Why is the Marketer so critical in Content Marketing?

A Content Marketer is someone who is spreading his content in the hope of gaining visibility, traffic, links and mentions. He is a promoter of quality content – someone who gives value and gains a reputation along with many other benefits.

Content marketing can be very helpful – it can spread your content to the depths of the Internet, bring new clients, attract potential visitors, and make conversions easy.

It can however backfire.

Have you ever seen a content marketing campaign backfire? Being a content marketer requires critical thinking to ensure every aspect of the campaign has been thought out before step one launches. I’ve see so many cases of rushed or ill-thought plans result in not only zero results, but worse the damage inflicted by Google can literally shut a business down in a matter of weeks. I can’t tell you how many companies I have see go out of business as a result of a Google penalty.

Let us discuss 7 tips on how a marketer must be critical about a content marketing strategy.

1) Content Creation

This is the first step. You need the content to get started and it must be a real gem. If you go wrong on this step – no matter what you do after this – your campaign will more than likely flop.

The more you push low quality content – the quicker it will fall apart.

The first requirement in a content marketing campaign – is your content. This content can be in the shape of articles, preferably – flagship articles, infographics, videos, ebooks, etc. anything will work, as long as it is high quality.

2) Check Facts

Make sure to check your facts and mention your sources. Research your stats and details, if something seems farfetched and has little citation – leave it. make your data real and believable. You don’t need to surprise your readers with insane statistics – you just need to earn their trust.

3) Design it well

If the content is visual then the design must be very good. Infographics spreads well, but it all depends on how the quality of the design and the information presented. Invest extra on quality, this will ensure good results.

Social media is very choosy and a poorly designed infographic won’t be shared much.

4) Make it easily available

This step is crucial. You don’t want to have a broken signup form for your ebook, or an infographic that does not load. Remember – it is about giving away for free – and perhaps a signup form is a bit too much already. It is always best to allow one click downloads.

5) Promote it well

Once everything is ready and you are confident that it will be accepted well – go for the promotions. If your content does not reach anyone – no benefit will come out of it. So, promotion is important. If you already have a platform for spreading your content – that is a start. An email list with faithful subscribers can help, or a popular blog – or good social media following.

• Use every promotion tool you have at hand. There are about a hundred – free or paid – infographics directories. They all work well.

• Do guest posts – try to get some mentions and links from popular A-list sites to your valuable content. This is not easy – but works well.

• Use social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedInStumbleupon, Reddit – they all have a paid promotion system.

• You can try a press release, but if you do, you must do paid promotions on your press release will not reach an audience. A much better strategy to get news is to go directly to the news media. This strategy is called a “News Release” This ensure the information makes it into the news outlets and attracts readers.

• Go a step further – do adwords or any other kind of PPC. This is a quick way to reach your audience and if done properly – can bring you instant results.

6) Think about the conversions

Make sure to give additional links for more information from within the content. Since content marketing is not selling – the real idea is to spread the valuable content. Once your readers are happy with the content that you have freely supplied – they will start to trust you. That is when you should offer them additional things – and some of them might not be free.

7) Keep it soft on the sell

If you try to sell hard – it will never work. That is the primary issue with forceful selling. Your actual content should not have any sales pitch at all. It should be educational and completely free. The idea you are providing in the content should be a free method – whatever it is.

Remember – your primary target with any content marketing campaign is to earn their trusts. Then, you can expect them to share your content, recommend you – and if all goes well – they can sign up on your list.

Once you have them on your email list or any other kind of subscription – that is where the sales process should start. Content marketing requires you to give away valuable content and gain fans in the process. The content that you give away should be so good that your potential customer is already sold – before you pitch anything at all. Be very critical about your overall content marketing strategy and its implementation – if it all goes as planned, there will be plenty of long term benefits.

Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask, I’ll be happy to get back to you directly – Brian Newmark

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