Content marketing institute conference is happening in a few days, and if you’re a content marketer, you should definitely check it out. But before you head to the conference, you should check out the rest of this blog post. It will give you a sneak peek into what you can expect at the conference, and some tips on how to make the most of it.
Content marketing is not new, but it is constantly evolving
We all know that content marketing is not a new thing. It’s been around for quite some time. What is changing is the way we look at content marketing. Today, content marketing is a way to build your brand, generate leads, and engage your audience. It is not only about the content creation but also about how you distribute it. Video, images, and social media are all being used to distribute content.
A content marketing strategy includes creating and distributing content to help your organization better serve your target audience
Many companies jump into content marketing without a clear plan and end up with a lot of content that doesn’t help their organization in any meaningful way. It’s important to create a content strategy before you begin creating content. A content strategy outlines your goals for creating and distributing content and includes a plan for how you will accomplish those goals.
Content marketing helps you to better connect with consumers by providing relevant, useful and consistent information
When you create and publish content, you’re providing a helpful experience to your customers. Whether it’s through a website, a blog, social media or a newsletter, your content can help answer questions, solve issues, inform, guide and motivate your audience to take action.
You may begin with blog posts, but you could also include videos, webinars, podcasts, infographics, white papers or e-books
Depending on your business, you could even publish a book! Whatever your content marketing strategy, make sure your content is helpful, original and relevant to your audience. And don’t forget to share your content across your social media channels. When you publish content, share it on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This will help you grow your audience and increase brand awareness.
Content is the foundation of your marketing strategy
When it comes to content marketing, you need content that is informative, educational and helpful. If you create content that is not helpful, it won’t be shared and it won’t help anyone. So, your content needs to be top-notch. If you want to get top rankings and drive traffic to your website, you need to create content that your audience will want to share. The right content can also help you build relationships with your customers. So, take your time to create high-quality content that is original and educational and helps people solve problems. When you do, you will see a great ROI on your investment in content marketing.
Content marketing is all about providing the right information in the right place at the right time to the right audience
Your content is your platform. It’s how you build relationships with your customers and partners and help them solve their problems. It’s how you drive traffic to your website, social media pages, and email lists. And it’s how you generate leads and sales for your business. But most importantly, your content should be useful to your audience. Whether it’s an article, video, infographic, webinar, podcast, or something else, your content must be a helpful resource for your community. People won’t read or watch something just for the sake of it. So make sure your content adds value and helps them solve a problem or make a better decision.
Content marketing allows you to establish your brand, tell your story, and establish your authority
Every business needs a voice to establish itself as a credible source of information and expertise. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, your content speaks to your audience and helps them understand how you can solve their problems and serve them better. The right content helps you establish your authority and build trust with your audience. When your audience trusts you, they are more likely to buy your products or services, or at least refer their friends to you.
Create a content strategy
A successful content strategy helps you create and publish high-quality content for all your marketing channels — social media, email, search engines, and more. If you don’t have a strategy in place, you’re probably not creating enough content to keep your audience interested and engaged. And without enough content, you won’t be able to meet your business objectives.
Create a plan to execute your content
If you’re new to content marketing, you’re going to struggle to create content that your audience will care about. You might create a bunch of articles and share them on social media, but nobody will read them. You won’t gain any new leads or sales. The first step in content marketing is creating a plan to execute your content. If you don’t create a plan before you start creating content, you’re going to waste a lot of time and energy.
Content is more than just text; it can be images, video, audio, and webinars
While the content may be a lot more than just words, the content you publish for your audience is most likely all text. For example, how would you feel if your website only had photos or videos? It sounds pretty boring, right? But, when someone reads an informative and entertaining article they will enjoy the content more because they can see images and hear sounds. Video content, especially, can go a long way to engage your audience and help them learn more.
Create a vision or mission statement for your content marketing strategy
Before you create content for your business, think about your brand mission. A mission statement outlines your organization’s purpose and how you plan to achieve it. It can guide everything from your marketing strategy to your daily work. A great way to develop a mission statement is by brainstorming what your content would need to accomplish for your audience.
Understand your client’s challenges
Before you create content, spend time understanding your customer and their biggest challenges. There are a number of different ways you can research your audience. You can do some online research, talk to past customers, and even do some competitive analysis to get a better understanding of what your customer is looking for. Try to find out what types of content are most helpful to them and what topics they struggle with. Your content should aim to address these issues.
Define your content marketing goals
Every organization’s content marketing goals are going to be different. If you’re just getting started with content marketing, it’s a great idea to start by looking at your current results. Write a list of all your top-performing content and determine why they’re so successful. If you’re working on improving lead generation, look at your website’s landing page and SEO score. It may be that your content is attracting high-quality leads, but you’re not optimizing it to rank highly.
Define your content types
A content type defines the format of your content. It’s similar to what a word document would look like and what a spreadsheet would look like. Your content types can include things like videos, images, presentations, white papers, infographics, and articles. The key is to choose which content will work best for the customer, the goal of your content and your business.
Understand what content types to create
One of the most important things to understand when it comes to content marketing is that content is not one thing. It’s a combination of many different types of content that work together to attract and retain your ideal customer. A good content marketing strategy will create an inventory of different types of content that answer your different customer’s questions, solve their problems, or show them how to make a purchase.
Content is more than one piece
When you hear the word “content” it’s easy to think of it as a long, wall-to-wall, text-based article. In reality, content is much bigger than that. For example, content also includes video, images, articles, white papers, data, and social media posts.
Content has multiple forms
Your content doesn’t have to be a single article, video, or image—it can also be a guide, a list, a presentation, or even a conversation. What matters most is that it’s high-quality, helpful to your audience and solves a specific problem for them.
Video
Video marketing is still extremely popular in the B2B space, but it’s changing, and fast. In fact, according to a recent survey by HubSpot, 65% of B2B marketers plan to increase video marketing in the first quarter of 2019. Video content is quickly becoming a primary part of the overall content marketing strategy for B2B marketers. Video content is more humanizing than text-based content, which helps build relationships between brands and their customers. Video marketing allows brands to show off their personalities and tell their brand stories in a way that can’t be done through other digital marketing channels.
Audio
Video marketing is still a popular content marketing tactic, and it’s not hard to see why. Video content is easily sharable and can help you drive traffic to your website and social media pages. Video gives your audience something tangible to hold onto and watch as they learn more about you and your business. But what if you want to take your video marketing to the next level?
In conclusion, if you’re looking to stay updated on the latest content marketing trends and learn from the best in the industry, the Content Marketing Institute Conference is a great event to attend. Register today and make sure to use the code CMIBLOG to save $100 off your ticket price.
