The Ultimate Content Marketing Strategy
In today’s digital age, it seems like everyone and their mom is making content online. In fact, “content marketing” seems to be the phrase of the decade. Businesses are realizing that their traditional forms of advertising just aren’t cutting it anymore, and many are faced with the decision to join the digital marketing age or risk becoming irrelevant.
Simultaneously, we live in a world saturated with information and online sales. How are companies (especially the small ones) supposed to compete? Some people will tell you that social media is the sure way to market effectively, others will say it’s through newsletters or video creation.
To a point, all of these are true. But the single-handedly most effective content marketing tool is blogging. Let me tell you why.
What Is Content Marketing and Why Is It Important?
Content marketing is exactly what it sounds like–marketing for your business through the content that you create online. This can come in all different forms: Instagram reels, vlogging on YouTube, or even creating Facebook ads. The point is to create content that answers your audience’s questions, builds trust, and gets people interested in what you have to offer.
According to HubSpot, content marketing has been proven to deliver resounding success. It is one of the most effective ways to grow audience engagement, develop your brand presence, gain more website traffic, and drive sales. The author at Hubspot explains, “Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts audience decision-making more than any other marketing strategy.”
But I’m not telling you anything new, if you’re a creator or business owner you already know the name of the game. You want to know how to optimize your efforts. If you’re going to put all of this work into creating content online, you want the most bang for your buck.
Why Blogging Is the Best: SEO Explained
You might be thinking, “Blogging? Isn’t that kind of outdated?” Contrary to what many people believe, the answer is no. While creating a strong social media presence is useful, blogging does something that social media can’t: lead thousands of people all over the world directly to your site.
Blogging increases your business's visibility online, A.K.A makes you searchable. If a potential customer types an industry-related question into google, your website can now be the place they go to to have their questions answered and their problems solved… a pretty good recipe for building rapport and generating leads.
However, this is only likely to happen if your website is ranked on the first page of google. After the first page, the click-through rate drops from 28% to 15% and continues to decline from there.
So how do you get your site to show up on that first page? Three words: search engine optimization or SEO. The name of the game with SEO is convincing google that your article or website is relevant and worthy of being ranked on that first page.
Google uses a web crawler to skim through the internet and index all of the pages. This crawler picks up cues in the content to see what a web page is about. If it thinks that the web page is relevant it picks it up and ranks it accordingly.
These cues include:
The URL
Headlines
Meta description
Keywords in your written content
Having optimized blog posts that answer your audience’s questions and provide value is the quickest way to direct more traffic to your website.
You’re Not Just Advertising, You’re Adding Value
According to Upland, 329 million people read blogs every month. Having useful information about your industry gives your prospects a low-barrier, useful way to research topics they want to know more about.
Although SEO is crucial for a blogging content marketing strategy, odds are that your blog will not get ranked if it’s sloppily written or doesn’t offer any valuable information. You want to identify your customer’s main problems and questions and answer them fully.
Having real, valuable content builds trust and rapport over time and leads to long-term sales. It keeps your readers, and google, very happy. In fact, some people find that the majority of their leads come from posts that were written months or even years ago. Blogging is the gift that keeps on giving
Blog Posts Have the Longest Shelf Life
Speaking of old blog posts, did you know that out of all content marketing strategies, blog posts have the longest shelf life?
According to Sprocket Websites, blog posts can stay visible for up to 2 years. To put that in perspective with other forms of media:
Tweets have an average shelf life of 18 minutes
Facebook posts have a shelf life of roughly 5 hours
Instagram posts appear for up to 21 hours
LinkedIn posts show up for 24 hours
Pinterest pins appear for 4 months
The numbers don’t lie. In a world where everything is temporary and we are constantly flooded with new content, blog posts stand the test of time.
Outsource Your Blog Posts: Hire a Freelance Writer
Now that we’ve visited all of the reasons why having a blog is the best form of content marketing, you might be wondering how you’re going to find the bandwidth to be able to write these blog posts regularly.
The good news is you don’t have to. There is a huge market of freelance writers to choose from to write these blog posts for you. You can even find someone who has experience writing in YOUR specific industry, and many writers have portfolios to showcase the quality of their work before you hire them.
Good writers can be an investment, but the ROI of having a steady stream of content for your customers is well worth it. I suggest checking Upwork, Contra, or Creative Circle for freelance writers in your industry. OR you can hire me! I write blogs and other written content for businesses looking to consistently publish valuable and informative content that is true to their message and drives more traffic to their website.
To take a look at my work you can view my portfolio and submit an inquiry about working with me here.
Happy creating!
