Content marketing is considered the king of getting business today. How can you do better at it, and increase your results?
Whether you are running a small local shop, a virtual Silicon Valley tech startup, a real estate business, or are investing in real estate, you are going to need content marketing. Today that covers everything you are doing in branding, advertising, raising money, and customer retention. It spans across blogging, website content, social media, and on and offline ads. This is a make or break factor. Here are eight ways entrepreneurs and business owners can and should use to enhance their content marketing results.
- Research
The first and biggest blunder most are making in this area of business today is just winging it on their hunches. If you want to be an effective content marketer, and to get the best ROI on your budget and time you’ve got to know the facts. You need real data, accurate data, and need to understand it. Throwing all of your money into an SEO and social media ad campaign based on thinking “sell your home fast” is a popular and valuable term in your city, can be a train wreck and bankrupt you if there aren’t actually any motivated sellers using that term in Google. You don’t know without good data. That applies to building landing pages, creating social media profile bios, and more too.
- Have a Plan
Do you actually have a content marketing plan, and content schedule? When know what happens when we don’t have a plan. Yet, many just have an overall marketing plan, and the content part doesn’t really have any direction. Having a plan and schedule helps achieve specific results, and enables you to get ahead of the game, and be publishing timely, quality content, rather than to be rushing to throw up whatever can be managed in time, or missing time sensitive opportunities. This will also help to drive down marketing and lead generation costs year after year.
- Delegate to the Pros
You may be a master strategist, master of your industry, and even a great writer, but most entrepreneurs and CEOs don’t have the time to be creating their own content, and they shouldn’t. You may chime in now and again (perhaps after consulting your team and consultants), yet, this time intensive role is best left to content marketing experts. That is data analysts, copywriters, and designers who spend every day mastering the intricacies and constantly changing marketing landscape. Delegate content creation out to freelancers or agencies who can propel your business and drive in the leads, while you focus on higher level things.
- Teamwork
One of the most critical parts of content marketing, especially when you begin building a team, is to make sure the team is working together. Do they know what each other are working on? Do they know what you are planning next? Do they have the technology and connection to collaborate?
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Promote Your Content
Two common mistakes businesses are making is that they end up with choke points that result in clogged up content which never gets published, or they fail to get it the visibility it deserves. Whether you are investing in creating a video, infographic, or great blog post, make sure you make the most of that. Get is published fast, while it can have the maximum effect. Then promote it. Get more eyes on it. Recommend it to other content marketers, boost it on social media, and repurpose it in multiple ways.
- Keep it Unique
Whatever you do, keep your content unique. If you simply copy or mimic everyone else you’ll have nothing unique or especially valuable to offer others. Be unique, be interesting, and stand out. That’s what will create results. Fail to do this and you’ll be sabotaging your own efforts and budget, and could end up with expensive Google penalties.
- Build in Synergy
Make sure there is synergy across your content. This applies to looks, tone, word choice, keywords, and funnel flow. It applies to web page content, social media, blog posts, and opt-in magnets.
Summary
Content marketing is so important to entrepreneurs and business owners today. Use the above tips to bet better results and to maximize your marketing budget.
