Do you have questions about content marketing and development for your own company? For some people this is confusing language, but you will find that if you break the whole picture down into manageable parts, you really can develop a great marketing strategy. While there are companies that can help you with these aspects, simply knowing how the whole process works can help you in building strategy and more importantly, reacting to patterns.
Yes, learning your audience is important but for now, were going to talk about the basics of how to develop content and create an online marketing campaign. Regardless of what kind of product you’re selling, whether a physical product from a store, a book from Amazon, or even a software program, your online strategy is going to be similar: give your audience the information they need. Not about “you” but about how your product addresses their needs.
The content on your website is the driving factor in your Internet marketing campaign. Your content gives you search engine ratings, builds your viewer base and draws attention to your services or products.
Technicalities of Content
While content is generally associated with an article or blog, it can also be multi-media, enriched with graphics, videos, prose, photos or other digital assets. The content developer edits the media and codes it into hypertext markup language (HTML). The content writer pays specific attention to finding keywords that will yield good search engine results. These words may be chosen for their unique qualities, for public interest or their ability to summarize information quickly.
In the early days of the Internet, businesses were able to acquire high search engine ratings through the manipulation of keywords. The process, known as keyword stuffing, used prime keywords repeatedly to manufacture Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Basically, they were writing documentation for a machine, not a human viewer.
This process has changed drastically over the last few years. The sophisticated algorithms no longer respond to repetitive keywords and instead recognize stylized and authored work. Keywords continue to be an important aspect of the Internet search, but their most powerful base is in the title, first paragraph and anchor text of the document. For best search engine results, keywords should be used naturally and flow easily with the text.
The Content of Your Business
Your website is your virtual real estate. Its landscaping and development is entirely in your hands. You can open virtual doors into an office, shop or venue, create interactive designs, cover your site with glossy photos, or maintain a standard news format. Your content is your welcoming voice, your personality. It tells readers what they can expect from you as a business and as an individual catering to their needs.
Internet users are very hip. The style and delivery of your content tells them whether you’re just giving an advertising pitch or actually have useful information. Some information is critical to readers, such as location, office hours, products pages, shopping carts and contact information. This information should be displayed on the home page or listed in a category. What will actually drive readers to your site, however, will be articles and blogs focused around your services or products.
Determining Your Blog Content
It’s easy to develop tunnel vision if you’re focusing primarily on the quality of your product or listing the services you provide. While it’s vital information, the very aware public has heard all of it.
1) Place your offer in its surroundings. This surrounding is where your offer is most likely to be used. This will help you visualize the type of audience you are likely to reach.
2) Once you have determined your likely audience, identify the common interest groups. If you’re selling fishing lures, your blogs might include instructional fishing videos, real life adventures in fishing and standard fishing equipment.
3) Speak their language. If you have a new medical device, all the technical and medical terminology would be expected if you are pitching your product at medical technicians. If you want that new medical device to appeal to the public, explain it in terms they can understand. Generally, the public likes a conversational tone, but it can be humorous, colorful or journalistic, depending on the subject matter or demographics.
Blogging Ideas
In order to retain good search engine ratings, your website is expected to remain active. After the initial head rush of creating your website and filling in all the pertinent information, website administrators often find themselves groping around as to what to do next. There’s only so much you can say about your product or service, right? Wrong. Once you have placed yourself in your surrounding, there is a virtual world of other things to talk about that relate directly to your offer.
1) How-to blogs and videos. Probably one of the most popular searches today among internet users is picking up useful how-to information. If your product is a table saw, naturally a video on how to use it will be popular, but don’t restrict your video presentations on just what the table saw can do. Viewers like to see blue-prints for projects, step by step instructions for creating projects and safety tips. Other tips could include home repair, customized speaker boxes for vehicles or handy yard furniture.
2) Human interest stories. This can’t be stressed enough. Everyone likes a good story, whether it’s about an easily identifiable experience, something they wish they had done, or something they intend trying out in the future. The story does not have to be centered around your product, just around an event where your product is likely to be used. If your product is sports equipment, the common human interest factor will be more on the sport itself than in the actual product.
3) The environment of your venue. Venues often get more caught up in promoting their services than in promoting the environment around them. Certainly the public wants to know what they’re getting for their money, but unless they’re local, they may wish to know what’s so special about your location that they should travel there. Produce blogs that promote not only your venue, but the area surrounding it. Include the local color, the demographics, the climate and the seasonal attractions.
Maximizing Your Potential
There’s nothing like a killer blog to drive viewers to your website, but the production of lively, informative articles does more than attract an initial audience. It also triggers the interest of other website owners with similar content. Link building is a powerful asset in SEO writing. Check the websites that wish to link for compatibility with your site. There may not be a good reason to link your website promoting child car seats with a site advertising small engine repair, but it could be appropriate for child care, travel, and even legal blogs for vehicular accidents, as well as child products.
Make a list of the categories your product or service accommodates. Be sure to think in terms of related subject matter. Do an Internet search for websites that fit the categories you’ve listed. Check up on their own killer blogs. Contact the administrators to see if they are willing to accept a guest blog or provide a link. Quality links will boost the visibility of your website and improve the search engine results.
The Value of Socializing
Perhaps what sets the Internet apart from television and radio the most is its interactive aspect. Viewers don’t just surf the web for news, movies, and music. They enjoy being active participants. During its early years, the Internet became flooded with forums and chat rooms that allowed people from all over the world to connect, state their opinions and engage in conversation. While these services are still intact, Facebook and Twitter revolutionized the way people connect by creating social networks that made it easy to keep tabs with friends, family and other interests.
Social networking is the most strategic way to acquire an audience. The users of social networking sites willingly re-post blogs, photographs, news items, videos and information they find attractive and that they believe their group will find interesting. Occasionally, a post will go “viral”. The content will raise so much enthusiasm, it will be shared multiple times simultaneously, by multiple viewers.
Your goal, as a socializing business, is to present posts that viewers will wish to share. When you break it down into “things that go viral”, you may feel your options are limited if you are only thinking in the box of your product or service. Viral posts are usually hot news items, delightful humor, fascinating video clips and stunning photography.
Viral Content
When you break it down into these categories of content, it becomes possible to clearly see your options. For example, if your product is an energy saving device, and there has just been a news story broadcasting the need for energy saving policies within a given region, you have the opportunity to market your product while discussing the energy crisis.
Funny animals are all the rage on Facebook, which is a wide open door if your business is in pets or pet supplies. Wild animals doing funny things makes great advertising for those heavily invested in the tourism industry. Generally, however, using animals feels a little limited unless you can think of a good angle for using them in your marketing campaign. Funny people, sparkling wit and just plain silliness does tickle the funny bones of the socializing crowd, however, and have unlimited use in a strategic social network marketing campaign.
Before building your social network, take a good look around you. What is there in your surroundings that holds people’s eyes? Visualize the environment where the product or service would most likely be used. There are very few offers that cannot be associated with beauty, nature, art, music, safety or seasonal holidays.
Your Engaged Network
The same strategies apply to a social networking site as do to your website. You must keep your site active to build a strong reader base. You can do this easily with your social networking sites by linking them to your website. You can also extend your circle of friends by posting comments regularly to your group’s pages.
Stimulate conversations. The websites and social networking sites that create the most public interest are those that enable and encourage commentary. Respond quickly to your readers, using a conversational voice. Whenever appropriate, be the one to ask questions. Readers who leave comments find nothing more rewarding than expanding on their views.
Final Organization
Your marketing campaign begins with defining your product or service and crafting a suitable website. Your website should have a theme that compliments your business. Your content should be a seamless integration of images, blogs, articles, videos and interactive display. It should invite readers to engage with the business.
Determine the style and delivery of your content. For your social networking sites, try to incorporate all aspects of viral media; news, humor, videos and photography. Keep tabs with all current news that might pertain to your marketing offer. Incorporate them into your blogs and social networking sites.
Stay connected. Readers respond best to the personal touch, the feeling that they are a part of your circle. Make your commentaries about them, keeping your advertising spiel to a minimum. Build quality links and form partnerships with similar sites, sharing guest blogs and engaging in conversations that would provide more information.
The Internet was the great leveling ground for businesses. The new marketing campaign spreads out to a highly competitive global audience. Streaming videos and movies on demand have practically replaced old-fashioned television, with the largest audience, the fast moving youth and their mobile devices. The rules that governed marketing strategies for radio, television and paper publishing do not apply to Internet marketing. Your website must be accessible across multiple platforms, your content must be more about engaging your audience than in advertising your product or service, you must stay on top of all current events and deliver information that is both interesting and timely.
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