How to Develop Your Conversion-magnet Content Strategy
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We’ve all seen and read about how crucial content marketing is to the success of your business. But even when you’ve heard all about the importance of having a content strategy, are you willing to put the pedal to the metal to get it done and help you get the results you’re after?
A company’s strategic approach towards content marketing is a huge influencer to the way your message resonates across every online platform imaginable.
And if your company is devoid of a strategic approach to content yet, there’s no better time than the present to start formulating one. Or you can risk missing out on all the good stuff that your competitors are enjoying.
Understandably, many companies will be facing a lot when they start out. So we’ll promote you to answer questions like:
- Which types of content should you create?
- What’s your schedule for pumping out your content?
- Where would you post all your content pieces?
- How should you go about distributing them?
The content you produce is the magnet that lures your customers to your brand. It attracts qualified audiences to come in droves to your online business and provides the opportunity that you need for conversions in your loyal customers.
So today, we’ll be discussing how to write content that’s geared for conversions, and how you can use the knowledge you’ve collected from data to attract your qualified prospective clients.
But what exactly does strategic content marketing entail?
A content strategy is a complete bunch of careful steps to do some thorough research, craft, distribute, and promote relevant information that your audience would appreciate — so long as it answers their needs. Don’t delve too deeply into it and lose yourself.
The main ingredient that any strategy involving content marketing must have is quality. You need it because loads and loads of content float around the world wide web. Otherwise, how do you set yourself and your brand apart?
Your business needs to do what it takes to rise above the rest of the competition.
An essential key performance indicator that your business should be closely monitoring is lead generation. Because the greater the number of customers your website can usher in, your opportunities in business multiply and you can generate sales.
When do you need a content strategy?
But before you dive deep into the world of content strategy, take a moment to think about your business objectives and goals first. You see, only a minimal handful of businesses won’t reap the benefits of a proper content writing strategy.
So the first step involves questioning whether or not your customers are struggling to overcome circumstances and meeting their objectives. And if your answer is the along the lines of an affirmative, then that’s a definite signal for you to update your current content writing plans.
Okay, so for instance, let’s picture you selling software as a service. And of course, you’re going to need most of your target audiences to purchase it. Your other predicament is that you don’t have the financial resources to pay for advertising and promotions. A strategic approach to content marketing can help you in this way.
And thanks to articles like these, they can easily locate your website. They look at your content, appreciate it, and eventually return for more. As long as your customers require your services and need your products, your company’s brand will immediately pop in the forefront of their minds.
But in the absence of solid content writing plans, your writers are only playing at guesswork. A strategy lets you formulate the appropriate kind of content in the most opportune of times.
Does a content strategy bring more conversions?
One important thing you must remember is that your customers will only yield into conversions when they’ve been nurtured enough and when they’re ready. However, in strategizing the way you write content, you can be immediately present in that specific instant when your prospects decide to buy. It’s all about being present at the right time.
And with a solid content strategy in play, your business will have information on the following key points:
- What kind of and which keywords you should be targeting
- The tone that will be implemented in the content creation
- Perfect time to casually insert the names of your products
- How to craft and deliver a killer CTA
Your purpose is that you wouldn’t just want your target audiences to view your content and read it afterward and leave without doing anything. You want them to take the next course of action that you put forward.
And if you want to appear convincing enough to them, then you need to demonstrate your thought leadership in that specific niche. Offer content that’s more informational and more generous than that of your competitors. Afterward, create a strategic content marketing plan that can aid you in reaching the right audience whenever and wherever it’s necessary to them the most.
A Guide to Your Conversion-magnet Content Strategy
You know that your business needs a concrete strategy for content but if you have no inkling about where to begin, then that’s perfectly okay. We have this detailed guide that will show you the way.
1. Do some research on target keywords
Some marketers will assume the use of key phrases is old-fashioned. If you believe in that, you’re in the losing end of the online marketing party, my friend.
As long as one of your target audience are typing strings of words in search of something in Google’s search, they are actually making use of key phrases. And it happens whether or not they’re perfectly conscious of doing it. And it’s your job to puzzle out specifically which keywords would resonate with your target audiences the most.
If you’re looking for an exceptional keyword tool that’s great for finding phrases that you should target, you can start by using Google’s autocomplete function, Google Trends, Moz’s Keyword Explorer, etc. You can begin at the first stages with a general keyword. And then you can move on to finding longer keywords that would add more meat to your list.
Set your goal marks on these two types of keywords — competitive and not competitive. And on that note, be sure to set your sights on the keywords that are longer and consist of more than two words. These actually get you organic traffic that’s directed towards your site, and you need to do it too for the sake of voice-search optimization.
Take this, for example, this keyword, “workout pants” targets an expansive group of people — maybe even in differing demographics. However, the keyword “workout pants for pregnant women” will let you laser in on the exact audience that you’re after; an ideal situation if you want to draw in and encourage conversion among qualified leads.
2. Finding related keywords
For any marketer, it’s not a good idea for a business to put all their attention on only one key phrase. In a bid to aiding the giant search engine, Google, into comprehending your pieces of content a lot better, there is a need for you to include related keywords.
Several tools for keyword research can help you immensely. All you need to do is continue inputting key phrases or keywords that are directly related to a specific subject. List the following keywords that are related and would be sensible to the rest of the target market.
Remember that Google has a crap ton of information to sort in one day. That means you must do your part in content creation to help. More often than not, most keywords contain several meanings — at the very least, they have two. This is why the inclusion of related terms help. This actually aids Google in understanding the kind of user intent to effectively target.
3. Designing spreadsheets for each keyword topic
Next thing you need to do is build a proper spreadsheet that your brand writers can have as a template. Your master spreadsheet should also have the target keyword written down, your list of semantical key phrases, along with different types of information derived from keyword research right before the process of content writing can even begin.
4. Create an outline for your content
Constructing an outline lets will give you the opportunity to arrange a bunch of ideas, and afterward, form the structure of your article. In doing so, creating an outline lands a bigger impact, and is done for the benefit of SEO and for your target audiences. The outline you’ve constructed will also aid you in determining the kind of subtopics your company would cover. Plus, an outline can help keep you from disregarding ideas carelessly before the process of content creation can even begin.
On a further note, the outline you’ve constructed must be immediately written down on your spreadsheet. Take care to place precise identifications over each subtopic that’s within an outline. Make sure it has the proper heading tags, plus different pieces of valuable information.
5. Drafting your content
No matter what kind of content you’re producing, it will always start out as a draft. In creating this, you can always choose Microsoft Office, and Google Docs, or other writing software that you’re perfectly comfortable with using. On the other hand, you can even construct each of your drafts within WordPress. You can even do it on any of your other favorite CMS.
And when you’re done writing the draft, you can leave it to stew in your computer folder for a couple of hours before you open it again to do some editing and a couple of revisions. You can also forward the draft to your editor for an even more critical assessment.
6. Designing publication and scheduling a promotion
You have the freedom to determine how you schedule your published content. Regularity has more weight than frequency. Let’s say for instance, that your writers put out fresh pieces of content each Wednesday, and in doing so, your readers have the general idea of when to return to your site and read up on new content.
As much as possible, do your best to broadcast content on a set of the scheduled number of weeks, days, and hours. Remember that organization and consistency is the key to how your strategic content creation will succeed in the very end.
Also, remember to promote your content upon distribution. Broadcasting newly published content across your social media channels, and sending newsletters to the people in your email list has a significant influence on the number of people that your content will reach.
Some social media platforms let you set pieces of published content ahead of time. There are also several tools to make your content promotion easier.
7. Outreach towards influencers
When you reference reputable brands and other worthy people in your content pieces and collaborate with them with the sole purpose of sharing great work, you’re actually opening doors of opportunities for your business. Highly likely, the majority of those brands and influencers will not call you back, but for the most part, you can still count on it being a reliable method.
Another good idea would be to send emails to a couple of influencers who you know find your content pieces intriguing. Take special note of the people who have considerable social media following. You know full well that any type of influencer has the significant power to turn underrated content into sensational ones. So give your fantastic content pieces the chance to reach a large number of your target audiences.
8. Build your internal linking portfolio
Internal linking aids in your content ranking higher on SERPs. Plus, it does wonders for customer retention. Nobody likes website visitors leaving right after seeing just one article. Every content marketer’s goal is to have the reader stay on the site and discover more.
Evidently, if you’re creating your strategic content outright from the bare basics, you evidently don’t have much content. You’re just about to make them. So while you create newer pieces of content, return to your previously written posts, and work on sliding invaluable links to both the new and old pieces to maintain your internal link structure.
A Checklist for Your Own Content Strategy
And after tackling these eight steps to help you build a solid way of structuring your content, where do you begin?
In a content strategy checklist, here are some of the more important points you need to keep track of and take note to help you start out:
- Doing keyword research: Do your part to ensure that your spreadsheet is rich in terms of quantity of keywords that would be directly related to your services or products, and of course, the entirety of your brand. Update your keywords list constantly, so you can find fresh ideas for key phrases to avoid running out of ideas for topics.
- Deciding on content goals: Ask yourself what kind of goal you would want to attain through content production. You can have multiple goals as even a single content piece needs its own specific goal. For example, one piece of content might be intended for establishing thought leadership, while the other is for boosting sales and encouraging conversions.
- Finding the right length for your content: How long should your articles be? Will your audience appreciate short or long content. Nowadays, content that’s lengthy acquires more attention in search engine results because it’s perceived as more thorough. But only make it longer when it’s necessary. Otherwise, a short punchy article is still effective when you do it right.
- Your style guide: Make sure that your published articles have consistency in terms of tone, voice, and the general appearance.
- Cornerstone content: Cornerstone content is any type of top-notch article that focuses on your highly prioritized key phrases. In the long-run, you can build smaller pieces of content around the cornerstone. You can even link to these pages consistently form your other articles and form an umbrella around it.
- Other forms of content: Visual content does remarkably well. So don’t shy away from creating fully customized infographics, producing videos, and along with other forms of interactive content that would complement your other textual content.
- On proofreading: Cultivate a systematic approach for creating and proofreading content. This is so it consistently reflects your best work.
- Targeting your audience: Each content piece that you create must be targeted towards specific audience segments in the target audience. Always refer back to your audience research.
- Promotion and distribution: Focus on how you’ll go about distributing your content, and which social media channels you should use for promotion.
On an Endnote
Remember that your content strategy doesn’t just come into existence straight out of thin air. It would take time and effort to create. You can make use of resources to help you jumpstart your online marketing strategy, and then proceed to test your content out across different platforms to see what other kinds of responses you can generate.
Content strategy can skyrocket your business growth, but it’s only possible when you make decisions and final choices based on the real-time data.
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