Are You Getting the Results You Want?

Your content marketing is a key component of your overall marketing strategy – one of the most important things you can do to ensure the success of your business. Quality and quantity both matter when it comes to getting it right. Content marketing helps with brand awareness and loyalty, lead generation, and more, ultimately maximizing your bottom line. Publishing quality content isn’t rocket science, but you do need to know a few things to get the best possible results. Here’s how.

Grab attention with your headlines

Make sure your headlines are interesting and concise; if a reader is bored or annoyed by a headline, they aren’t likely to keep reading. Realize your headline is an opportunity to spark interest in your content and treat it as such.

Research matters

Whether you are doing the writing yourself or working with a team of professionals, research is important. To position yourself as an authority in your field, your content must be credible. When appropriate, use statistics, facts, and metrics supported by reliable sources.

Hook your readers early

People usually decide within just a few short seconds whether to continue viewing a piece of content. After capturing their attention with your headline, hold it with the first few sentences. This is a good way to keep them reading and lead them smoothly to your first major point.

Have a single central focus

A piece of content should have a single purpose, one main message you want to get across. This message should be the theme of the piece throughout, and any other points made should tie back to this main point. Keeping your focus on one specific topic opens the door to more ideas for new topics in the future, so don’t use them all up in one post.

Pay attention to your voice

Your brand needs a unique voice that your target audience recognizes. Consider your brand’s personality and message and align your tone across all of your content marketing with your brand, your goals, and your audience.

Optimize your content

Digital content should be optimized in a few ways. First, it must be easy for search engines to find, so use keywords strategically and keep up-to-date on SEO best practices. Second, it should be optimized for easy reading by using short sentences and paragraphs and bulleted lists or subheaders that make it skimmable (the way most people read).

Don’t skimp on editing

Even the world’s best writers use editors. That’s because it’s not always easy to see your own mistakes; a fresh pair of eyes almost always finds what yours missed. Editing is important for every piece of content you create or outsource because simple mistakes can make you appear unprofessional and turn readers off.

Effective content marketing can be boiled down to two things: getting enough of your content out there and making sure your content is good. This second requirement, of course, is a little more complicated than the first. Make sure you’re getting the results you want by heeding these tips and remember that professional content creators are your best bet for achieving your marketing goals.