Social media, SEO, website design, creative branding. Chances are if you want to sell a product or service, you’re probably already using these components in your content marketing efforts. When used effectively, these strategies can help reach business goals and serve as huge players in business growth. But what if you’re not seeing any return? It could be that your audience is viewing your content, but seeing it as irrelevant. There, I said it. But no worries, just follow these best practices to avoid the dreaded unfollow.
Quality Over Quantity
You may have heard horror stories about algorithms, and if you’ve read this blog before, we’ve said it’s necessary for you to post a lot to get around them. While true, you shouldn’t be writing content to just check a box. Any content you produce should always provide value to your followers and encourage them to engage with you. The trusty 80/20 rule suggests that 80% of your content should be informational and entertaining while only 20% should promote your offerings. Instead of creating content that looks like a list of services or product features, focus on solving your audiences’ problems. Whether it’s your website, SEO or social media, your audience should always be top of mind.
Check Your Numbers
Not sure how to measure your content’s success? Website bounce rates, time spent on a webpage and social media engagement are all good indicators of your content’s relevancy. If you consistently have high bounce rates on your web pages and a low number of shares on your social media posts, then you and your audience aren’t speaking the same language. Using social and digital analytics tools, such as Sprout Social, Hubspot and Report Garden, provides valuable metrics that help determine what is working and what just... isn't. And as our digital strategist Rob would say: Data doesn’t lie.
Be Unique
A great strategy when it comes to content creation is using curated or recycled content from other sources or your own archives. Unfortunately, unless you’re offering something unique like new information, a new perspective or opinion, your followers’ eyes will probably glaze over from seeing rehashed content. If there’s a topic in your industry that’s received a lot of attention online recently, definitely write about it! But get your point across in a new way with a new accommodating visual. Especially in today’s ever-changing online landscape, you don’t want users to read your content and think “That is so last week.”
Not sure how to use content marketing effectively? Check out our Instagram and Facebook pages to see how we do it, or reach out to chat!
-Bailey, Social Media Coordinator
