggers will help you understand how to create content that is successful for the future.
- Entertainment: people log on to social media to either wind down or distract themselves from the outside world. Make sure to fill your social media with humor, relevant memes, videos, music and more.
- Social approval: according to Copy Blogger, people love to express their attitudes and receive affirmative feedback from their circle of friends and acquaintances. Sharing content is a way to express one’s personality to a group.
- Support Ideas: social media can be used as a way to show support and connect with other people who support similar ideas.
- Communication: When it comes down to it, humans want to interact with each other. Social media allows us to do that no matter where we are.
According to 2Staillions, online consumers will use your website mainly for one of two things: they are either looking for information or they are looking for a product. If the content you use to promote your brand is dull and unengaging, you may be missing out on potential sales.
If you are worried that content marketing isn’t right for your brand, know that according to Content Marketing Institute prominent organizations including P&G, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and John Deere use this strategy to help elevate their brand. However, creating content is not just for large brands, according to Forbes, content marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing for small budgets.
According to Daniel Heerkens on 2Stallions, “Content marketing is the bridge between your services and your customers. Information, whether used as a tool to convert customers or to provide research data for prospective customers, will always be in demand. Using this information to your advantage using efficient content marketing methods is the difference between your business and your competitor.”
Content Marketing Increases Brand Awareness and Brand Loyalty
A reliable brand can build trust with engaging content. If your audience finds the content you are sharing or creating engaging, entertaining or helpful, you can easily start to build trust within your online space.
If you’re sharing enough engaging content on a regular basis, your audience will get used to seeing your content every week, and they will begin to think of your business as a trusted resource. Because of this, your audience is much more likely to share content on their timelines and with their friends, increasing the potential visitors to your website.
By regularly posting content to both your site and your social media sites you can increase website traffic and count on a constant flow of new visitors to your site. If you stick to your content plan you can demonstrate your skill and expertise repeatedly.
Content Marketing Can Help Sales Conversations
How does engaging content you share turn into conversions? The following statistics by Lyfe Marketing explain.
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- After reading recommendations on a blog, 61% of online consumers in the U.S. then decided to make a purchase. (Content Marketing Institute)
- According to 74% of companies surveyed, content marketing has increased their marketing leads, both in quantity and quality. (Curata)
- Video content can help provide a great ROI and significantly increase conversions, according to 72% of businesses surveyed. (CrazyEgg)
- Inbound marketers are able to double the average site conversion rate (from 6 to 12%), in part due to their content marketing efforts. (HubSpot)
By providing your consumers with content they find engaging and interesting, they are much more likely to stay on your site longer, which increases the chances of them converting into a sale. Another bonus of using engaging content marketing is that it will give your audience a reason to come back to your site and continue to engage with new products you may be offering.
Content Marketing Helps With SEO
SEO is complicated, make sure you give yourself every advantage you can.
As we have discussed at great length before in blog articles and social media posts alike, following SEO best practices is an important strategic element to successful blogging. According to Lyfe Marketing, content creation is the most effective SEO technique. In fact, business sites that post consistent blog content have on average of 434% more pages indexed by search engines than those that don’t publish at all.
Content creation and SEO go hand in hand for a number of factors. In blogging, you can use keywords throughout the article, in the title, subheads, photo captions, etc., which make your post more credible to the SEO algorithms. For videos, you can also include keywords in the video title, as well as the captions within the video.
SEO algorithms are always changing, and it can be hard to keep up, however, if you are consistently creating quality content and then outfitting it with relevant keywords, your content will appear higher in search results.
Search engines like Google also love fresh, new content. If you supply your brand with a steady stream of engaging content, Google will reward you with higher search rankings.
Blogging is a cost-effective and efficient method of content creation.
Content Marketing is Cost-Effective
Though content marketing costs about 62% less than traditional marketing tactics, it generates about 3 times as many leads, according to DemandMetric. Even though it can be time-consuming, content marketing doesn’t have to break the bank. If you use Wix, Weebly, Squarespace or another website service, they all offer some kind of free blog feature.
To design visual content, you can use free online services like Canva or Adobe Spark. These tools are limited in some capacity but are still excellent tools to use when creating content.
Even though content creation is effective, it can take a while to see results – as long as 18 months! Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see immediate results; establish a plan that you can stick to on a weekly basis and give it time to start to pay off.
Content Marketing Lets You Showcase Your Expertise
When a consumer is looking at your brand, they want to know that they are dealing with credible information. According to Lyfe Marketing, content marketing allows your brand to demonstrate its expertise in the field while providing valuable knowledge that can help readers make a more educated purchasing decision. The more content you share with your online consumers the more reliable you appear to them. If people view you as an expert, they are more likely to buy your product or hire you for your service.
How to Begin Content Creation Efforts
According to Sprout Social, when it comes time for you to actually start creating your own content there a couple of things you need to keep at the forefront of your mind.
- Find your voice: Your business has a personality and a voice. Make sure the content you create matches the tone you have already established so you have one cohesive message throughout all your content. Also keep in mind that different social media sites have different voices inherently. For example, LinkedIn is used mainly for professionals looking for jobs, whereas Snapchat is more fun and lighthearted.
- Tell a story: The main purpose of social media is to connect with your audience. Developing a plan is only half the battle when it comes to social media. In today’s day and age, people’s attention spans are incredibly short, and if you don’t engage a consumer immediately, you may lose out on a sale. When you create social media make sure you create an engrossing story that aligns with your core values so that you promote your own business and increase engagement with your audience.
- Know your competition: Standing out from your competitors is as important as the content you are creating. Use your competition as a benchmark for what to do, and sometimes what not to do, in your social media strategy. However, be sure to never copy and paste.
With patience, time, and dedication, content creation can take your brand to the next level. Make sure you develop a plan you can stick with and don’t get discouraged if you don’t see results immediately.
