When developing a content marketing plan, utilize these 10 secrets to keep focused:
1. Write for the reader, not your company.
Help your target market do their job better and improve the quality of their lives. How will people use your content? Scan it or dig through it? How is your content perceived.
2. Use quality thinking to improve lives and avoid marketing-speak content.
Taking the time to put quality into your thoughts and content solves problems and makes work easier. Best of all? It’s free.
3. Use Content to get found in Google.
Getting to the first page of Google–a great position for visibility and sales–means that your content must be effective through its mechanics in addition to its quality. While it’s important for content to educate and drive loyal customers to you, don’t forget to optimize meta information such as the title tag and the URL. Keywords are great for usability and and SEO, and knowing what long tail keywords you want to hit is extremely helpful (long tail keywords are unique, specific terms as a opposed to broad, competitively searched terms).
4. Make consistent content the voice of your brand.
Many may contribute, but try to have one consistent voice for your brand.
5. Use content to translate what you already do very well.
Get very specific on product and service content that is unique to you. Make it full of benefits and remember that ads are not content.
6. Make content a competitive advantage.
Cover the basics, but also offer try to offer content that your competitors don’t (or in a way they don’t). Also consider offering content free as a competitive advantage.
7. Always use captions with photos and graphics.
People are visually-oriented, so images are a great way to draw the eye. Captions help place images in context and can also offer more SEO opportunities.
8. Communicate in layers.
Your front page should be clear and simple, explaining the basic concept of you Website and how it will benefit potential customers. Go in a little deeper to one of your main pages and you can start to elaborate with content such as product descriptions and articles. Even deeper you might find more specified content such as situational examples or testimonials. Remember: keep it light on the front end and deeper on the other pages. Just because you have the content doesn’t mean you have to throw it all in one place.
9. Write lists and steps. Explain your process.
Lists are a great way to keep things simple and are easy to digest. They are also a great way to offer helpful processes and instructions.
10. Write direct and simple taglines and headers.
Communicate with strategic purpose.
Bonus Secret: Content is cheaper and more permanent than most forms of sales and marketing! Plus, it provides great ROI.
