Content Marketing How to Optimize Your Strategy
Content Marketing How to Optimize Your Strategy

Content Marketing: How to Optimize Your Strategy

Content Marketing is a marketing strategy focused on creating and distributing relevant content (such as articles, ebooks, and social media posts) without explicitly promoting the brand. With Content Marketing, the company helps its target audience to solve their problems and becomes an authority on the subject.

Content Marketing

Table of Contents

What is Content Marketing

When starting a Digital Marketing strategy, every marketer finds this front called Content Marketing. But what does it mean, after all?

Going straight to the point, Content Marketing is the strategy of producing content for your target audience, which helps you in the entire purchase process and attracts them to you in a natural and spontaneous way. It is the fuel of Inbound Marketing.

The idea is to inform people so that in the future they not only respect your brand and have it as a reference but also become customers of your company.

We can say that the meaning of Content Marketing is relatively new. It was only in this new century that this concept was forged and that studies, analyses, and experiments began to be carried out.

However, its applications already took place even before the digital age. Yes, this strategy also exists offline. And it’s been a while!

But how so? Isn’t that part of Inbound Marketing? How could it exist before the rise of the internet?

Let’s contextualize it historically with a classic example.

In 1895, John Deere, a leading company in the agricultural machinery segment, published the first edition of “The Furrow” magazine. The publication remains in circulation to this day and is focused on issues related to agriculture.

With this magazine, John Deere dared and chose to share content with the public interested in agriculture rather than simply creating ads “pushing” the products that are manufactured by the company.

Content Marketing is not about what your company does, but what your customers need

It’s true that not all readers of the magazine owned John Deere tractors, but by consuming the brand’s information, they could discover pains that they thought were non-existent until then. And when they feel the need to make a purchase, they would opt for a trusted brand.

In other words, the magazine fulfills exactly the purpose of the concept: to educate the public, gain authority on the subject, and influence the purchase decision. It is one of the first Content Marketing records, and since then, several brands have made use of the practice.

In short: Content Marketing is talking about your niche market. Unlike a press release or traditional marketing release, it’s not about what your company does, it’s about what your customers need!

Content Marketing - How to Optimize Your Strategy

What is Content Marketing for

Okay, now that we’ve covered the concept of Content Marketing, you might ask yourself: why should I produce content if I can create ads featuring my product?

If you still don’t understand what are the great advantages of a Content Marketing strategy over a traditional marketing strategy, keep reading the next topics. After all, this strategy managed to achieve what conventional marketing could not.

Just take a look at the companies that are using Content Marketing today. Here at Valuecoast Digital, for example, content is the focus. It is with educational materials and our Digital Marketing blog that we attract our customers, teach our methodology, and continue a relationship after purchase so that they can stay with us.

The blog, by the way, was where it all started here at Valuecoast Digitais. Even before we launched our Digital Marketplace, we were already producing content on the subject in this channel. He has always been and will always be indispensable for the company’s success.

But we are not limited to our own examples. Analyze large companies in the market, regardless of industry, and notice how they are using this to their advantage.

Red Bull, GoPro, McDonald’s, Vivo, Magazine Luiza, Samsung, Walmart, SalesForce, General Electric, and other market giants already do Content Marketing.

Among its various objectives, we can highlight 6:

1. INCREASE YOUR VISIBILITY ON THE INTERNET

Content Marketing has a wide influence on a website’s SEO strategies. We know that today it’s not enough to produce content with keywords loose in the middle of the texts or do link building in large quantities, but without quality.

Google’s search algorithm has developed a lot and is already able to understand what content is relevant to the user. Data such as CTR on SERP, time spent on the page, and quality of links referenced in the text are analyzed and influence ranking.

2. INCREASE INTERACTION WITH YOUR BRAND

3. NURTURE YOUR LEADS BASE

4. REDUCE CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COST

5. GAIN PUBLIC TRUST AND ACQUIRE BRAND PROPAGATORS

6. IMPROVE THE AFTER-SALES EXPERIENCE

How Content Marketing has helped the market

How Content Marketing has helped the market

Content Marketing has ensured its space in the Brazilian market in recent years. However, despite the growth, the percentage of companies that use the methodology is still low.

If we dig deeper and look at how many companies document the strategy, the value is even lower. In other words, it is not too late for your company to start working on such a strategy right now.

We are going to use ContentTrends 2017, a survey conducted by Rock Content in 2017 with 3,650 participants from different industries and areas of activity in Brazil.

Some of the key insights that the survey generated were:

  • The adoption of Content Marketing is done by 71% of companies;
  • Among the remaining 29%, 68.9% intend to adopt the strategy ;
  • 71.7% of successful companies with the strategy are present in an intermediate/advanced stage ;
  • Companies that adopt Content Marketing generate 2.2x more visits and 3.2x more Leads ;
  • Those who produce more than 13 monthly content earn an average of 4.2 times more visitors;
  • 60.6% anticipate increasing investment in the strategy.

How to Get Leadership Support in a Content Marketing Strategy

As with Social Media, Content Marketing has now left the enchantment stage behind, moving to a different moment where it needs to prove its ROI (Return on Investment). 

This test is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges for any marketer: how much revenue Content Marketing can bring.

For many, being able to measure the commercial success of Content Marketing is still very difficult, which makes many marketers based on results that are sometimes easier to justify, such as engagement (likes, shares, retweets). 

However, companies are businesses, and businesses need to make a profit, just talking about engagement will not guarantee that the manager believes in the proposal.

Even if every marketing professional understands that when writing with quality about their field of expertise, it is possible to transmit relevant information to visitors, gain new business opportunities, become referenced as an authority on the subject, and, of course, create and narrow the relationship with its contact base, this is not always clear to the company’s leadership. 

Even though there is no lack of reasons to face Content Marketing as one of the pillars of success in Digital Marketing, you still need to justify its value.

This is because many CEOs and entrepreneurs do not understand how Content Marketing works, many are even unaware of the terminology. 

For this reason, it is essential that Digital Marketing professionals find a new and simpler way to explain its value and functioning. As decision-makers in the company, it is imperative that they understand and support.

Based on that, we share here some tips for you to get around this challenge:

prepare the terrain

Relying on your leader’s support is easier when you can clearly present how Content Marketing is useful to achieve real results. Before presenting your strategy, prepare yourself:

  • Make benchmarking: Consider whether your market is already using the strategy. Can practices be followed and replicated to make your company have better results? Identify how your competitors propose the information and editorial policy they follow;
  • Surround yourself with tangible metrics: Show how content marketing is an effective channel to generate more business leads, reduce customer acquisition costs, and increase sales. When writing about your segment, you disseminate useful information that will be used to empower your potential customers and prepare them for the moment of purchase.
  • Neutralize objections: In the business world, you need to be prepared to deal with adversity. Be prepared for objections like cost and time.
  • Use strategic data:  Since content marketing drives organic traffic to the site, the company can spend less on media buying. There are surveys, such as the one done by Kapost and Eloqua, which indicate that Content Marketing can surpass the ROI of sponsored links by up to 3 times. This is even one of the great advantages of Content Marketing: the ability to generate Leads. The result will most often be proportional, the more authority you have on a given subject, the greater the amount of Leads generated.
  • Plan the actions: organize a posting schedule and involve the team in the execution. In addition to saving money, there is nothing better than a team that knows better the specifics of the product and the market to speak very well about topics that are attractive to your target audience. This way you can also dilute the costs of hiring an exclusive professional for content writing. See our example, here at Resultados Digitais, a large part of the team is involved in content creation, each area has a person responsible for delivering a monthly post respecting the schedule determined by Marketing.

These tips are very helpful but don’t leave unprepared throwing information on the table. Customize your arguments and adopt the language your leader uses to convince you. Put yourself in his shoes by choosing arguments that make sense. 

Match the goals that the company wants to achieve with the content that will be covered in content production. 

But what to say? In the contents of Valuecoast Digital we always highlight to our customers several important points, but what is most often used is that Content Marketing is a permanent asset, explain to the company’s management that when you produce and publish content, the benefit it brings, or rather the ROI, is long-lasting.

If you need to exemplify, show how it is easier to be recognized as an authority on a subject when you produce copyrighted and quality content, and present cases of great references that got there for producing content. 

On this blog, we have a series of customer examples where we bring some very cool cases, check out this link where we comment on cases of customers who created rich content easily and that worked, a little extra help for you to demonstrate in a practical way that Content Marketing generates results.

Content ROI: highly measurable

To know your ROI, the first step is to know how to estimate the costs and income derived from the production of Content Marketing in your company. These values ​​can include different estimates, such as team salary, hours of an employee allocated to create content, platforms used for sharing, outsourced labor for content production, Leads generated from content that subsequently closed a sale, and so on. Knowing exactly these numbers makes it easier to quantify your return. We could separate these results into two types of metrics.

editorial metrics

These are metrics that present more numbers in relation to the effects caused by the content on its consumers. This includes sharing, comments, unique visitors, page views, time spent on the page, linkbacks, and so on.

business metrics

Business metrics are more related to conversions as a result of interacting with content. This metric can include Demo and Trial orders, quote orders, Lead generation, and sales.

With a good estimate in hand, we can now go to the calculations, a possible formula to arrive at the content ROI would be something like this:

(The revenue generated – Content marketing cost) / Content marketing cost = ROI

In order to be able to calculate the Content Marketing Cost, you will need some data that we list below:

Content Marketing Costs:

  1. Labor (Content Manager, Analyst, etc)
  2. Cost of producing ebooks, posts, infographics, and webinars (layout and video editing, copywriter, etc)
  3. Tools – Software and website and blog hosting

Putting it on a table would look like this:

Content Marketing Planning (Costs)

Folks
Content ManagerUSD 2,000.00
Third-party company ContentsUSD 1,000.00
designerUSD 1,000.00
Contents
blog postsUSD 100.00
ebooksUSD 800.00
webinarsUSD 1,000.00
Tools
Blog Platform (WP)free
accommodationUSD 100.00
Total CostsUSD 6,000.00

*The values ​​listed are merely explanatory

Content Marketing Revenue:

  1. Sales closed with Leads generated by organic sources (posts) (exclude Leads generated by CPC) and;
  2. Sales closed with directly generated Leads that offer some other type of content (ebooks, Webinars, emails, Landing Pages).

Content Marketing Planning (Revenues)

Lead Generation (Quantity)
Blog Posts (minus CPC)5,000
Webinars/Ebooks (less CPC)15,000
Sales – Considering conversion from 1 to 6%
Blog Posts300
Webinars / Ebooks700
Product Service Value – BRL 12.00
Total RevenueBRL 12,000

*The values ​​listed are merely explanatory

In our example, if you make $12000 in content marketing revenue and the company’s total cost of content marketing is $6000, you will find a “return on investment” as being 1x the total cost or 100%. Of course, these values ​​will vary according to the size of the company, team size, structure, and consequently the type of business, ticket value, etc…

But whatever the count, the math is clear, content marketing has to be profitable, meaning generate more sales, revenue, and profits. For the account to close and for you to be able to assess the impacts and better measure your marketing efforts, an initial step is to understand the current state of your sales funnel.

How to do Content Marketing

How to do Content Marketing

Content Marketing without a well-planned strategy is not enough to generate maximum results. The method has proven results, but it is necessary to allow time for planning and strategy.

Content Marketing is not just about writing a blog post or creating a Facebook post

There are several ways to apply and execute a good Content Marketing strategy. Some ways can be:

  • Blog;
  • Rich Contents;
  • Videos;
  • Social networks;
  • E-mail marketing.

As you can see, Content Marketing is not just writing a blog post or creating a Facebook post and waiting for the results to magically appear on your desk.

You need to think about what to write, when to publish, in which channel to promote, which format to use, which persona to achieve, and what result you want to achieve.

Having the goals mapped and the goals defined, you can start to expect good results when working with Content Marketing.


How to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

Blog

Creating a blog for your business is a key action for an effective Content Marketing strategy.

Many people may think that, with the popularization of social media, blogging is an outdated element. However, not only in the case of Valuecoast Digital, but also with the example of hundreds of clients that we have, the blog has proven to be a spectacular channel.

This happens because only with a blog on your own domain you can have full control of all Content Marketing actions.

A blog is the most common form of attraction on the internet. With good content and good SEO optimization, blogging is the best way for you to get traffic. A good relationship via Email Marketing and social media also helps in generating traffic to your business.

Blogs are often the gateway to future clients. Therefore, it is important that your company’s blog is relevant and catches the user’s attention. Only then will this user become a Lead and, in the future, a customer.

If you already have a blog or are thinking of creating one for your business, it is important to be careful with some points when putting this type of plan into practice:

  • HAVE CADENCE IN POSTS
  • AGENDA PLANNING
  • REMEMBER TO OPTIMIZE TEXT FOR GOOGLE
  • DIVERSIFY THE TYPE OF COMMUNICATION

Have cadence in posts

To find out what is the ideal frequency for your company, take into account its size, your competition, and the team available to produce content – ​​it is important that the frequency of post-publication does not affect the quality of the material.

Another important factor is to maintain a pattern and a post-calendar. Being regular helps to have visitors returning to your site. If you add these returns to new daily visits, you’ll find that it pays to maintain this regularity.

One of the ways to keep a loyal audience is to make them understand the frequency of blog posts. Your visitors will find it strange if you post twice in one week, ten times the next week, once the third week, and again ten times the next week.

It’s true that studies show that the more new posts, the more chances your blog has to stand out from the competition. However, this only happens if the increase in quantity is not going to affect quality. Here, the qualitative index always comes before the quantitative.

So the most important thing is to be regular. Whether with daily, weekly or biweekly posts, it is recommended to keep this frequency so that your audience knows how your company’s blog works and realizes that everything is being done in an organized way.

Agenda Planning

For maximum effectiveness of your Content Marketing strategy, the topics that will be covered on the blog cannot be random. One of the secrets to a successful blog is precisely not to avoid the central theme.

Forecast how many posts per month or week you can produce for your blog without making it repetitive or unruly. If your blog is in an extremely specific niche, for example, it might be harder to find daily topics.

The main tip is to create an agenda in advance, based on the problems your persona faces and the different stages of the Shopping Journey. This way, you can predict what the next topics will be, better organize your blog content and, at the same time, maintain the editorial focus and diversity of themes.

Also, consider Google searching for the topic you want to write about. It is important to give priority to those who have searched so that your blog can be found more easily.

Remember to optimize text for Google

After doing theme planning and defining the frequency of posts, it is important to follow good SEO practices so that your publications are well-positioned in Google results. After all, your website needs to be found!

Set a keyword to focus on in the post and follow some On-Page SEO optimization techniques. There are many ways to optimize a post, but to sum up the technique, remember to put the keyword in the following attributes:

  • Post title;
  • Post URL;
  • Post description;
  • Alt-text of images;
  • At least 1 Header <H2> of the text.

Furthermore, it is recommended to use the keyword at the beginning of the text and, diluted, throughout the post.

But be careful not to write the article just thinking about search engine optimization. Also, think about the user experience before publishing. Will the article help you? Is it relevant to the problem he has? Does the title match the content?

It is important to combine SEO with the user experience, as Google’s algorithm is quite advanced and is already able to identify some qualitative criteria in the text. So, don’t stuff your text with disconnected keywords. There must be sense!

Diversify the type of communication

Another very important factor for well-written content is structure. It is essential to keep in mind that reading on the internet is different from reading a book, magazine, or newspaper.

There are many distractions on the internet, and it is common for the user to lose attention if the text is not attractive at first or is not scanable.

For example, very large blocks of text, with no eye rest, often cause discomfort for the user.

So, whenever you can, enrich your blog with subheads, lists, bullet points, bold, italics, images, infographics, videos, etc.

In addition to being a great way to improve the user experience, it’s a habit valued by Google.

Video: How to increase your blog visits


Rich Contents Content Marketing

Rich Contents

The production of blog posts is very important to attract visitors to your website and make your company a reference in the market, but for a complete Content Marketing strategy, it is necessary to have an intermediate conversion to hook those who are not yet at the right time to purchase.

That’s the function of rich content: educational material that adds value to your visitors. By offering this type of content, your company can continue educating your potential customers and preparing them over time and, at the right time, make the sales approach.

But creating these materials is not enough for them to help educate prospects and make your company a reference in the market: it is necessary to disclose them correctly and efficiently to get Leads and, from there, start a relationship with these Leads.

The most effective way to offer them is through Landing Pages, which are conversion-oriented pages. Through them, you can offer the content and, in exchange, ask for some contact information from potential customers, such as name, email, telephone, etc.

The production of this material doesn’t necessarily have to be laborious: you can start by offering content that you already have and use in your company, such as spreadsheets, templates, market research/analysis, technical articles, checklists, glossaries, etc. Subsequently, you can produce materials specifically designed to answer questions and curiosities or to solve the pain of your potential customers.

Some of the main rich content formats are eBooks, webinars, tools, kits, infographics, and templates, which we’ll talk about in more detail below.

  • EBOOKS
  • WEBINARS
  • TOOLS
  • KITS
  • INFOGRAPHICS
  • TEMPLATES

eBooks

Making eBooks is a great alternative to longer content that could be too long for a blog post. They convey an image of authority on the subject, conveying trustworthiness to their target audience.

That’s because writing an eBook and organizing it requires a lot of research and knowledge of the topic. In addition, it organizes a particular topic into a logical learning sequence, which can be useful for anyone studying a particular subject.

This type of format also has the benefit of having a “high virality”, as it is enough to share it on social media with images and a catchy title that your readers will likely share (if the material really generates value for them).

Another advantage is that it is a relatively cheap format to develop, as, unlike other content, it requires little infrastructure: just do the research, write and diagram. And even if you’re new to design, you can use one of the eBook templates from Valuecoast Digital to design your eBook.

All these peculiar characteristics of eBooks make them one of the great tactics of Content Marketing.

webinars

Like eBooks, webinars are a popular format for content production. They end up having a more personal touch, which brings the company’s potential customer closer together, and are a great opportunity to establish contact with reference people in your market.

They are also not very expensive: you can record a webinar with just an amateur camera or cell phone, a microphone and a computer to edit the video – of course, the better the production, the better the image you will pass from yours. company.

You can offer it both live and recorded. Live versions benefit from closer proximity to interested parties, as you can answer questions instantly. But nothing prevents you from later making this webinar available in a recorded version, so that it continues to generate Leads over time.

In addition, you can still use what was said in the webinar to create other content formats, such as new posts, eBooks, infographics, etc.

Tools

Tools help your prospects with practical problems that often couldn’t be solved just by reading an eBook or watching a webinar. They have a good lead generation potential, because if they are able to facilitate the work of your target audience, they will probably generate a lot of engagement.

They can either be part of your product/service or something entirely new. If they are part of your product/service, they can make the Lead move forward in the purchase process, as they provide a “straw” on how the complete solution works.

One example is our Digital Marketing Funnel, a partnership between RD and Contentools. The tool gives both companies an idea of ​​what potential customers could better explore in their Marketing actions and strategies.

Generally, creating tools requires a little bigger infrastructure, as you will need to have the help of a professional who knows about programming. On the other hand, your tool will hardly be copied, since it is more complicated to reproduce this type of content than a post, for example. This makes tools a nice way of differentiating.

Kits

Kits are a content-rich format that brings together two or more materials on the same topic, or aimed at a specific audience.

A big benefit of kits is that if you’re already working on rich content production, they can simply be the aggregation of material you already have, optimizing the content team’s efforts.

For this reason, they tend to have a low production cost, as you only need to adapt them for a new release, creating new Landing Pages, Thank-you Pages, emails, images etc.

But even if you decide to create a completely new material, the kit can be very attractive to those interested and have a good cost-benefit ratio, as it draws attention to the amount of content being offered for free.

In addition, they also help those who are learning about a particular subject, as they usually gather what you offer the most interesting on the subject.

Infographics

Infographics are the union of information in visual and written formats, with graphics and data highlighted to facilitate the understanding of a message.

Infographics as a Content Marketing strategy can be as efficient as rich material because they facilitate reading through visual information, especially when there is a lot of numerical data or it is necessary to explain some process with a step by step. In addition, they can attract more Leads because they tend to require less time than reading an eBook or watching a Webinar, for example.

Although it seems complicated, developing an infographic can be simple even for those who are not very familiar with image editing and creation software, as there are several tools, many of them online and free, that can help you in this task, such as Canva.com .

Templates

Templates are basically templates for spreadsheets, presentations, lists and other ready-to-use materials, which, as well as tools, make it easier for your prospects to perform any task. In Digital Results, for example, we have:

  • eBook Templates
  • Content calendar
  • Digital Marketing Report
  • Marketing Automation Worksheet

As they have a very practical application, templates are very good to attract qualified Leads. So, remember to create self-explanatory templates or templates that have support material to be used well.

Plus, they’re easier to create than you think. After all, many companies already use templates in their internal processes, and they can offer them without having to change practically anything.


videos Content Marketing

videos

Video is another format that, when applied within a Content Marketing strategy, can be extremely valuable to your company.

It is a format that is becoming more and more popular, and largely because of how easy it is to create a video today. Some companies don’t even have professional cameras, and use webcams or cell phones for recordings.

Videos are so hot that today, in 2016, 50% of all mobile internet traffic is already made up of them. Plus: having a video on a product page increases purchase intent by up to 85% by reinforcing the product’s reliability for the customer.

Some tips for you to use videos in your strategy:

  • USE OF BLOG VIDEOS
  • USE OF VIDEOS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
  • VIDEO CHANNEL AND MEDIA CENTER

Use of Blog Videos

The blog is the main medium in which the content produced by your company will be disseminated and, when we think about it, the first content format that comes to mind is usually the text.

In fact, this format is the most common, but we shouldn’t forget the possibilities that the videos present.

There are several ways to use videos as blog content. One is by creating a series of short videos that cover a certain topic but aren’t long enough to become a webinar.

Use of videos on social media

Another good practice is to use videos on social networks. There are video-specific social networks such as Youtube, Vine and Periscope, and multi-content social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which also offer video as a publishing format.

There are several ways for your company to create video content on social media. You can create teasers that direct the user to a page, mini explanatory videos on a particular topic, product demos, case studies, live streams, and more.

Videos work great on social media. Within Facebook, for example, it is the publishing format that generates the greatest reach, as we talked about in the post Why publish videos on Facebook .

Video channel and media center

Thinking in the larger context of Digital Marketing, it is possible to go further and do something focused on conversion. For this, having a repository of your company’s videos is an excellent way to position yourself and generate results.

When we think about making a video channel as a Content Marketing strategy, it is quite common to have a channel on mass free platforms such as Youtube, Vimeo and Daily Motion. And taking advantage of the audience that these channels actually have is something attractive, especially when we are aiming to attract visitors to the site.

It turns out that this is not always the best option: it is possible to go a step further and turn this video channel, or media center, into a channel of your company, such as the website itself. This is something much more interesting to position yourself as a reference and avoid some classic problems brought by free platforms, such as loss of attention and third-party advertising.

There are national and international tools that help you improve your conversion possibilities through videos.

Prices vary and so does value delivery. The important thing is to choose the one that can generate more business for your company, that fulfills the technological needs of your moment and, obviously, that is cost-effective.


Social networks Content Marketing

Social networks

The social networks are great channels for your company make Content Marketing. These are multifunctional channels within Digital Marketing, because they can work both for attraction and for relationships and, in some cases, even sales.

There are many reasons for your company to be present on social media. For example:

  • For many people, it is the main channel used to consume content, information and entertainment;
  • It’s a cheap channel that can yield results even for those who don’t promote their publications;
  • It has high content dissemination and viralization power;
  • It is a channel for relationship with customers and fans, both through inbox messages and in public publications;
  • It is a powerful source of traffic and lead generation for your company’s website.

There are definitely more advantages. Therefore, maintaining a presence on social networks is essential.

Now, when it comes to content, an interesting alternative is to use social networks not only to promote what your company produces for your blog or website, but also to use them to produce content directly on the platform, in different formats than it is. published on the blog.

The biggest social networks today are multimedia, which allows your company to produce texts, infographics, montages, videos, live broadcasts, contests, photographs, gifs and whatever else your creativity allows.

Note that we are talking about social networks, in the plural. In other words, doing Content Marketing on social networks is not just about creating a Facebook page and posting nonstop.

  • SOCIAL NETWORKS IS NOT JUST FACEBOOK
  • DON’T BE AN INCONVENIENT SELLER
  • MEASURE THE RESULTS
  • TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO INTERACT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

Social Networks is not just Facebook

It’s true that Facebook is the biggest social network on the planet. In 2016, it reached the incredible milestone of 1.65 billion active users worldwide. In Brazil, this number is 92 million people, or 45% of the Brazilian population.

At first glance, it may seem that, according to these data, just being on Facebook is enough for your company to be successful on social media.

However, it’s just the opposite. Being on Facebook is not a differentiator, it’s the basics. And to stand out among so many other companies and content producers, you need to work in a very strategic and creative way.

An interesting way is precisely to be open to other opportunities and produce content on other social networks as well.

Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, SlideShare, Snapchat, Tumblr, Google Plus, Periscope, Pinterest: all these media can work for your company. All you need is a lot of dedication, quality content and frequent publication.

To begin the process of choosing the social networks your company should be present on, it is important to identify where your ideal target audience is and how your company can share relevant content with them. Talking to some current and potential customers can be a good way to find out what they’re wearing on a daily basis.

In addition, even if your company is not going to act actively in all of them, it is important to create profiles on the networks to reserve the name, preventing pages or profiles from appearing with the name of your business.

To better understand, we suggest reading these two posts:

  • Overview: In which social network should your company be present?
  • Social Media: Why use each one differently (and how VD does it)

Don’t be an inconvenient seller

Most of the time, social media is not an environment where people are wanting to be approached by corporate posts and sellers.

And as we’re talking about Content Marketing, the ideal is for your company to use social media to first create a relationship with your audience and then work on your offers in an architected and subtle way.

Remember that the fan who is following your company on social media may even be a customer or a consumer of your product or service, but they will not always be consuming your solution. In other words, to keep him engaged with your company, create content for him and make offers at the right time!

measure the results

Whenever possible, analyze your work performance on social media. This will help identify opportunities and improve what has not worked.

But how to measure results? What are the really important metrics for social media?

It is quite normal to find companies focusing the success of a Content Marketing strategy on the number of likes, shares and comments of publications, and forgetting that engagement is useless if there is no generation of business opportunities.

It is important to make clear that we are by no means saying that these metrics should not be tracked. Yes, they should be monitored as, indirectly, they help the reach your publication will have.

Posts with more likes, comments and shares are understood by social networks as quality content, and that is why social networks emphasize them.

However, the focus should be on metrics that we can call direct, that is, that show the audience’s interest in continuing to interact with your company.

Impressions:The first step of the social media funnel represents the number of times your post has been viewed. Always try to optimize your publications so that they are seen more and more by your audience. 

Some controllable variables can increase your page impressions and consequently increase the top of your funnel, such as publication time and format;Clicks:

This is a very important metric to measure the performance of your posts, after all, the objective that belongs only to a company’s social media management is to generate traffic to other specific channels to generate business opportunities. 

You should optimize your posts as much as possible so that your audience clicks more and more on them and, later, is converted into Leads;

Conversions:The number of conversions from visitors to business opportunities should be your main metric to track in this process. 

Although the conversion does not depend solely and exclusively on the work done in social media, it is a metric that shows the channel’s effectiveness, that is, the amount of your Leads that were generated by social media.

Take advantage of the opportunity to interact with your audience

Social media are places where you can and should communicate more personally with your target audience.

Make the most of this opportunity, as this can be a differentiator in your strategy.

Respond to the comments your fans make so they feel privileged. It’s a quick and easy way to retain the fans you already have and even turn them into advocates for your brand.

Furthermore, interaction with the public usually generates good insights for new Content Marketing actions. Take advantage of what your fans have to say and make them feel like they’re participating in your publications.


E-mail marketing Content Marketing

E-mail marketing

The Email Marketing has been the workhorse of many companies that know how to use it. Today, the channel goes far beyond sending messages or notifications: it’s a good way to spread content, attract new visitors and deepen relationships with the contact base. 

As an agile and low-cost channel, it is useful for various types of businesses and sizes of companies that want to apply Content Marketing and other marketing strategies.

By separating your contacts by areas of interest (content accessed or downloaded on your website, which indicate what type of product or service they may need), it is possible to deliver messages with the right offers to the potential customer, considerably increasing the conversion rate . This brings important results in terms of engagement, in addition to being fundamental to guide your prospects towards the sale.

In addition to sending newsletters and disseminating new material through promotional emails, your company can invest in a Leads nutrition strategy. Use each email to educate and motivate your potential customers or inform you about your offerings – content, services or products.

Despite these benefits, when Email Marketing is done wrong, it can leave a wrong impression about its quality. Therefore, some important precautions must be taken.

  • DON’T BUY EMAIL LIST
  • SPEND EFFORTS ON SEGMENTATION
  • DO NOT SEND AN “IMAGE EMAIL”
  • WORRY ABOUT FREQUENCY
  • MEASURE THE RESULTS

Don’t buy email list

Purchasing mailing lists may seem advantageous, but there are many reasons not to invest in this practice.

First, because the people on the list don’t know your company and have shown no interest in it, so they have no idea how you got the email. This causes a very bad impression when receiving the message.

The second reason is that we have seen the explosion of social media, which has given consumers voice and power. Today the company is frowned upon not only by those who received the spam, but also by all of that person’s friends, if they use their profile to complain.

Thirdly, email services are getting smarter. There is a good chance that many users will mark your message as spam, and by doing so, your company’s reputation will suffer. That way, the next submissions have a high chance of going straight into the spam box, and even people who would like to receive something from your company won’t see your email.

Also, these lists often have a lot of emails that don’t exist or have been disabled. The quality is also bad in terms of target audience, because to “fat” the list and try to make it worth more, all types of email are included. Thus, enter profiles that do not have any relationship with the service or product offered by your company.

Spend efforts on segmentation

Sending the right email to the right person brings the most out of your contact base. For this, the first step is to have information, which can come from many places – for those who work with Digital Marketing, the most common is that it comes from Landing Pages.

Thus, it is very important that, when creating a Landing Page, the questions to be asked are defined, that is, the most relevant information that will help your company to make a better segmentation.

With the information in hand, the next step is to think about the process as a whole – not only for creating campaigns, but for the release of materials. It is common for companies to define the offer before the public. There’s nothing wrong with that, however, when there’s information about the Leads base, it’s easier to make an offer specifically for a well-targeted audience.

To help in the process, you can make a good integration between the services that your company uses and keep it always updated or use a more complete Digital Marketing platform , which has most of the necessary tools already integrated with each other.

Do not send an “image email”

Another practice that causes negative results in your Email Marketing campaign is putting all the message content in a single image. That’s because most major email services – such as Hotmail, Yahoo and Outlook – have a default security lock for viewing any image format that is in an email.

With the Internet increasingly abundant with information, it is rare that users have time and interest to the point of authorizing the exhibition and only then discovering what the email is about. The email needs to show what it came from right away. By using just one image, many recipients will ignore the email, or delete it or mark it as spam.

The best way to make sure that the email message will be transmitted to the recipient, even if the recipient does not authorize the display of the images, is to use an HTML email template with good distribution between text and images with alt tags, always placing a text that describes the image.

worry about frequency

Determining the ideal frequency of emails is very important when using Email Marketing, as it is one of the elements responsible for the results of your campaigns in the long run.

A high volume of emails can have a greater reach and even generate more sales on the spot, but it also tends to annoy readers and cause a gradual drop in subscribers to the list.

On the other hand, sending few emails can “cool down the relationship” and underuse the channel’s potential, in addition to causing surprise to the reader when the email arrives.

To help find the sweet spot, think about the purpose of the email. If you want to report the events of the week, for example, the frequency is weekly. For cases where the idea is to maintain a relationship or promote something timeless, however, more information is needed and the next step should be taken.

Chat with subscribers. This “investigative” work is essential in defining the frequency, not least because, as the consequences of this come in the long term, it is much more difficult to do tests to find the best frequency than for the best time.

Also pay attention to the number of people who cancel their subscription. If you find that the rate of people unsubscribe from your list is high, it’s time to stop and review your shipping policy.

Don’t set an optimal frequency, even if it’s been chosen by your customers, if it’s not enough time for you to select or produce relevant content. If the submitted content is not relevant, it will be very easy for people to get bored and unsubscribe from your list.

measure the results

After sending the emails, it is important to measure the results to see what needs to be changed, tested and improved. For this, some metrics such as list growth, open, clicks and unsubscribe rates must be observed.

List growth rate is the percentage of new emails out of the list total. This metric allows us to observe how the construction of a relevant base as a Digital Marketing asset is going. A bad rate could mean that your business needs to invest more in bait to get emails.

The open rate is the number of people who opened the message divided by the number of people who received it. Although not very accurate (there are some technical distortions), the open rate is a very important metric to indicate the quality of the chosen subject for the email and the best time to send it.

The click-through rate is one of the most important items, and that is why many companies care only about it. However analyzing it exclusively and separately does not show where the problem lies. An email with a low open rate obviously tends to have fewer clicks.

When we also measure the click/open rate, we can identify the problem more clearly: we see if there were no clicks because the content is bad (after the email was opened) or if the open rate is what is bad (and the problem is in the subject, shipping time and history with the brand).

The unsubscribe rate per submission indicates how many people have opted out of your list and reflects issues with content quality and/or submission frequency. A high rate of unsubscribes is a big warning for your company and indicates the need for reformulation in the Email Marketing policy.

It’s also worth analyzing the impact of actions on your website – how many visits the email generated and, especially, how many conversions are performed by this source of traffic.

In this way, it is possible to understand a little more about the business value provided by this type of action:

12 Most Common Content Marketing Mistakes

Here are twelve common content marketing mistakes:

  1. Lack of Clear Strategy: Failing to define a clear and measurable content marketing strategy can lead to haphazard efforts with no defined goals or direction.
  2. Ignoring Audience Needs: Not understanding or addressing the needs, preferences, and pain points of your target audience can result in content that doesn’t resonate.
  3. Inconsistent Publishing: Irregular posting schedules can lead to loss of audience engagement and can hinder your content’s reach and impact.
  4. Neglecting SEO: Ignoring search engine optimization practices can make it harder for your content to be discovered by your target audience.
  5. Overlooking Quality for Quantity: Prioritizing quantity over quality can result in subpar content that fails to engage or provide value to your audience.
  6. Ignoring Data and Analytics: Neglecting to track and analyze content performance can result in missed opportunities for optimization and improvement.
  7. Ignoring Content Promotion: Even great content needs to be promoted effectively to reach its full potential audience.
  8. Not Diversifying Content Formats: Relying solely on one type of content (e.g., blog posts) without considering other formats like videos, infographics, or podcasts can limit your reach.
  9. Being Too Self-Promotional: Constantly pushing products or services without providing valuable, informative content can turn off your audience.
  10. Not Adapting to Trends: Failing to stay updated with industry trends or failing to adapt content to current events can result in stale and irrelevant content.
  11. Ignoring Feedback: Disregarding audience feedback and failing to incorporate it into your content strategy can lead to missed opportunities for improvement.
  12. Impatience for Results: Expecting immediate results from content marketing efforts can lead to frustration and discouragement. Content marketing often requires time to gain traction and show its full impact.

Avoiding these common mistakes and implementing best practices can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is a marketing strategy focused on creating and distributing relevant content (such as articles, ebooks and social media posts) without explicitly promoting the brand.

What is Content Marketing for?

Among the various objectives of Content Marketing, the main ones are: to increase your brand’s visibility on the internet, increase interaction with your brand, nurture the lead base, reduce CAC, increase trust and conquer brand evangelists and improve the after-sales experience.

How important is Content Marketing?

With Content Marketing, the company helps its target audience to solve their problems and becomes an authority on the subject.

How to do Content Marketing?

There are several ways to apply and execute a good Content Marketing strategy. Some ways can be: through blogging, rich content, videos, social media and email marketing.

Ini Patrick

I’m Ini Patrick, The online business/blogging enthusiast. I started Valuecoast with the sole purpose of informing and educating young online entrepreneurs, and now it’s empowering more than 10,000+ readers globally by helping them to live a laptop lifestyle via blogging & digital marketing and has since become a full-time digital marketing agency. With our unique solutions, vast experience, and affordable resources, we will help you become successful online.

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