Content is a powerful thing online nowadays and many businesses are trying to find new ways to boost traffic to their websites and social media handles. It’s all in the hopes of getting a bigger following and converting those potential leads to sales. As a company, your content marketing strategy is always something that’s worth assessing to see how you can improve it.
With that being said, here are five tips to level up your content marketing strategy in 2021.
- Be more diverse in your content team
Regardless of whether you have an in-house team, an outsourced provider, or a mixture of both, diversity is important. Diversity helps to contribute a range of topics and ideas that are going to cater not only to your target audience but will also be a representation of the world around us. Having people from different backgrounds, not just from a writing point of view but in general, is essential.
It’s good that each team member knows what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are so that they can all work as a team to create the best content marketing possible. When there is something missing or lacking within your content team, that might be an indication of needing a new member or perhaps an opportunity to outsource.
You need a wide range of skills and interests when it comes to your writers, graphic designers, or editors. The more diversification you can have, the better it will be for your content and the success of that content. It’s also great to more aware of the content you’re putting out and having others question anything that is potentially misconstrued by your audience.
It’s very easy for companies to create content that’s been received with some negativity by the general public. Previous examples are campaigns like Pepsi’s 2017 ad with Kendall Jenner, trivializing the BLM movement. Reputation is easy to lose but can be very difficult to gain back.
- Know more about your audience’s needs
The data you have on your audience currently is worth exploring and if you don’t know enough about them, then it’s important to get more of that data. From website analytics to the demographic of your followers on Instagram, having a good knowledge of your audience is going to help with improving your content marketing strategy.
For example, you might have an audience that goes beyond the country and language that you operate in. Therefore, you might need to take advantage of using more tools and software as part of your content marketing strategy. It might be audio to text services, subtitling for videos, or creating content that’s going to be more universal.
Video is an incredibly effective way to communicate your brand and you can use it in a variety of different ways. Whether it’s a testimonial from a customer, behind-the-scenes footage of the company, or demonstrations of your products in action, corporate video services can be used to build trust with your prospects and customers.
Knowledge of your audience is going to help the content that you produce, hit exactly who you want, rather than it missing the target completely. When you’re spending money on marketing for your business, you want it to be successful in its reach and with helping to get customers through the doors.
If you’re struggling to get information on your audience, then consult your existing customers. Use methods like email marketing to help understand your demographic a little more. It could be filling in surveys or simply exploring the data that your customers have inputted when creating an account.
The benefits of social media are that most platforms offer some form of analytics where you can look further into who is following you and therefore the type of content that they would enjoy.
- Consistency with content is key
Being consistent is a very important element when it comes to content. It’s good to have an audience that are glued to your profiles or website, eagerly looking forward to the next campaign or content you have going out.
Consistency is hard for some businesses to keep up and so it’s essential when it comes to your content marketing strategy, that you have a schedule in place. This can be something you plan out on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis, depending on how much content you want to produce.
Content planners keep everyone in check and it can be super helpful when it comes to making sure that your audience is getting enough of your branding via their social media feeds or through organic searches on your website. Planning can also help avoid any mistakes from being made or having content forgotten about that needed doing.
When working in a team, you want to provide them with all the necessary processes that are going to make their roles easier. So by having some form of plan in place, you’re going to ensure that consistency is achieved every day in the business. It’s not something you can afford to drop the ball on, especially as there’s so much content being churned out by other businesses all over the world.
Again, if you’re struggling to remain consistent, then it might be that you outsource or get additional help with the creation of the content. You may want to be more structured in how you create the content, the design, and schedule it. There is plenty of software and tools available to do this and that can make business processes a lot easier.
- Focus On Quality Over Quantity
Quality is always going to be more important than quantity. If you’ve created an advertising campaign that’s basic in design and doesn’t indicate your call to action or get your message across, then it’s not going to be well received. It’s essential that your content is being actively engaged with and quality can provide that.
A lot of it can rely on your branding and how effective it is in capturing the attention of your audience. It’s worth looking into something like a brand tracker survey in order to see just how recognizable your brand is and how it can then is improved as a result.
From creating imagery for your products on social media to writing blog posts for your website, all of the content you create must be consistent in quality. You could post over a hundred low-quality posts that do nothing, but that one post you spend more time and energy on could provide a lot of success for your company.
With your content marketing strategy, make sure you spend time proof-checking your content and quality-checking it with more than just one individual. It’s always good to have another set of eyes on a campaign or post to see if anything can be tweaked or changed to make it better.
Ask your audience for feedback too and pay attention to how well they engage with the content. A high-quality piece of content is going to get a lot more engagement and you’re possibly going to help convert more leads into paying customers. There’s a lot of benefits that come from putting more effort and time into the content you produce. It certainly makes a difference when it comes to getting noticed by new customers and followers of the brand.
- Optimize For SEO
Content needs to be done properly and for that to be done, it needs to be SEO-friendly. Search engine optimization is helpful to cover when it comes to the creation of your content. Why? Well because it can help you rank higher on Google’s or Bing’s search engine. When creating content on your website, it’s important to focus your attention on content that hits a checklist of SEO essentials.
These can be things like making sure all links included lead to a high-authority site and that are fixed when broken. Compressing images and giving the alternative text on them, the keywords used in the content itself. Keywords are important because it helps customers to find you more easily when searching for you via the search engines.
Optimizing your content is certainly going to help when adding it to your content marketing strategy. The more you perfect your posts and webpages in general, the more impressive it will appear for Google’s crawlers. There are plenty of existing webpages and content that’s currently on your site, that might need updating with any of the tips mentioned above.
A lot of businesses will outsource their SEO needs because it’s a task that does need doing regularly and sometimes having expertise in this field can often be limited when operating in-house. There are lots of individuals and businesses that will be more than happy to help your business create the right type of content when it comes to search engine optimization.
Level up your content marketing strategy for 2021
The previous year has been a struggle for many businesses and the online world is fast becoming one of the best places to be for a company in this modern-day world. With that being said, if your content marketing strategy is looking a little outdated, then 2021 might be the year to focus on tweaking it and making those adjustments needed to better your content going forward.
Use these tips to help drive more
About Carson Derrow
