Is content marketing one of the marketing strategies you are thinking about using to promote your startup? This type of marketing strategy has the potential to attract huge numbers of shoppers, customers and subscribers who want to find out more about your business. Below is a guide that will allow you to perform content marketing in a much more effective manner.
Planning
Every business activity you undertake needs to be planned and content marketing is no exception. It’s vital to have the tools and information required to create a solid plan, so that you are aware of any pitfalls and are able to control and manage the content you produce.
It’s a good idea to look at other content marketers to see how they approach this activity, so that you can plan in a more realistic way. Once you understand what’s involved, you can set out a plan that details who will do the work, how much it will cost, when it will be done and what approach you will take.
Define your target audience
Before you publish a single word online, you have to identify your target audience. These people have concerns, prefer certain things and ask certain questions. If you don’t know exactly who you are writing for, it is very difficult to satisfy their content needs.
Some research will uncover huge amounts of information you may not have considered and will make it much easier to create content that a specific group of people really want. Visiting forums, blogs and social media web pages that discuss your niche or industry will quickly give you this valuable information.
Reaching a bigger audience
As a start-up, you probably won’t be able to reach a large audience by simply publishing content on your website each week. Instead, you have to find ways to make your content more shareable and use tools like Link Discovery to find the optimum places to publish it.
Type of content you will publish
In the past, content marketers mainly communicated through text. However, in recent years this has all changed and video, images and audio are also used to great effect. The content in these formats can be published on your own website, but this content can also be hosted on other websites such as video sharing websites like YouTube, that reach a much wider audience.
What your content should achieve
Every piece of content you create should achieve a certain goal. In some cases, you may want to educate your audience about a new product you have, in other cases you may want the reader to share your content.
And in other situations you may want a reader to subscribe to your email list after they consume your content. Strong calls to action need to be included in your content, once you decide what your content should achieve.
Content marketing can be a powerful way for startups to attract more shoppers, customers and email subscribers. Success won’t happen overnight, but following the tips above will put you in a much better position to benefit from this marketing strategy.