If I ask you why your company is doing content marketing, what will you say?
Perhaps you embraced blogging believing that you would 13 times more likely gain excellent ROI. That it would be complementary to or better than traditional methods such as outbound marketing. But why are you struggling to calculate the ROI? Why are you not getting your brand recognized by the right audience?
As an executive or a content strategist, you need to be honest and evaluate your content marketing efforts before the year ends. In doing so, keep in mind that the most important metric to use in your analysis is intangible.
You have to determine whether you are providing your target customers with meaningful content. How does that work? Here are four foundations for you to build on:
Connection
It is not easy at first to establish subjects that will strike a connection with your audience. Experiment on several categories. Make sure you align priorities with insight. For instance, you don’t want to dive into the features of your product if your readers do not know yet about the technology behind it.
If you are offering a virtual private network service, think about people who are hearing about VPN for the first time. What questions might they have? What doubts might arise from their minds? The FAQ section is also a valuable piece of real estate for your site. So take the time to fill it with information you don’t want to repeat in your blog posts.
Authenticity
It is tempting to copy what your competitor is doing especially if you are being pressured to produce immediate results. However, what if the other brand is only after creating click-bait articles? You may be able to ride a trending topic, but that does not mean you are driving quality traffic.
In the end, you may be causing your loyal audience to unsubscribe. Be patient in developing your voice, getting your message out there, and building your identity. I am not against consulting content oracles like BuzzSumo. What I’m saying is that you have to set filters when deciding topics.
Multimedia
According to Adobe, 51.9 percent of global marketers believe that video has the highest probable ROI among content types. Because of the reach of the internet, you can choose among channels such as YouTube, social media, and your own blog. But you should not limit yourself to videos. You can tap into the power of infographics, podcasts, and multimedia (a combination of text, images, and videos).
Do not forget good old email marketing. Hyper-personalized newsletters are now a thing. Through this method, brands give their subscribers a summary of content based on their interests. There are also those messages that make readers feel like there is another person on the other end. Check a few good email signatures to add, and you are likely to convert those email leads into sales.
Interaction
What did pre-Facebook bloggers and traditional newspapers have in common? They encouraged interaction with their readers. If it was 2005, you would find people leaving comments below a personal blog post or a New York Times article. The blogger or author would usually write a reply. A thread discussing a particular subtopic would sometimes be born.
Today, there are still platforms who do this. Two of the more prominent examples are the brands of Neil Patel (SEO) and Michael Hyatt (leadership).
If you visit their blogs, you will find their interaction with individual readers. This kind of back and forth grows into a thread. From that thread, a community can be nurtured. So go ahead and devise a plan on how you can promote deep engagement with your followers.