Correctly marketing your online business can seem like an overwhelming task. After all, there are so many different options to choose from. Luckily, there’s one type that everyone one knows and can be a great place to start and its content marketing, a method that is both effective and popular. But it’s a fast-changing world, and you need to keep up with the strategies for content marketing.
In the information age, content is queen for any business that wants to succeed. Whether you are running an eCommerce store or a personal consulting brand, the content that you put out is going to be crucial in creating first impressions of what you offer and helping to position you as an expert and trusted brand in your industry. Content marketing is crucial for helping your business build a strong online presence, along with building trust with customers, facilitating strong customer relationships and encouraging sales. However, content marketing is constantly changing, with some of the biggest changes leading to drastic differences in strategies for content marketing.
Focusing on the Viewer
In the past, content marketing was less about the viewers than it was about search engines. Content quality wasn’t a huge deal, as long as the right keywords were included in blog posts. Getting companies higher up the Google search results was often the top priority when it came to content marketing, and this took precedent over everything else, including creating content that was either enjoyable or informational. However, this strategy simply won’t do today. A content marketing strategy has to put the viewers first and foremost to be successful. Adding value, building trust, and increasing engagement through content all works together to improve a company’s online standing.
Social Media
Marketing agency merrittgrp.com outlines how social media has led to some of the biggest changes in content marketing. Today, viewers aren’t just getting your content from search engines like Google. In fact, social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram are vital to content sharing and discovery. Google is no longer the main online marketing channel for many businesses, and increasing views and engagement on social media has become significantly more important.
Search Engine Algorithms
As time went on, search engines like Google wised up to the tactics that were being used to increase website rankings in search results, realizing that there was little to no value being added to the viewers themselves. Over the years, Google has made it clear that the customer experience is the number one thing that they care about, and have even gone so far to make significant changes to their algorithm to penalize rather than reward companies that produce content that is stuffed with keywords, poor-quality, or otherwise useless to viewers. While there’s every reason to consider keeping SEO in mind when producing content for the best results, it shouldn’t take over as the only focus.
Increase in Content Mediums
Content marketing used to be all about blog posts and written articles. Today, however, there has been an influx of many different content mediums, with social media driving this change. Apps like Instagram and websites like YouTube have brought about a bigger increase in image and video content, and video content is quickly becoming the most-consumed type of content on the web since it’s often much easier to engage with and digest compared to lengthy articles.
Content marketing is always changing and evolving, putting viewers first and ensuring that the best content marketers are providing value to their audience above all.
