According to a survey from CMO Council, 90 percent of marketing leaders said they had a content marketing strategy, but only 2 percent deemed their current approach effective. Even worse, 12 percent of marketers feel that their brand’s content keeps specific audiences, industries, and targets top of mind.
In other words, marketers see enough value in producing great content to make it a part of their budget but struggle to produce the results they read about. Where’s the disconnect?
If Content Is King, Let It Lead
While SEO sits on the throne, content keeps the kingdom functioning. Content development, search, and social media need to work together to develop a high-quality strategy that is consistent across the board.
What this means is that content development needs to be active — it needs to be held to the same standard as any other search campaign. Content should be held accountable for impressions, traffic, and sales after each piece is published.
Data from Google Analytics will let brands keep an eye on how well each piece of content is performing. The metrics aren’t for show. They’re benchmarks to improve upon.
All too often, because a lot of resources go into creating content that stands out, brands run out of fuel necessary to stay consistent. With news sites and bloggers constantly raising the bar, writing well is not enough.
Marketers must analyze the success and failures of their content against their goals to identify new obstacles and opportunities. Identify weakness and adjust content over time to keep consumers engaged and taking action.
Many tools intended to optimize content can be overwhelming when a brand’s strapped for resources. With a content studio, specialists know that brand storytelling needs to match consumer interest and intent.
Infographics, slide decks, and interactive tools can bring much-needed variety in a maelstrom of competitor content. Articles created across all channels and devices are meant to provide a digital PR solution and empower traditional public relations strategies within a digital landscape.
Listen To Your Consumers
With all this information, content needs to be crafted with consumers in mind. Poorly conceived content that doesn’t connect with readers is not going to convert them into customers. Or worse, they’ll buy elsewhere.
It’s helpful to leverage expert opinions and the knowledge of your team when developing specialized content. Integrating content strategy into other initiatives allows your content team to extract unique knowledge of each specialized team to create authoritative content that drives action.
Buying patterns and pain points discovered through internal discussions can be instrumental in developing content ideas that will connect with audiences pain points in their search for solutions. Content strategists need to be communication experts to create a bridge between business solutions and customer problems.
After improving the supply of content, audience insights like age, location, and interests give brands opportunity to see on who’s engaged and what they expect from your content. Let your content stream evolve more information about the audience becomes available.
There’s enough information to discern where web traffic is coming from, so rigorous targeting strategies are an important factor for digital marketing success. From search to different social platforms to even emails, finding where an audience is likely to click and engage with content is key to reaching the most valuable consumer.
I Hit Publish. Now What?
One thing’s for certain: the road to sales starts online, but not necessarily on a website. Without providing optimized access on essential channels, like smartphones, brands are leaving money on the table.
According to CMO Council, no distinct sharing pattern will dominate, especially when there are so many different touchpoints across all digital platforms. Search and social media are both vital to engaging with consumers on all devices and with all content mediums.
Bloggers and social media experts bring a lot more value to outreach efforts. While turning consumers into influencers is useful, turning influencers into consumers will amplify the reach of branded content beyond the bounds of their own followers.
But they aren’t perfect. Help publishers optimize their content for search by providing links to the perfect landing page to provide more information for consumers. It will help both parties boost their SEO portfolio and discovery.
We live in a multichannel world, and that means there is going to be variety in content delivery. Social media platforms are increasing in complexity and cost, leaving consumers as the ones to ultimately benefit with improved user experience. Meanwhile, brands need to play catch-up and figure out how to incorporate that functionality into their content strategy.
In order to have content reach its maximum visibility potential, more resources need to be dedicated to optimizing the digital PR of each piece of content. Working with experts who specialize in sharing content beyond in-house social networks and blog posts is the key to successful content strategy.
But there is a bright side: these platforms come with a wealth of new audience data ready for brands to take advantage of. This creates an opportunity for brands to really reach their customers once they establish a strong, evolving presence on each search and social channel.
So where do you tie them together? By setting multichannel goals and customized, evolving content development strategies that find the right audience.
While having branded activity across all platforms is a great place to start, a variety of high quality content types, links, and social media posts kept to a high standard is necessary to reach a wider audience.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Boost Web Traffic With Active Content
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