Content marketing is a hot topic in digital marketing circles, and the advent of social media has driven this. One of the main things that drives consumer engagement with social media is successful content marketing but, without content that’s strategically planned, solid and compelling, your social media is doing little more than broadcasting a message that’s worth very little to the consumer – and to your brand. Keep these three elements of content marketing in mind to make the most of your content marketing campaign.
Relevance
Relevance seems so obvious that it’s taken for granted when content marketing strategies are planned, executed, tracked and analysed. If you take the time to carefully consider your content’s relevance to your target market on a frequent basis you’ll be more likely to keep your existing audience while attracting a wider audience to your social media platforms. To do this you need to examine your audience’s makeup and then tailor your content to their needs. This takes ongoing attention to your content marketing campaign but it’s vital to your success.
Value
Valuable content is always more likely to be “sharable” content. Content shared via social media needs to be up-to-date and relevant to your target market. It should react to trends, current affairs and industry events that your audience will want to know about because they find it useful. This well-timed information will position your web real estate as the first place to go for news and thought leadership in your consumer’s field of interest. Ideally, you want your content to be of real value to your consumers’ lives. In that way you will become indispensible to your core audience, who then become strong brand advocates.
Reliability
Reliability is key if you want to develop a dedicated following. This doesn’t just mean the content you deliver should be reliable and that external sources of information should be trustworthy, but also that you should deliver content regularly and consistently. This will highlight your reliability of the internet, too, which will matter a lot to your audience.
Athar Naser is the head of Juice Content, a specialist content marketing company.
