Quality search engine optimised content is the not-so-secret key to achieving outstanding organic search results. Content is where you get the long-term growth of organic search results and is all about how we continually grow, build, write, video record and dictate really valuable content that our target audience finds useful and that they’re looking for online.Â
There’s a lot in all of that which we’re going to break down into bite-size chunks for you today.
Great digital marketing content builds trust & attraction
Great content builds you into the authority and expert in your field (that you know you are on the inside). This great content in turn builds trust and makes people naturally like you. The more I like you and trust you, the more I’m going to choose to use your services over competitors. Now, it doesn’t mean I’m going to buy from you today, I may not have a need for your services today, but I will most certainly sometime in the future.
Building strong relationships through digital content
Business is all about relationships. We need to start building a relationship with your potential customers. And that comes down to how are we adding value to them. By adding value to your potential customers (and expecting nothing in return in the first instance), they will like you more and they will trust you more.
How to add value
In digital marketing (and marketing generally today) we add value by helping people. And we help them by educating them, by providing them with information, resources, guides, how-to’s, etc.
Align content with your value proposition
To know this we need to have crystal clarity on your target audience and your defined value proposition, and then we can create great content that fulfils this value proposition to this target audience accordingly. The long-term aim is how are we building the complete ‘Wikipedia’ (for want of a better word) of your industry, your products or services and your business – both what you do and what you know.
Solid digital marketing strategies are vital
If you aren’t clear on who your target audience is, and what value you are going to provide them, you can’t be clear on what great content is for them. So you need to get this right to be able to create a great content strategy.
Digital marketing content is a great asset
Great assets add money into your pocket every day, week, month and year. And great content is an asset that is designed to continually drive leads and revenue to your business for many years to come. And that’s actually worth a lot of money. Your ability to continually bring in new clients and repeat clients is ultimately the value of your business. And that all boils down to how good your content is.
Great content starts with foundational pillars
Knowing your target audience and the value you want to add, also allows us to produce what we call ‘content pillars.’ The whole point of content pillars is to define the framework and categories around how we add value, information, education, and ideas to our target audience that’s going to make them like us more and more.
Here is one example:
- Guide Me: Given the uneducated nature of the market, we need to produce great content that guides the beginner through the minefield of how to choose what’s best for me.
- Techie: There is a real opportunity for you to own your space, so we want to show our thought/industry leadership with our, and others, technology advances.
- Let’s Get Healthy: This is all about how we help the general public get healthier, so let’s share ideas, recipes and habits that are going to help them.
- Inspire Me: It’s time to showcase how important healthy food is to life and how we are contributing to a better world.
Answer questions through digital marketing content
Marcus Sheridan’s “They Ask, You Answer” is a cracking book that I suggest you read. We want to overlay some of what this awesome book covers, which literally is just that for every single question you get from anybody about your products or services, you should be writing it down.
Then you should be making:
- A blog article out of it,
- A video out of it,
- A screen share out of it,
- A webinar out of it,
- or whatever else you can think of.
Every single question you get asked, you should write that down and answer it because if they’re asking it, chances are somebody else’s going to ask it, and chances are, somebody is going to type it into Google, and Google is going to show them your answer. Chances are half your customer base is going to ask it.
So that illustrates the amazing power in the sort of content we want to create.
Share your industry expertise
Let’s not be shy now. You really are an expert at what you do. You’ve done it for a long time, you’re good at it, and you’ve learned the hard way. Now it’s time to share that expertise with the world.
There’ll be ideas in your head of what you do, how you do it, and better ways of doing things that are contradictory to what your competitors do – these are all the things you should be sharing:
- How do you bring in what you learned from the last trade show in Las Vegas that you went to?
- How do you get ideas out of your whole team’s head?
Because once again they’ve got a plethora of knowledge that needs to go onto your website, which is worth its weight in gold. And ultimately they all form amazing assets and resources that can be shared throughout the business.
Great digital marketing content tools
There are some great technical tools you can use that give you an indication and guide to what people are actually typing into the search box that we want to get your content ranking for from your business. We need to make sure that there are some decent volumes coming through that we can write some good content about. This then drives the priorities of what content we’re producing and when we’re producing it.
Importance of keyword research
You put in ten seed keywords and it spits out the 4,000 possible variations. Then you go through and start categorising them together and that starts giving you some good themes of the type of content that you should start producing. The next step is content design and planning.
We need to then put that all together into a plan of attack so we know who’s doing what, when and how through the process.
The biggest challenge
The biggest challenge is to actually produce the content. Everybody has great intentions, and most will get the first piece or two under the belt, then it falls by the wayside. Customers get in the way, staff grab your time, etc. Making content production a priority and building working habits is one of the biggest challenges; however, making internal digital marketing content production a priority and establishing consistent habits is crucial for success.
Create great SEO content, not just content
You want to produce a good amount of great content, not just lots of average to good content. This is all about how we would use great, unique, interesting, informative, educational, bits of content.
Developing the right habits, cadence, and rhythm is essential. This means establishing a consistent schedule for content production, whether it’s a weekly blog post, a monthly video, or quarterly eBooks. Consistency is the key to effective content strategy.
Diversify content for your audience
We want our content in all the different formats as everybody learns differently.
We want:
- Standard blog articles
- Videos for quick and easy digestion
- Images and infographics
Leverage your content
We’re not creating new bits of content for each, we’re re-purposing it. The more we can use the same bit of content, the easier, quicker and more useful it becomes long term.
So we do a video presentation that we can turn into a blog article, and it gets shared out, that’s one of 10 that we do together that we can all package up into an eBook. That eBook can then be packaged up into a master bible of instructions or encyclopedia or whatever it may be on something.
Once again, it’s continually used in different formats for different benefits. Ultimately, we continue producing amazing assets for your business.
Promote & share your content
Once we’ve created it, we need to share and promote it (it’s no good for it just to sit there and do nothing). So we need to share it on your social channels (both the businesses and yours personally) and we want to pay to boost it. We want to email it out to your database, and we want to put it on blog sites, industry sites and discussion forums.
Note: you must pay to boost your posts, no point in putting them up if you’re not prepared for the world to see it and put money behind it.
Keep it individual!
Share it with individuals. People love you thinking about them, so share specific bits of content that are relevant to people at different times in their journey with you. One article is just as relevant to a lead as it is to a networking colleague or a friend.
Boost Your SEO Content With These Tips
In the world of digital marketing, content is king, but quality content is the emperor. To truly succeed, you need to create valuable, targeted content that resonates with your target audience. When done consistently and strategically, it will transform your business by building trust, authority, and lasting relationships with your customers. And remember, these tips and strategies should be used throughout all your customer and client relationships.
