This year has very much been the year of content marketing. Social media, second screen and mobile can all claim to have had huge marketing years, but they’re all just strands of content marketing anyway. In 2012, content is king once more. With that in mind, 2013 is likely to be even bigger. So we’ve come up with content marketing tips to help you make 2013 a successful year for your brand.
You Don’t Know it All
If you only ever take in one piece of advice about content, it should be that you don’t know everything about it. Nobody ever will, because content marketing is a constantly evolving concept. So read blogs, watch webinars and try things out, every day is an opportunity to discover new content marketing tips.
Quality Content Wins
You want your content to be found and shared. That’s why you’re creating it. In order to hit both targets you need to produce content of the highest quality. This year has been Google’s biggest push towards quality content so it makes sense for SEO. As far as shares are concerned, would you share low quality content?
But Don’t Overthink It
The danger with all content marketing tips is that they make you overthink. You should never over analyze or overthink your content. High quality content is content that others find interesting, engaging or amusing. You don’t need to hit certain word counts or video lengths. You don’t need to tick a list of boxes. Just create great content.
Don’t Limit Your Content Either
One of the content marketing tips you’ll hear over and over is to define and target the right prospects. That’s great advice, because the more quality prospects that see your content, the more chance you have to generate sales. But don’t limit your content by creating things that will only be enjoyed by your target market. If you create content with slightly wider appeal, you never know who might share it. And who they might know.
Share Over and Over and Over
With that in mind, share your content everywhere. If you think LinkedIn is the best place to share a particular piece of content or another should be sent by email, that’s great. You may be right and those channels might get you the best results. That doesn’t mean you should exclude other channels. It’s also important that you keep sharing content. The more you share it, the more chance it will be shared and the more prospects it will bring back.
Don’t Fear Variety
A lot of marketers have particular niches they like to stick to. In fact you’ll find plenty of content marketing tips about focusing on what you do best. Just don’t forget that what you do best can be used to add to other content. Blogs, video, images and infographics are all formats that work as well together as they do apart. Content marketers should regularly experiment; it’s the best way to learn.
Don’t Stop Posting
Content marketers can’t afford to take breaks. If you have down time planned, you need to have content ready to be posted. You need to stay on top of your prospects, because there’s so much content out there. If you let up, you only open the door to rivals.
Create and Curate
Some of the best content marketers out there never write a word of their own. They curate rather than create. Curation of content is an incredibly powerful skill. If you can pull together content from around the web and present it to the right people in the right way, you can create huge traffic for your brand.
Conversion is King
The most important thing is to remember to convert. Make sure you include calls to action with all of your content. Link everything to a conversion point and gather as much customer information as possible. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of content creation. Just don’t forget that it’s called content marketing and marketing is all about sales.
Take Everything with a Pinch of Salt
Last, but not least, take every piece of advice with a pinch of salt. That may sound strange on a post giving content marketing tips, but it’s true. You will get a lot of content marketing advice and you should follow a lot of it. But test it first. Only you know your brand and your audience. Make sure you don’t follow advice so blindly that you lose sight of that.
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