‘Content’ has been one of the top marketing buzzwords for a couple of years. When done right, content marketing creates continuous engagement with your customers and is a relatively low-cost approach to building a successful brand. If you are starting content marketing this year, there are certainly some big trends to watch.
1. Create longer content
Most marketers think the ideal length of a blog post is within a few hundred words because no one would read anything longer than that — that is an old and outdated thought. As the internet world becomes ever more crowded with words and blogs, people are much more willing to read a long, well-written article that offers good quality information. A good blog article is easily longer than 1,000 words.
But if you want to go for shorter content, keep it relevant and to the point; cover only one or two key points. A 600-word article covering ’10 things you need to know’ often means you are not really saying anything about any thing.
2. Outsource to a content writer
Although content marketing has been around for a while, it is still a relatively new form of marketing. Most companies are just getting started, trying to figure out what is the right type of content, or even building a content marketing team.
Don’t forget that for content marketing to be successful, you need more than just a talented writer — you will also need a graphic designer, a digital marketing manager and a UX/UI designer to produce high-quality contents that drive traffic. Therefore, rather than recruiting an in-house writer, it is often more cost-effective to outsource the writing task to a content writer.
3. Stop focusing on your brand, your product and your service
It is tempting to write a whole article selling your brand and your offerings, but your readers don’t want that. Content marketing is about sharing engaging content with your customers. So write about something that your customers want to know.
If you run out of ideas, choose one keyword that you know is highly relevant to your offerings or your industry, Google it, analyse the conversations around it, pull out a few more relevant keywords that keep popping up and create content around that.
4. Work with micro-influencers
Influencer marketing isn’t new. But when you say influencer marketing, marketers generally think of those with thousands or millions of followers and tend to overlook the power of the lesser-known influencers. They may have only 5,000 followers, but what truly matters is the engagement rate of these 5,000 people.
Try reaching out to these smaller influencers; they tend to be more open to sharing ideas and building a solid connection with your brand. What’s more, you can probably get the job done with a smaller budget.
5. Segment your target customers
The days of one-size-fits-all marketing are long gone — relevance is hugely important in content marketing. If you have not started using data analytics, 2019 is the time to start. Segment your customers according to demographic characteristics, purchase patterns, or whether they have used a specific service you offer, then write interesting content targeted to a particular segment. It doesn’t mean you have to invest in an expensive software; there are some free analytics tools available in the market, just start with one of those.