As a business owner, you should be publishing high-quality and relevant content on your website. This is because content marketing has a wide range of benefits, from helping to establish you as an expert, to improving your online visibility.
I’m going to provide you with my top tips for creating a content plan that will get results.
Choose a handful of content types to focus on
You should focus on quality over quantity, so you need to choose a few content types to focus on, rather than trying to do it all.
Here are the main kinds of content you should consider creating, and high-quality examples from companies that are getting it right.
Ultimate guides
An ultimate guide should include all of the information someone could possibly be looking for about a particular topic.
Small Biz Daily has a fantastic guide to small business hiring, which falls into this category. It answers all of the questions their target readers might have about this subject, and helps to position the site as an authority in this area.
Trend pieces
If you would like to update your blog with timely content, trend pieces are great. Think about what your target audience are going to be most interested in hearing about.
For example, Looka is a company that specializes in branding, so they have a guide to 2021 font trends. This is very relevant for their ideal customers, who are likely to be interested in the latest design trends.
How-to guides
Could you create tutorials that address your customers’ pain points?
For example, Continental Message Solution helps businesses to set up out of hours answering services for their phones. And they’ve created a guide to setting up an answering service for a medical practice, which will attract a segment of their target customers, and shows their expertise.
Buying guides or comparison pieces
You want your customers to make the best purchases to suit their needs, and buying guides can help.
Take inspiration from InVPN, which specializes in helping people find the best VPN software for them. They publish a lot of reviews and comparison pieces, such as their guide to NordVPN vs ExpressVPN, which weighs up the pros and cons of each.
How could you make this kind of content relevant to your products or services?
Free tools or resources
Show you’re an authority in your field by creating free tools and resources your audience will love.
FreshBooks does a great job of this with their free invoice templates. Their ideal customers — freelancers and small business owners — are likely to need these templates. Offering them allows the company to build relationships with people who might be interested in paying for their services down the line.
Choose your target keywords carefully
Keywords are the terms people type into Google when they’re looking for your products, or information relevant to your niche. If you rank on the first page for the right keywords, your customer base can grow tremendously.
To choose which keywords to target with your content, consider your customers’ needs and how your business can address them. You also need to consider certain keyword metrics, like search intent and competitiveness to give yourself the best chance of success.
Getting your keyword research right can massively improve your SEO practices.
Consider what types of content will help you build links
Building links continues to be important for SEO, as it tells search engines that other experts in your niche consider your site to be a source of trustworthy information.
Content types that are most likely to be shared with a link include:
- Infographics (Venngage has high-quality infographic templates you can use)
- Original research
- Evergreen guides
- Video tutorials
When you publish any of these types of content, let others in your niche know they can use them, as long as you’re credited with a link.
Create a content calendar
Create a content calendar so you can make sure you’re always on track.
Pay special attention to national holidays and dates relevant to your business so you can prepare relevant content to publish at these times.
Timely content is incredibly useful for keeping your business current and relevant. When your diary is quiet, you can publish more evergreen content to fill the gaps.
Come up with a content promotion strategy
You’ll want as many people as possible to see your content. Social media and your marketing emails are great for circulating your content wider.
You’ll only want to use social media platforms that are right for your business, though, so make sure you monitor how your posts are performing. SocialPilot has a round-up of social media analytics tools that can help with this.
Summary
If you’re trying to grow your customer base and make more sales, you need a strong content marketing strategy. Take these tips on board and it won’t be long before you’re creating great web content that converts.
Adam Steele is COO and co-founder of Loganix, which is an SEO fulfillment partner for digital marketing agencies and professionals. The company provides the SEO services that businesses need to grow and achieve their goals. If you enjoyed this article, you can find more SEO guides and templates on the Loganix blog.
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