Beginners Guide to Content Marketing

Content marketing is a tactical marketing approach that focuses on the creation and distribution of valuable, appropriate and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined online audience and eventually drive traffic to your website.  The following is the ultimate beginners guide to content marketing:

Choose an Appropriate Topic

Each and every content marketer has two options: to either write dozens and dozens of articles and blog posts and wait to see which one does well or to carefully choose an appropriate topic that has a potential for a large audience. Not everything you write will attract a huge audience. Therefore, carry out a research and find out what sells on the internet in terms of content and what does not. You can also use Google’s keyword planner to find a relevant topic.

Plan out Your Content 

Intensive planning is very essential when it comes to writing your final content. Before you start writing, devote one third of your time to brainstorm, outline what should be written and then find the right sources. Outlining your ideas gives you an idea of what to write and prevents you from deviating from the key points. When writing, ensure that you back everything with facts. People like associating themselves with content that has facts not fiction.

Write Great Content

What attracts visitors and a huge audience to a particular site is basically the content. Great content will always attract a huge traffic to your site. So, how does a great content look like or what makes up great content? Great content is one that is well edited, has no grammatical or spelling errors, invokes some emotions, answers the audience’s questions, it is concise and to the point and above all is not verbose. Remember to always write facts.

Format Beautifully

After writing out your content or product, it is important to design the packaging. The packaging in this case involves editing and formatting your content to match your audience’s expectations. This involves optimizing your pictures, optimizing your headlines and to ensure that your writing is visible and can be read by anyone who accesses your website. It is important to understand that most people who visit websites usually scan through the content to find something valuable and when they do not find this, they will move to the next site. Let key points stand out in your content. You can also include pictures in your content to attract your visitors.

Promote Your Content

Once you are through with editing and ensuring that your content has what it takes to be a great content the next step is to publish your content. Once you have published, it is important to call a few of your friends, colleagues and even random strangers to check out your content. Let them give you feedback about the content. You can share your content in social media platforms, ask your friends to share widely, email the content to some of your friends and ask them to share it.