Content marketing as an inbound marketing strategy has gained popularity over the years. The website of a start-up along with its social media pages has to be bustling with updated content which is interesting as well as informative to the readers. Great content leads to better higher SEO rankings and better social media reach.
Benefits of content marketing:
i) Targeting:
Through a huge variety of informative content, you can target your niche audience. Through market research, find your target and through content marketing, target them.
ii) Creating awareness:
It is very important to make your TG aware about your offerings. An easy and effective way to make them aware of any new development or offer is through the content on the website as you can regulate it.
iii) Online relationship management:
Through the content on your online portal, you are in a position to hear out complaints and issues and solve them as the content on your website is a quick fix to relations with customer’s gone sour.
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Five ways you can improve the content on your website are:
1. Research as much as you can
Before even beginning to strategise your content, research about everything- the need for the product, the target group, the demand etc. Researching thoroughly will give you a clear idea about the demand for the product and what people want to know about it. If you can, conduct surveys, focus group interviews and do a content analysis on a test batch.
2. Know your competitors
Along with your own research it is very important to be aware about your competitors- their positioning, the kind of content they put up etc. Once, you have a fair idea about the competition, it is relatively easier to strategise your content in a particular way to put it out to the people. Also, you could learn from their mistakes and tap certain areas that have been overlooked.
3. It is very important to set targets
It is very important to be clear from the beginning regarding what you want to achieve from the content you are putting up online. You need to set your goal which could be anything- better outreach, more followers or making the public aware. Strategise your content according to your goal. This helps the content writer in understanding what s/he needs to write and gives the audience a clear view of what you are suggesting.
4. Spend time on allocating your resources and priorities
After you’ve set your goals and targets, it is essential to set aside a budget for content marketing. This budget needs to be evenly allocated. For instance, if you want to build up an audience for your venture first, you need to market intensely on all social media platforms to make people aware. You also need to sort out where your resources and budget need to be allocated: if you’re going to have an in-house content team or source it out to external agencies; questions like that need to be addressed. Once, you are clear with this step, the process becomes relatively smoother.
5. Be accountable for the content
It is very important for a website or an online portal to be accountable for the content displayed. If it is written by an in-house writer, make sure you give him/ her credits. Also, if you’ve picked up content from other websites, make sure you add the sources and give due credit where necessary. Also, you must be willing to own your content and take charge if there is some issue later.
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