Content marketing plays a crucial role and is considered the crux of digital marketing in today’s ever-changing market. Digital marketing techniques are heavily incorporated into almost every marketing strategy to create and maintain a brand image. Content marketing plays an increasingly important role in promoting numerous products and services both online and offline.
An individual’s perception of a brand is largely based on its content. A brand could be a company or a person, but people look forward to interacting with them based on the kind of stories they provide.
Previously, people consumed content only through cinemas and spread word of mouth; now, they consume content through a variety of platforms, such as social media and instant messaging applications. People are more confident about content they are able to view online than content they can’t see online. Short videos, web series, images and write-ups are common content types among these platforms. Over the past decade, the trust that consumers place in these channels and their buying patterns have changed dramatically.
A consumer can be influenced to purchase through multiple touch points. An ad in the newspaper or viewing a product on the website is not sufficient. Consumers must be converted into customers through multiple touch points. As they can be followed on every platform they visit once they leave the website, this increases the brand recall value. This heavily influences them to make a purchase instead of indulging in content consumption.
The content displayed by brands should therefore be relevant, empathetic and engaging. Social media and online platforms have a huge impact on influences the buying patterns of consumers.
An organization’s brand equity is largely dependent on content marketing. It affects its identity, improves user engagement, and is influential in generating potential leads. Content marketing contributes to improving the brand relationship with customers as well.
In addition to written content, video content is a highly consumed content type across online platforms. Hence, producing relevant videos that are in sync with the brand’s equity and values can have a significant impact on the consumer. With a strong message, the videos should be appropriate for the right audience and targeted to them.
CONTENT MARKETING
First, we need to define content marketing. There are many definitions online, but this one summarizes ‘what content marketing is’ pretty well: Marketing based on online content (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not directly promote a brand, but stimulates interest in its products or services.
Today, content marketing is the preferred method of marketing. It promotes brand awareness and builds communities around a company, in turn driving incremental sales. There’s no denying the fierce battle for social media users’ attention. The fierce competition has been driving marketers to figure out how to leverage content in order to attract attention.
CREDIBILITY AND AUDIENCE GROWTH
There’s no doubt that high-quality content works best when it gets shared via social media. No wonder marketing experts say that social media and content marketing go together like wine and cheese. Getting the right combination of types might take some time, but once you find the formula, your audience will grow like never before.
Publishing content on your website and promoting it on social networks is the usual procedure. However, companies want results immediately, and content marketing is not able to deliver them. It needs to build momentum before it is evident that results have been achieved.
Content marketing experts advise companies to stay consistent with providing valuable content to their audiences over time. The momentum I’ve mentioned above is built over time, which is why an organic approach will help you build credibility and grow your audience at a slow pace.
If you are sure that your content is valuable, you can use sponsored posts and tweets on Facebook and Twitter, announce follow-up stories, and reach out to influencers in your industry to get your social media growth.
CONNECTS A BRAND WITH ITS AUDIENCE
As a marketing strategy, content marketing is to establish a connection between an audience and a brand, and not just any connection, but a connection that gives the audience sympathy and empathy for the brand. Content is the primary means of making people feel passionate about a brand. Mostly because they can see that they share the same values through a successful content marketing campaign.
This is called Brand Affinity in marketing. By achieving it with the right type of content, it becomes the most powerful way to convince prospects to become customers. This sounds great, but how can it be done?
The best way to turn your content marketing strategy into a brand affinity strategy is to provide unique and valuable content. A great way to begin is to share and demonstrate the company’s values within the content you share. You may create a course or a quiz if your company values knowledge, information and skillfulness, and share it, along with study materials, with your audience for free.
PROMOTES CONVERTION OPPORTUNITIES AND RATES
It is only content marketing that can increase conversion rates through remarketing audiences. Since you may be wondering how this is connected to content marketing, let me explain. Content analytics have the answer.
As an example, suppose that you have a number of different types of content on your official webpage (blog posts, infographics, products, reviews, etc.) and dozens of social media posts linking to your content. You can analyze your visitors’ behavior by implementing Google Analytics on your website. The good thing about this is that Google Analytics’ tracking code includes this information.
It is possible to build remarketing lists based on this data and serve content to prospects who juggle between social media and your website.Prospects, who are about to make their purchase decision, will be more likely to buy from you if you keep your business in front of them.
ASSISTS YOU IN BECOMING AN AUTHORITY
Making sure you provide your audience with topic-specific content that is accurate, relevant, and fresh will enable you to establish yourself as an authority. People love sharing valuable content, so if you provide it to them, you should enjoy publicity and engagement. Social media is a great way for you to share your clever and honest insights. Content written in an easy-to-understand, read way has the potential to engage more people. Becoming an authority on a particular topic doesn’t require you to use technical jargon.
A RANGE OF 5 SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT TYPES THAT ATTRACT ATTENTION
You can leverage social media channels to share great content with your audience. Here are five types of social media content to boost engagement and exposure.
1.The creation of user-generated content
A common way to increase your engagement and generate impressions is through user-generated content. User-generated content demonstrates that you are committed to connecting with your audience and building meaningful relationships with them.
The content you share on your platform may include images, videos, or text created by your followers. Story contests, caption contests, or other contests provide wonderful opportunities to generate and share UGC.
2.Videos
Almost all web traffic is generated by videos, and this trend keeps increasing. Videos are visually appealing and they tend to perform really well on social media, where people can share them. There’s no wonder social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook post viral videos.
3.Live Streaming
A lot of business pages now employ livestreams in order to increase their reach and engage with their followers, despite them being relatively new to social media.People seem to enjoy live streaming on social media platforms, which allows them to interact with brands in real-time. Simply put, people appreciate this feature because it offers a more intimate interaction in a public space.
4.Content for the infographic
Despite their eye-catching nature, infographics remain popular social media content because they provide relevant, educational information while being visually appealing. These visual representations of information are a great way to share important information and data with people, and they often get a lot of shares, likes, and comments. You can create attractive infographics with applications like AppyPie’s Infographic Maker, Infogram, Venngage, and others.
5.Providing educational content and how-to guides
Providing people with solutions to their problems is what your business is all about. Whatever your business may be, your social media content is the perfect platform to enable people to find what they are looking for. As the most-consumed web content, how-tos remain at the top of the list, and they could benefit your social media page very much.
It is obvious that the marketing world loves social media platforms. If you wish to attract more people, your content must resonate with your target audience. It’s crucial to get to know your audience before creating your content marketing strategy. This will enable you to understand what type of content will appeal to them.
