Content marketing is one of the most important and challenging aspects of modern marketing. Despite rumors regarding the relevancy of content, it is apparent that it is still king and plays a vital part in all marketing endeavors. This form of marketing has changed considerably over the years, shaped by demand, user experience and preference, algorithm changes, and competition. If you want a successful content marketing campaign, it is important to plan it out carefully. In this article, we discuss different fact you need to know before you embark on this process.
1. Content Comes in Different Forms
When people think of content, they often imagine witty articles or research pieces with facts and numbers. While written Content forms the bulk of all content marketing, it isn’t the only medium marketers use. A solid campaign will include a wide range of different formats like:
- Infographics
- Photographs and images
- Videos
- Animations and graphics
- Audiobooks or podcasts
It is important to ensure your campaign is versatile and has something for everyone. Your audiences have will have different preferences when it comes to content formats. Some will like video and pictures while others will prefer plain text.
2. Content Helps Establish Trust
Modern consumers are much more careful about where they invest their money than their predecessors. They research products, read reviews and collect as much information as they can before they make the purchase decision. Content can help you earn their trust and encourage them to convert.
Good quality content showcases your competence in the field. It shows customers what you know about the product and your industry. Content also provides them with additional information regarding the products and services provided. They’re less likely to look at some third-party source for more information.
3. Content is Essential for Link Building
Both content and link profiles are two of the three most important ranking factors today. You can’t get good links from high-authority websites unless you some interesting information to offer in return.
Long-form articles with facts, percentages, and numbers are more likely to attract links than generic articles of less than 500 words. If you want to build a good link profile, you will have to invest considerable effort into content creation.
4. Content Length Matters
When content marketing first started out, people would churn out generic 300-500-word articles in the hopes of becoming visible on search engine results pages. This doesn’t work anymore because Google wants to make sure its users get quality content. Research indicates that the average word count of high-ranking pages is around 1800 to 2000.
Google deems any piece of fewer than 300 words as thin content, though there are some exceptions to this rule. If you want a successful content marketing campaign, you need to make sure that your articles are at least 1,000 words in length.
5. Content Value Also Matters
Word count is less important than content value and Google’s search engine is advanced enough to differentiate between the two. Machine Learning and AI make it possible for Google to understand the context of the articles and establish relevancy. The crawlers take everything from inbound links to the page statistics into account to understand the content value.
If you have a 2,000-word article that doesn’t provide any value to the user, it will rank low on the SERP. On the other hand, if you have a small 200-word piece that provides essential information like a definition of a technical term, your page will rank high. It is important to balance content value with word count to get the best results.
6. Evergreen Content Provides Great Value
Evergreen content is a piece of content that evolves with time and provides extended value. For example, an article like “All 200 Ranking Factors Explained” has long-term value and can be upgraded every year to ensure the information remains relevant. This type of content requires a lot of effort at first because you need to carry out in-depth research and understand the topic well. You will also need to provide facts and statistics to improve the value of the content.
Once the article is live, it will start attracting links consistently over a long period of time. You just need to make sure the content is current and provides fresh information. You can upgrade it every year or every six months to get the best results.
7. Content Marketing Relies on Promotion
You won’t magically gain an audience as soon as the piece is published. It is important to promote the piece as much as possible to get substantial readership. The best place to promote the articles is on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The promotion will draw more people to your website and invite linkage opportunities as well. You can also promote articles through your website an in E-E-mail newsletters. Get as many eyes on the content as possible for the best results.
8. Focus on User Intent
In the past, SEO experts would pick a few keywords and write an article around it. Today, they focus on user intent and look for topics that their target audience might actually read. For example, content marketers look at the comments on their articles, browse through social media, and explore Q&A platforms like Quora to find topics their audience might be interested in. They then create a detailed article on the topic and promote on different platforms.
This ensures you’re filling a vacuum and satisfying a demand instead of just waiting for audiences to find you. The focus on user intent helps bring more visibility to your content and can improve your link profile as well. It can also improve your reputation in the industry and earn customer trust.
Content marketing is best left to professionals who have experience in this field. Many small businesses try to save money and carry out a DIY campaign. While this can be effective, it doesn’t deliver the same results as a possible campaign will.
Author Bio
Archana Singh is a Professional Blogger and Content writer. He is working with Ranking By SEO. In his professional life he has written many useful articles about WordPress, social media, SEO and almost all about Digital Marketing.
