With Christmas rapidly approaching, we thought we’d offer the gift of wisdom by sharing 12 content marketing tips that can take your content marketing efforts to the next level!
If you’re aspiring to be a thought leader in your field or you wish to generate leads by publishing thought leadership content, always check your sources!
It can be easy to find statistics from an article titled, ‘10 Mind-Blowing Facts on Content Marketing’ but ask yourself, how reliable is the source? If the website is unreliable, you could tarnish your brand's name by publishing false statistics.
Another common mistake brands make is using their competitor's website to add validity to their content. If you do this, you’re at risk of directing potential website visitors to your competition, which can mean you’ll lose credibility and business.
At the end of the day, you won’t see Tesco putting up signs saying “Go To Aldi”. By linking your competitors to your website, you’re essentially doing the same thing.
In B2B content marketing, authenticity and credibility matter! That’s why supporting your content with sound research and credible sources is the foundation of excellent content writing.
You can read more about credible sources, how to find them and which websites you can trust by reading our article on ‘How to Identify Credible Sources in B2B Content Marketing’.
Did you know, 55% of online visitors spend 15 seconds or less on a website? So if your introduction doesn’t grab their attention in those 15 seconds, you’re at risk of losing a potential lead.
It’s absolutely essential to entice your readers with a good introduction. You can do this by:
You can also start your content with an enticing hook. There are three types of hooks you can use:
A good question at the beginning of your article can spark an interest or challenge a thought in your reader’s mind.
Example:
“Did you know…”
A statistical hook is an excellent way to kick off your content, shock your reader and leave them wanting to know more.
Example:
“The Economics Times found that only 8% of the world’s currency is physical.”
This can be a direct quote from an interviewee or an insightful quote that gets to the crux or the heart of the matter.
Example:
“Client X went above and beyond to ensure we achieved our goals in the short space of 6 months.”
Caution! You must avoid is clickbait introductions! This is where you state you're going to answer a question in your content, but you fail to do so. This can frustrate your reader and damage your credibility.
For further insights into creating well-crafted introductions and hooks, check out our blog on ‘Tips and Tricks on Creating Engaging Introduction and Hooks’.
A powerful call to action (CTA) is also needed to help direct your audience once they’ve landed on your page.
An astounding 90% of visitors who read your headline also read your CTA. Therefore, it must be powerful enough to encourage them to take the next step.
Here are some good tips on writing an effective CTA:
For further examples on creating compelling CTA’s, check out our previous blog on ‘How to Entice your Reader by Writing an Engaging Call to Action’.
When you’re in the ‘writing zone’, you can easily miss out on a comma or two, or perhaps misspell a word. It’s such a common mistake. However, you can avoid that by having a second pair of eyes read over your content.
If there’s no one around to proofread your work, you can set it aside and come back to it in a couple of hours or days. That way, you will have a fresh pair of eyes when reading over it.
There are also tools available to help correct grammar and punctuation errors. For example, Grammarly is an excellent tool to use to ensure your content is in top condition.
Although these tools are brilliant for spotting the minor mistakes, they can often fail to grasp the tone of voice you’re projecting. As a result, they offer suggestions that may not be correct or make sense. Therefore, you should never blindly accept them and instead use it to support your content rather than write it.
Did you know that the brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than text? Meaning, a user is likely to remember more information when it’s well designed than if it’s just laid out in text.
At CopyHouse, we have echoed the importance of balancing both copy and design to create engaging and thought-provoking content.
Although you may have a brilliantly worded article, it’s noteworthy to know that the average web user has an attention span of 6.8 seconds when it comes to viewing a single page on your website. However, if a website is well designed and visually appealing, that can be increased by 50 milliseconds. This can make the single difference between a user leaving or staying on to reading your work.
To learn more about the importance of balancing copy and design, check out our article on ‘The Art of Audience Communication with Visual Content’.
“When you market to everyone, you’ll reach no one.”
It’s crucial to understand your target audience before developing your content strategy. You can do this successfully, by creating a customer avatar. A customer avatar is the ideal customer for your business. By tapping into this buyer persona, you can understand your consumer on a deeper level, therefore, better catering your brand’s services and content to them.
When creating a customer avatar, you must take into consideration the following:
Once you've thoroughly researched this, you can then adapt your content marketing strategy to cater for them.
For more information on the psychology of consumers and how to create a customer avatar, check out our blog and video on ‘Unlocking your Brand’s Potential with Customer Psychology and Avatars’.
Did you know that 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google searches? And from that percentage, only 0.78% of Google searchers click on the second page?
Although you may have produced brilliant content, it can go unnoticed if you fail to have a strong SEO strategy supporting your content strategy and pushing it further.
Having the right SEO and keyword strategy supporting your content can allow it to rank high on search engines and generate organic traffic. This organic traffic can then transform into highly qualified leads if your content is up to scratch!
However, to create a strong SEO strategy, you need the right SEO tool. At CopyHouse, we use Semrush to search for keywords that will get our content noticed.
You can read more about Semrush and how to use it here.
The average B2B buying cycle is 6 to 12 months. This is considerably longer than a B2C sale because B2B buyers are often less impulsive. During this long duration of time, your audience will be at different stages of their buying journey. Therefore, you cannot produce a one-size fits all marketing strategy.
There are three stages of the sales funnel where different content can be applied.
We’ve all been there. Where we’ve written a piece of content that has done exceptionally well but is now going through a dry spell. Instead of throwing it to the side, repurpose it!
You can simply update the copy to be more relevant to today’s issues and trends, or you can transform it into another form of content. For example, an infographic, social post, or if it’s a piece of long-form content like an eBook or whitepaper, you can create bitesize blogs around it.
Repurposing your content not only gives it a new life, but it also allows you to strengthen the SEO around it by finding stronger and more niche keywords.
Not long ago, CopyHouse repurposed content for InPlayer and the results spoke for themselves. Our team revamped the content and made it more appropriate to the present day. You can check out the case study here.
Creating quality content is important. However, if there are no visitors or your content is struggling to attract potential leads, you will need to re-evaluate your content marketing strategy.
That’s why using analytics to see what is working, what isn’t working and what needs to change, is a must!
Focusing on analytics can also help you refine and improve your strategy for the future.
For example, suppose your analytics show that more people are engaging with your content on LinkedIn and only a small fraction are engaging with your content via drip email. You may want to rethink your strategy and focus on sharing more content via LinkedIn and use drip email campaigns in other ways, such as sharing events and company updates.
Although long-form content can be time-consuming to create, don’t be afraid to spend that extra bit of time to publish it.
Interestingly, long-form content can drive almost 4x more traffic than short-form. This is because it truly engages your audience due to the depth of the topic. Long-form content is not for a quick read, the intention behind it is to educate and inform those who are after answers to specific questions.
Although the longer the content is, does not mean it’s better than short-form content, long-form content is a great way to generate traffic to your website and should be part of your overall content strategy. This will help you generate leads at each stage of the purchasing funnel.
Long-form content can be anything above 1,200 words and usually involves the following:
On the other hand, short-form content is anything below 1,200 words. This can include:
As mentioned, although a mix of them should be used, do not shy away from spending that extra time creating great quality long-form content.
The pandemic changed the core messaging of B2B brands. Although marketers were once creating content that sells products or services, this mindset has now shifted to a serve mentality.
Content marketing has a new tone filled with empathy by creating content to help others as opposed to hard sells.
In the Technology CMO Outlook Report, numerous marketers who work for leading technology brands such as Adobe, ContentCal and SAP express how their core messaging has changed over the past year. They’ve all agreed that we must now, more than ever, acknowledge that behind every business is an individual with pain points, that must be addressed. As a content marketer, you must understand these pain points and show how you can help successfully resolve them.
A content pillar approach provides a complete answer to any question a user may be searching for on a given topic.
It’s essentially a long piece of content that can be broken down into other forms of content.
For example, if you create an eBook, you can then use this long-form content to generate numerous short-form content pieces such as blog posts, infographics, videos, emails, social media updates, and more. This will provide your audience with more information and insight on the topic.
This method of creating content is an efficient way to cover numerous platforms and get your message out there, whilst helping you lead customers down the purchasing funnel.
It also helps support different groups of people. For example, if a potential lead prefers blog posts instead of listening to a podcast, you can cater for them by ensuring your content connects with each customer. The same will apply if a lead prefers a podcast over a blog post. The information is readily available.
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