If there’s one element you shouldn’t overlook with your digital marketing efforts, it’s content creation. Google has even said that publishing high-quality content is the single most important thing you can do. But it takes more than just a generic page of rehashed content to connect with your target audience. Check out the following tips to enhance your content marketing strategy.
Make Your Content Sharable
This tip is pretty self-explanatory: your content should be easy for other users to share on their social media pages and profiles. You can encourage social sharing by adding buttons/links to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. on your site. Depending on your site’s content management system (CMS), you can probably find a plugin or extension designed specifically for this purpose.
Go Beyond Text
Who says your content marketing strategy should be limited to text? While there’s certainly nothing wrong with creating text-based content, there are dozens of other solutions available. Some alternatives to text content include photo galleries, videos, podcasts, infographics and interviews. Diversify your content marketing strategy by incorporating several of these solutions into your efforts.
Quality Over Quantity
There’s no rule stating that you must publish X pieces of new content weekly. Unfortunately, though, many digital marketers and webmasters are stuck in this mindset, so they end up with low-quality content. This is one instance in which the mantra “quality over quantity” holds true. It’s more beneficial to publish a single high-quality web article than half a dozen or more articles. That one article may receive hundreds of Facebook likes and social shares, boosting its authority and search rankings.
Update it Frequently
Some digital marketers assume that a piece of content is finished after they click the “publish” button. In reality, though, you should get into the habit of updating your content on a regular basis. Information will change from time to time, so even if a piece of your content is currently accurate, it may not be accurate later down the road. Updating your content regularly allows you to fix these dependencies while also showing both visitors and search engines that you are actively engaged in maintaining your site.
Reinforce with Images
Notice how each of our blog posts contain at least one image? That’s because images improve user satisfaction and engagement, which in turn encourages higher search rankings and more traffic. So whether you have a blog or static website, reinforce your text-based content with images. You can source free images from Flickr Creative Commons, assuming you credit the original author. Another option is to buy stock photos, although at $1 to $10 bucks a piece, the price can quickly add up.
