Content Marketers: Five Best Handpicked Tips for A Smart and Successful Content Marketer

Content marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing and distributing content for a targeted audience online.[1] It is often used by businesses in order to:

•     Expand their user base
•     Diversify their user base
•     Establish or Increase online sales
•     Increase brand awareness or credibility
•     Create an online community of users

Unlike other forms of online marketing, content marketing relies on intercepting an existing customer need, as opposed to creating demand for a new need. As James O'Brian of Contently wrote on Mashable, "The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return. Instead of the commercial, be the show. Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story.

 Optimizing the website lead capture form is marketing without ado. It helps but the subtle marketing pitches and undertones help better. There are many bumpy crossovers in subtly insisting people to purchase. To overcome them, follow the below-mentioned hacks:

Blur the demarcation lineNo boundary line exists between the author and his readers. This is the first marketing lesson a content developer needs to internalize. The implications of this lesson can be far-fetched:

The author starts communicating with his audiences from the moment he jots down the first word of the copy.

I know what you are thinking. That communication is a two-way process, how’d the author communicate when there’s no one around him, right?

He needs to:

•     Anticipate the possible responses from readers. How well he can anticipate depends on his acumen.
•     When producing a copy, treat his readers as co-authors.

What happens when content is produced this way?
Readers can easily relate to it. Their doubts are cleared, they get solutions to their problems. Most importantly, they feel the content was written for them, which, in turn, increases the engagement quotient of the content and push readers to the sales funnel.

So, a bit of guesswork and predicting readers can do wonder for online content.
 

Take interviews
Next step is bringing others on board, so that the content’s virality score increases. Others include industry influencers. Interviews are great because they can be persuaded to become a part of the content production process.

Most influencers have a dedicated blog or a business site (in case they are business owners, which many of them are). They should have a reason to give you an interview. Convince them that the interview will add another feather in their thought-leadership cap.

There are plenty of benefits of interviewing thought leaders. If you don’t have expertise in a particular area, the thought leader’s expertise could suffice. Once you publish the interview, the thought leader will share it to his audiences, making it go viral.

Framing the interview questions can be really challenging. Follow the below-mentioned rules of thumb:

•     Ask the interviewee what makes his approach/product stand different from others.
•     Ask him about his audiences, their demographic details and how he retains them.
•     Ask him what, according to him, are the takeaways of the interview.

A word of caution is never use jargonish phrases because that’d make the interview esoteric and create a communication barrier between you and the audiences.

Take help of statistics
Incorporate statistics into the content. Statistics boils down to numbers. There’s a big difference between a piece of content with statistics and without it. When numbers and stat figures are used, readers take it more seriously. Besides, the credibility of the claims, made in the content increases.

Here are some rules of thumb when you are inserting numbers into the content to make it detailed and increase its authoritativeness:

•     Always write numbers with digits. People sometimes write numbers with letters. It reduces the impact of numbers.
•     If you are writing a big number, use numerals instead of letters. Write 200000 instead of 2 million.
•     Do math. Addition, subtraction, multiplication or division – do them in the content. Instead of writing “Against a self-employment income of $50K a year, he has to pay a 50% tax,” write “As the self-employment tax is 50%, against a self-employment income of $50000, he pays [($50000 x 50) / 100] = $25000”. The math in this example is trivial. But it makes the content more authentic.

A word of caution: don’t use numbers and stat in isolation. Always use them to back something.

Remember voice search
The voice search traffic is steadily on the rise. Google’s Sundar Pichai announced at this year’s I/O that 20% Smartphone users opt for voice search. Recognizing user’s proclivity to voice-based web interaction, many content developers are switching to podcasts from text content.

Is it benefiting them. Yes it is. Take a look at the infographic below, showing the growth of podcast listening over the years:

The infographic shows a 12% growth over the span of 8 years. There’s a correlation between mobility and podcast growth; almost 13% of US population listens to Spotify every month, and 64% of them download Spotify music on mobile.

Content developers need to pay attention to the stats above, and create content as detailed and informative answers to voice searches. Natural language queries are the precedent of voice search. Content marketers need to anticipate semantic-driven versions of syntax-based keywords, secured by bidders for top PPC slots.

A bit of experimentation can help marketers go several miles ahead of their competitors. For example, they can feature podcasts in their websites and post a brief version of it as text content. That will ensure audiences aren’t missing out any content format. As a result, they will net more and more mobile traffic.

The End
The ending is not simply an ending. It’s the culmination of everything discussed so far. The content producer should invest 10 times more effort in penning down the ending than the rest of the content.

Why are endings so important?

For two reasons:

#Reason 1: The introduction of an article is to initiate the discussion and the middle part is for the free flow of information and ideas. Towards the end, the author needs to summarize everything. The summary should be derivative in nature, as in, the readers should be able to derive actionable takeaways. At the same time, the ending needs to be concise. Hence, it’s challenge for content developers to embed information and takeaways in a short volume of texts.

#Reason 2: Making a summary is not enough. The ending should contain CTA elements. The author needs to make sure the audiences are prompted towards making a purchase. The best time to prompt them is when he’s calling it a wrap. There’s hardly any point offering takeaways to audiences, if they purchase from someone else.

Whether it’s a video, or a podcast or a blog post, the ending completes it.

Summing up
Unless content is developed from a holistic perspective, it can never be sales material. The tips discussed here cover every aspect relating to sales and quality. By following these tips, content marketers can ensure they are providing marketable and quality-focused content to their audiences.

Have any questions? Feel free to ask me via the comments section! Remember to share this tutorial with others on Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus.