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0:14 – How can I achieve success with content marketing?
0:42 – Stop talking about content marketing, start writing an editorial calendar
1:45 – Are you a “Content Machine” already? If not, you should be
2:35 – Prioritise engagement in 3 simple steps
3:22 – How can you know what your target client is really searching for online?
3:57 – Reaping the rewards of social media (like a gold digger!)
4:42 – Quick overview of content marketing
Hi, it’s Fiona Soutter here from Super Savvy Business.
00:14 – How can I achieve success with content marketing?
The big question I often get asked is “How can I achieve success with content marketing?”
It’s the big question on a lot of business owners’ lips. I know a lot of people try to do content marketing effectively, but they just don’t get the results. So I am going to give you 4 tips today as to some simple things that you can put into place that will help you to gain some traction with your content marketing and actually get a good ROI (Return On Investment).
00:42 – Stop talking about content marketing, start writing a calendar
So the first thing I’d like to share with you is to have an editorial calendar. If you don’t have something written down and it’s just spoken about verbally, then it is very easy to get off track, to forget where you are going, what your goals are, what you’re trying to achieve. Perhaps if you’ve had a theme in place, then you might stray from that.
So sit down and work out what you plan to produce, publish, and then syndicate.
I like to work on 3 month blocks, possibly on themes: depending on the type of business, you can have a “Spring” theme, or perhaps a “Racing” kind of theme, or whatever theme works within your business. But sit down and actually write it down.
Think about what you are going to publish as far as videos, blogs, images that you will share through social media… have it all there. Perhaps it will be customer testimonials, perhaps it will be a Fun Fact Friday; think about all the different types of content that you can cover and put that down in an editorial calendar.
You’re more likely to stick to it and you are also more likely to be regular with your content production.
1:45 – Are you a “Content Machine” already? If not, you should be.
Now, that brings us to Step Two, and that is to be a “Content Machine”.
The most successful businesses, when it comes to content marketing, publish several times a week. It’s not a once-a-week, or once-a-fortnight, or once in a blue moon. And they do it on a consistent and regular basis.
You hear me talk about this a lot when it comes to content marketing.
And the reason being is not just because it gets you frownie-brownie points with Google (because they see you adding fresh, relevant content to your site consistently – which helps to raise the authority of the site), but also your community will stay more engaged if they know that they can come to your site or to your social media profiles and be provided and served up good quality content that is going to help answer their questions, entertain them, and keep them engaged.
So, that’s the second step.
2:35 – Prioritise engagement in 3 simple steps
Step Three is to prioritise engagement. Just by having a documented editorial calendar strategy in place and posting on a regular basis, that in itself is going to help to prioritise engagement and help keep people engaged with your brand.
But there are a few things you can do as far as helping to increase this engagement:
- First of all, define your audience, know exactly who they are.
- The next thing to think about is what are their main needs, wants, desires, problems that they want solved? Be clear on that.
- Then the third thing is to create content around that. So you are actually serving them information that they are wanting.
3:22 – How can you know what your target client is really searching for online?
How do you find these sorts of things out?
- Well, brainstorm with people in your business
- Send out surveys
- Talk to your customers
- Listen to their wording when you’re having meetings
- Listen to people when you are interviewing them
- Go on to forums and see what sorts of conversations are going on with your target market
- Look at social media…
Just listen and look, find out, ask, brainstorm, and you’ll very quickly be able to determine the kind of topics that they are wanting to read information or get information about.
3:57 – Reaping the rewards of social media (like a gold digger!)
Finally, my last thing I’d like to talk about is to invest heavily in social media.
For the majority of businesses, social media is a great way to be able to connect with your audience. Most of your audience are using social media, but even if they are not there for business, they are there for personal reasons.
Plus, more and more social media is being used in business. For example, Facebook is a really good example of how it started off as just a social platform where people would just talk about their personal lives, but now from a business perspective it’s absolutely GOLD.
Will work for a lot of businesses; but perhaps if Facebook might not be for you, it could be LinkedIn or even Pinterest (it is growing rapidly and getting fantastic results for many business owners).
4:42 – Quick overview of content marketing
So there you have it: the 4 steps to helping to improve your content marketing campaigns and get a much better return on investment. Let’s just recap on what those four things were as follows (feel free to tweet them so your friends can also take notice):
That’s all I have for today. My name is Fiona Soutter and I look forward to seeing you in our next update! Take care and bye for now.