Tag Archives: Content Marketing

Digital trends to bolster your content marketing in 2019

Digital trends in 2019 that you can use for content marketing

Content marketing depends a lot on contemporary trends and technologies.

From the mid-2000s to 2010 content marketing was mostly about writing blog posts, email marketing and articles on article directories.

Then came social media. Then came social mobile apps.

These days content marketing involves, aside from still writing blog posts, email marketing and articles, publishing images on Instagram, publishing small posts on Facebook, publishing updates on Twitter and publishing through a slew of other content formats.

I normally don’t advocate spending your energies on multiple platforms because the more you focus on a single platform, the better ROI you get.

For example, if your audience prefers blogs, then focus on blogs.

You can use other channels to distribute and highlight your content on your blog, but otherwise, put all your energies into creating stellar blog content.

This Entrepreneur article talks about five digital marketing trends you can use to keep your audience engaged.

Digital marketing is a broader concept, but I look at these tools from the perspective of content marketing.

How do you use these developments manifesting in 2019 for the advantage of your content marketing?

First, these are the digital trends that you will encounter in 2019:

Artificial intelligence
Chatbots
Voice search
Influencer marketing
Live video

Artificial intelligence and content marketing

Artificial intelligence is everywhere whether we realize it or not. Here are a few blog posts in which I have covered AI and content writing and content marketing:

What effect is AI going to have on your content marketing?

Is artificial intelligence going to replace content writers?

How does AI help in content writing and content marketing?

When it comes to leveraging artificial intelligence for content marketing, don’t think of AI as some artificial thinking bot that is going to react whimsically about your content.

For example, search engines like Google are using artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency of search results.

Of course, it is not in Google’s interest to build an AI system that doesn’t bring up the results needed by its users.

Google has built/trained its AI so that it picks up and ranks only the best possible content it finds.

Chatbots and content marketing

Chatbots allow your customers and clients access helpful, useful information without your direct interference.

You must have experienced Chatbots on many websites.

You must have also noticed that sometimes instead of providing small answers to questions, Chatbots bring up links to their FAQs sections or even detailed articles.

The power of Chatbots lies in their ability to engage users.

True engagement can only happen if you carefully listen to your users: what sort of problems they may have, what sort of language they use, and so on.

Just like it is important to use the right language to improve your search engine rankings, it is very important to use the right language when writing content for your Chatbots.

The content for your Chatbot must be conversational, relevant, succinct, helpful, and to the point.

Voice search and content marketing

A good part of your content marketing goes into improving your search engine rankings for relevant keywords and search terms.

2019 onward, you need to make sure that your content comes up when people use voice search.

You may like to read How to optimize content writing for voice search

According to a Forbes article mentioned in the above link, by 2020, 50% of online searches will be voice searches.

According to Sundar Pichai, by 2016, 20% of mobile queries were already done by voice search.

Voice search is conversational. People search the way they speak.

While creating, writing and publishing content for your content marketing, make sure that your content is conversational, engaging and to the point. Use the language people normally use in voice searches.

Partnering with influencers for content marketing

There are contradictory opinions on exactly how influential influencers are but collaborating with influences can be really beneficial for your business if they have a strong fan following for your niche.

If there is an influencer on Instagram who posts lots of fashion-related photographs and has millions of followers, you may like to collaborate with him or her to promote your products or endorse one of your links.

Before deciding to collaborate with an influencer you may have to spend some time exploring the level of interaction that the influencer has with his or her friends and followers.

Content marketing with live video

Every social media service these days provides you the facility of broadcasting live video.

You can stream live video using Google Hangouts, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Periscope.

The best form of content marketing with live video that I have seen is organizing webinars.

Since everything happens in real time, so does interaction with the viewers. They can immediately ask questions and get answers from an expert.

These are just a few digital trends that may shape up your content marketing in 2019 and beyond. There can be many more.

Frankly, when I’m talking to my clients, I suggest them not to get too bogged down by all the platforms available these days. Just focus on the platforms where their prospective customers and clients spend maximum time.

Have a single place where you publish original content and then re-purpose the content to make a presence on other platforms.

Importance of email marketing for content marketing success

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Email marketing is important for content marketing success

In this blog post you will learn why email marketing is an integral part of content marketing and your content marketing is in complete without email marketing.

Although there are many reputable email marketing services, including MailChimp which I use, an average person relates email marketing to spamming.

Even those who want to use email marketing think that it means sending promotional and marketing messages to a bunch of email ids hoping that some of the recipients would purchase.

Since this approach rarely works, people conclude that email marketing doesn’t work.

For whom email marketing works, they know how to do it.

Content marketing works

They know that email marketing is not about promotion, it is about nurturing relationships and providing valuable content in people’s inboxes.

These people understand that content marketing and email marketing are inseparable.

Why you can’t ignore email marketing for your content marketing to be successful?

Because it is one of the most potent content distribution tools.

According to this Radicati report, by 2020 (this is January 2019) 3 billion people will be using email.

Do you think everybody is on Facebook and hence, people aren’t quite crazy about hearing from you via email?

According to this Forrester report, people are twice as likely to sign up for your email list as staying in touch with you via Facebook.

This Smart Insights report reveals that the email marketing conversion rate is higher than conversion rate from search engine traffic and social media marketing, combined.

Anyway the purpose of these links is not to throw numbers at your face, it is just to prove that there is a reason why businesses use email marketing even when everyone seems to be crazy about social media and social networking.

Coming back to the topic of the relevance of email marketing for successful content marketing.

Have a look at these statistics from Emarketer:

Email marketing ROI is much greater

As you can see, the ROI of email marketing is far greater than the combined ROI of social media, direct mail, paid search and online display advertising.

One of the biggest challenges of content marketing (aside from creating high-quality content on an ongoing basis) is delivering your content to your target audience.

No matter how awesome your content is, unless it reaches its target audience, it isn’t much effective.

Hence, content publishing and content distribution go hand-in-hand. One doesn’t exist without the other.

People won’t come to your website on their own.

One way is to make it possible for people to find your content on various platforms including search engines and social media and social networking websites.

The other way, more effective way, is broadcasting your content using email marketing, the mailing list that you have created.

The key phrase here is “the mailing list that you have created”. This is very important. Unless you build your own mailing list, there isn’t much content marketing success to be experienced through email marketing.

Building your own mailing list for content marketing success

Now, you may think, how are you going to build your own mailing list unless you get traffic and for traffic, you need your content marketing to succeed, and here I am writing that for successful content marketing, you need to depend on email marketing.

Yup, I know, it sounds like a vicious loop.

How to build your mailing list for content marketing success

These days lots of start-up companies approach me for quality content writing and content marketing.

I tell them that they should start gathering email ids from their website as soon as possible and for that, they must open up an account with one of the renowned email marketing services as soon as possible.

As goes a Chinese proverb, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is now,” if you haven’t already put up a sign up form on your website or blog, now is the time to do so.

As you persistently publish high-quality content on your website and you use the available channels with you – search engine optimization, social media marketing – other forms of promotion – you will draw people to your website.

These people would like to subscribe to your updates in case they don’t want to miss out on the wonderful information you are publishing.

They can’t be tracking your website all the time. They would like to receive an update from you whenever you publish valuable content.

For example, if you want to keep a tab on what I am publishing on my blog or website, you must subscribe to my updates because whenever I publish something new, I use my mailing list to broadcast it.

This is how your mailing list grows. People come to your website. They see what a wonderful job you’re doing with your content. They don’t want to miss your content. They subscribe. You build your mailing list.

Why email marketing is the most effective content distribution tool?

More than 85% of adults in the US send or read email every day.

When you check your email in the morning, you are in the right frame of mind. You are expecting to receive emails and this is why you are checking emails.

Of course, some emails are annoying, especially when you’re expecting business related messages and your inbox is full of promotional messages.

This is why, it is highly advised that you refrain from sending promotional messages unless they are very specific (an offer you wouldn’t like people to miss).

Content marketing means publishing and distributing valuable content – content that helps people. Hence, automatically, when you use email marketing for content marketing, the content that you broadcast through your emails, must also be content that helps people.

When you broadcast helpful content (or content desired by the recipients), naturally they are pleased to get your messages in their inboxes.

Are you using email marketing for experiencing content marketing success?

If you are, well done.

If you’re not, you should start right now.

It is not very difficult.

And forget about spamming people. Spammers are totally a different breed.

As long as you are broadcasting quality content, content that helps people, nobody is going to mind hearing from you.

Besides, you will be sending your messages to only those people who have opted to receive messages from you. Remember your mailing list, above?

Even if you don’t want to use any email marketing service, there are many add-ons even in Gmail that allow you to broadcast your messages using regular email.

For collecting email ids, you can use a normal form and put it on your website.

The success of your content marketing depends on ensuring your content reaches your target audience, and using email marketing is the best way of doing it.

Content marketing success stories: blog posts and articles

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Content marketing success stories

Everybody these days raves about content marketing.

But sometimes it feels like a gold rush thing – you know, the only people who made money were those who sold tools to those going to dig gold.

With content marketing it’s not like that, and those who feel like that, they haven’t experienced success themselves, or they haven’t really understood the power of content marketing.

Many businesses have. Big businesses.

Take for example Coca-Cola. Long time back, the beverage company stopped promoting its products on its website.

In fact, the Coca-Cola 2020 content marketing strategy is quite famous now.

Another good example is Open Forum from American Express. Previously it was called Open Forum, now it is called Trends and Insights.

While doing research for my own content writing and content marketing blog writing and even sometimes for my clients, I come across many interesting links content marketing success stories.

Some links, although excellent, have repetitive information on them, and some links are really unique and present a completely new perspective.

Recently I wrote about how to use the scrum methodology to work on longer blog posts.

Well, I’m going to use the scrum methodology for content writing, for this blog post.

I’m going to create a long list of blog posts and articles on content marketing success stories.

The purpose of this blog post is not to create a keyword-rich content piece, though, no harm in doing that.

I will be putting only the best links that I come across.

If you come across a link that you think should be featured on this post, do let me know. If you have your own blog post that you think is a fit for this space, then also do let me know.

Blog posts and articles on content marketing success stories:

Content writing for different stages of your sales funnel

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Content writing for different stages of your sales funnel

In this blog post you will learn how to do content writing targeting different stages of your sales funnel.

Every business has a well-defined sales funnel.

Your sales funnel is the journey that your typical customer or client takes, the various stages he or she goes through, before he or she eventually buys from you.

Unlike traditional marketing and advertising which is uni-directional, content marketing is multidirectional.

For better targeting, you need to do content writing for different stages of your sales funnel.

Typically, your sales funnel consists of the following people:

Those who are totally unaware of your existence.
Those who know about you but aren’t sure whether they want to do business with you or not.
Those who know about you, would like to do business with you, but haven’t yet made up their minds.
Those who know about you and want to do business with you.
Those we have already done business with you.

Importance of content writing throughout the sales funnel

Before the first category, you can also have people who neither know you and the sort of product or service you promote, nor they have any idea how their problem can be solved (assuming they are even aware of the fact that they have a problem).

For example, someone having problems with his or her search engine rankings but has no idea that this problem can be easily solved with high-quality content.

Read 5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO.

Why it is beneficial to do content writing for different stages of your sales funnel?

Everyone is trying to get more customers and clients.

It’s crowded out there.

More crowd means tougher competition.

Although constantly targeting customers and clients makes sense and sooner or later, you need to get onto that, but there is a vast number of people who may become your customers and clients but right now they are either unaware of what you are offering or they are dillydallying due to one reason or another.

Coming back to the example of someone having troubles with his or her SEO but doesn’t know that the problem can be solved with high-quality content.

To target this person, I need to write content (the above link that talks about the importance of content writing for SEO) that explains why good quality content is needed for better search engine rankings.

What about the person who knows that he or she needs good content for better SEO but isn’t sure of hiring my services?

For this person, I need to write content that showcases my content writing skills, especially vis-à-vis improving search engine rankings.

For the person who knows that he or she needs my services and is inclined towards becoming my paying client, I need to write content that constantly keeps in touch while he or she makes up his or her mind, through continuously writing quality content.

What about someone who has already availed by content writing services?

To him or her, I need to constantly show that I am reliable, I am available, and whenever he or she needs my services, he or she can contact me.

You can have similar content writing stages for your own business.

Here is an interesting write-up on How to format content marketing for the B2B conversion funnel.

The blog post has this graphic to explain the sales funnel for a B2B business scenario:

Content marketing for the conversion funnel of B2B market

The importance of awareness and educational content writing in the context of the B2B market is magnified.

Before making B2B decisions, managers and executives prefer to go through lots of material because the stakes are very high. In the initial stage content writing may involve

Articles and blog posts that offer very specific solutions for very specific business problems (good content for SEO, for example).
Very niche, vertically focused answers to industry-specific questions.
Case studies and white papers.
Resource guides and FAQs.
Tutorials.
Research data.

Similarly, even in the B2B market, content writing for the sales funnel will be different for different stages.

Content marketing strategies that always work

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Content marketing strategies that always work

In this blog post you will read about content marketing strategies that always work and bring you success.

Want to ensure that your content marketing does not fail and always succeeds?

Here is a nice blog post published in Entrepreneur that lists a few strategic approaches that you can follow when carrying out your content marketing strategy.

Before proceeding, you may like to read 11 things that make your content marketing successful.

The above listed Entrepreneur blog post talks about the following strategic approaches when writing and publishing content:

Write authoritative content: I have written a lot on my blog what authoritative content is and how it benefits your business. Writing and publishing authoritative content means conveying to people that you have full knowledge of your business or your stream and you are the right person to do business with.
Write and publish evergreen content: This type of content lasts. Of course, you should also write on topical trends but write high-quality content that can be used by people for many months, many years. This way, your content is always relevant. You can also keep it relevant and evergreen by constantly updating it.
Write in an easy-to-understand language: Write in a manner that freely flows. When you’re writing for a business website, you’re not writing a literary novel. Keep your sentences short and simple. Focus on the benefits. Be conversational. Stay to the point.
Give your readers something significant: Give them something that really solves their problem like no one else does. As the above blog post says, “focus on one big idea”, which means, give them something that is irresistible.
Connect with influencers in your field: Influencers are those who have already built an audience for themselves, who have built a platform. They can influence people. People listen to them. If they promote your content or one of your links, you can get lots of attention.