Content Marketing is simply the use of content to market your products or services.
It includes things like e-books, videos, educational articles, webinars, podcasting, emails etc that answer specific questions people have and provide them with accurate answers they can’t get elsewhere
In its early days, Content Marketing used to be quite easily doable but as it becomes more and more popular, it’s also getting more and more complex.
In this article, I want to suggest some tips to help you stand the complexity and be able to breakthrough and see results.
Contents
6 Evergreen Tips to Become Successful in Content Marketing
Before we get into these exciting tips, let me briefly touch on the three elements of content marketing you must know about.
This of course is going to help your understanding of the rest of the article:
A – The Product/Service to Be Promoted (The object)
This is the first phase and most important segment of content marketing.
There is no successful Content Marketing Strategy without the object of the campaigns.Click To TweetTo be a successful content marketer, you’ll have to start by clearly defining your product/service and the target market.
B – Producing the Content
Another important phase of content marketing is content production.
It has to do with creating the content in the format you’ve chosen:
- Articles
- Videos
- Audios
- Infographic (very interesting article on how to make infographics)
- Webinar contents
- Etc
C – Distributing the Content
It really won’t make any sense if the produced content doesn’t reach the target audience. That’s why it’s so important you map out your market right from the onset.
Once you have the product/service to promote and the content well crafted out, the next challenge is to get the content to the consumers.
Based on your content type, there is a large surface of distribution channels: Blogging, Video platforms, Webinar platforms, Social media, Podcasting tools, etc
Note that these channels perfectly blend and can be rightly used to promote each other. While you are able to use social media to promote your blog, your blog can be used to promote your YouTube videos, Podcast, Infographics, etc
But how do you become successful in a constantly changing content world?
Let’s look at the six evergreen and very helpful tips to become successful in this challenging industry.
1) The Object, the Content and the Distribution
There is absolutely no way you can successfully face the complexities of Content Marketing without the mastery of these segments:
- You can’t successfully market a product/service (the object) that’s not efficient
- If your content is poor (poor articles, poor video quality, poorly designed infographics, annoying podcasts, etc), chances are high that no one will pay attention to it.
- You must be able to select the right distribution channels for your content. This should be guided by how easily you are able to reach out to your target market using those channels.
The more you gain mastery and deeper understanding of these segments, the bigger your marketplace
2 – Don’t Be a Jack of all Trades, Master of None
There is a hidden temptation of trying to be everywhere at the same time. The market today is not for the Jack of all trades. If you dabble from one channel to the other, you end up becoming the master of none.
It takes time and training to master YouTube, for instance. It requires time and a lot of learning to become an expert blogger.
These (and more) are all very effective content promotion channels but you need to figure out how to effectively use them.
Marketers who scratch the surfaces of these platforms go home with little or no results.
If you want to see results from Facebook, focus on the channel to discover what works and what doesn’t.
You may also want to focus on building a large email list to distribute your content. With a blog, Facebook presence, YouTube channel and paying attention to email marketing best practices, you definitely will be able to create a successful email marketing business.
3 – Be Current
Whichever content type and distribution channel you’ve chosen, you must never forget that change is constant. What works today may not be needed in the next couple of years.
Some few years back, you would have a great position on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) with keywords sprinkled on your articles. But doing this today will leave you in a pool of tears.
In Content Marketing, there is constant need to move up with changes in the industry. These changes affect all segments in the chain.
If your product/service is not up to date, you will certainly see your market share cut off as your customers/clients move to your competitors.
While your content is expected to be topnotch and always relevant, you should also follow platform changes in order not to be kicked out.
4 – Turn to Offline Events
Offline Content Marketing events play an unarguable part in boosting the success of online activities.
Marketing events create stronger connections and bonds between marketers.
Knowing how important networking is in online business, offline meetings offer great avenues to create stronger and more long lasting connections.
Meeting other marketers in real life and having to talk and exchange with them creates deeper impacts that cannot be easily challenged.
There are generally two ways to be part of offline content marketing events:
- As an attendee
- As an organiser
One of the things I tell my blog coaching students is to organise offline blogging events beginning with small meetings with friends and relatives. This doesn’t have to be hard or expensive but results are always astonishing.
Organising offline events and marking sure they succeed connects you remarkably with marketers and businesses who will always turn to you for your services.
5 – Avoid Competing with Big Guns
One of the things that provoke the complexity in Content Marketing is competition. Unfortunately, competition cannot be eliminated in any industry.
The only options we have are to:
- Face it
- Avoid it
If you decide to face any competitor in your industry, I recommend doing a lot of Competitive analysis to properly measure the strength of the competitor you want to face.
Comprehensive competitor analysis is vital to your success in content marketing. Understanding where your rivals are weakest, reveals your most likely points of success. Click To TweetThere is surely a niche in your industry with less fierce fights. All you need to do is a deeper search to locate that sweet spot.
As a matter of fact, competing against marketers weaker than you will always leave you as the winner.
6 – Polish Your Customer Service
Customer service has always been a key factor in businesses. As a matter of fact, I look at it from two perspectives:
- Support staff promptness.
- Support staff qualification.
These two must be blended and prioritised to have a highly rated customer service online.
There are generally three ways to allow your content readers reach you:
- Customer service phone number (Generally toll-free)
- Ticketing and email support tools
- Live support facility.
While the live chat tool may not be a serious requirement for many content marketers, it goes a long way to improve your service quality. Having a live chat function on your website has always been a big challenge.
However, if you are WordPress user, you may take a look at these WordPress Live Chat Plugins
Getting your visitors’ problems fully resolved on time triggers positive votes and reviews in favour of your business. Of course, this will further promote you and bring more customers.
Signing Out
Content Marketing isn’t a bed of roses. It’s conversely not any rocket science.
One keyword is consistency, believing in what you’re doing. The more you satisfy readers, the more your sphere of influence will expand.
I hope these 6 tips will add value to your content marketing business.
Want more marketing strategies, tactics and advice? Check out one of our most read digital marketing guides:
- Priming In Marketing: Advertising Psychology 101
- Social Media Image Sizes 2020
- Instagram Post Reach: 9 Tactics to Reach More People On Instagram
- Facebook Page Likes: How to Get 1000s
- The Complete Guide to Facebook Ad Campaign Objectives
3 Responses
Love this guide! Thanks for this Josh. My blog needs more evergreen content.
Thank you! Good luck with your content!
Hi Enstine!
Great article. I think #5 is really important and can be hard for a beginner to judge. There are just some article topics you’re never going to stand a shot at competing for, even if you invested thousands of dollars into building backlinks.
Learning to distinguish what you can compete for and what you can’t is an incredibly important skill.
Thanks!
– James McAllister