While it might seem that content marketing is a concept that only became popular with the rise of the internet, the reality is it has been with us for the history of advertising.
Ben Franklin, for example, handed out copies of Poor Richard’s Almanac to promote his printing business in the mid-1700s. Jell-O handed out recipe books door-to-door in the early 1900s to promote the product as a “must-have” desert. The rise of early social media in the mid-2000s opened the door for value-added advertising catered to individual users.
That content marketing has longevity means that there are many “lessons learned” content marketers today can absorb to increase their chances of success.
Here is a rundown of six tips every beginner and expert content marketer should embrace to help their content stand out and provide value to everyone that consumes it.
1. Learn What Content Marketing Is and Is Not
The core function of content marketing is to enable users to easily find digestible but informative data that subtly promotes a product or service.
That definition maps out concisely what content marketing is not: Information posted online that does not enhance the reader’s knowledge about a subject, market a product, concept, or service or grab a consumer’s interest.
If you pattern your copy to reflect the former, your efforts will be more successful in building a loyal audience and marketing whatever it is you are promoting.
2. Discover and Define Your Audience
If your content does not match your audience’s interests, the audience will ignore it.
Suppose, for instance, you make a video promising to show an angler how to fish plastic baits.
Your video must cover how to fish plastic baits quickly, clearly, and concisely. The audience will leave if your content is just a video of you discussing how great an angler you are. Those consumers likely will not be back.
Not understanding your audience can lead to well-intentioned but misapplied content, which can turn off consumers.
All your content should reflect the following:
- Relevance and Applicability
All content descriptions must prove to a browser that what you have produced will provide them with the information they are looking to receive. Providing superfluous information does not enhance the consumer’s experience and might drive them away.
- One Clear Goal
Your goal with any content is to build an audience.
That means your content must appeal to your targeted prospects. If it is unclear what your content covers or why it exists, you will lose the interest of most consumers, even if you eventually get to your point.
- Concisely Delivered Information
You must remember the attention span of the average online consumer. If you do not know it already, it is short. Think of the attention span of a toddler and then cut it in half. That is your most likely audience. Your content needs to be quick, pithy, clear, and concise.
3. Be Unique and Fresh
As important as targeted content is, it is equally important that your content be distinctive and current. Content on a specific topic should not be dated.
For example, if your content is a tutorial on how to sew a blind hem, you must cater the content to your primary audience. Covering how hems were sewn in the early 1900s does not apply to sewing hems using machines today.
The exception to this is tailored content. For instance, sewing blind hems by hand versus a machine is a growing trend.
A video showing how to use a machine to do it will lose the consumer that wants to learn how to sew a blind hem by hand.
4. Copy Your Competitors
Your competitors are an excellent source for content ideas. Obviously, if their content is dated or off-topic, you want to avoid following their lead, but if your competitors are effective, you can presume they understand what their audience wants to see, experience, or read.
Use that information to come up with your topics. Be careful not to directly copy them, but there is nothing wrong with using your competitors as a guide to help you figure out where you want to head with your content.
5. Write Marketing Copy
The average reader possesses a literacy proficiency that lets them focus on quick, digestible factoids but cannot muscle through lengthy or complex topics. Grammatically, virtually no one is perfect, including grammar sticklers. Additionally, lower reading proficiency means content must be simply written.
Most readers struggle with perfect English and do best when reading something that reflects how they speak.
That means grammar is still important because it makes written material comprehensible, but closely sticking to grammar can exceed the reading and comprehension capacity of the average internet user.
6. Do Not Worry About Word Count
Too often, content marketers worry about producing enough words to make something worth reading or watching. Most consumers, however, are not so worried about the length of something as much as they are about what information is being imparted.
One example everyone cites as irritating is the life story that tends to come before any online recipe. It is awesome that garlic and butter-infused mash potatoes evoke memories of growing up on a farm for the writer.
However, whether or not anyone believes that actually happened, idyllic life on a farm is not why someone looking to learn how to make garlic and butter-infused mashed potatoes visited the site.
They are there because their search indicated the content would show them how to make garlic and butter-infused mashed potatoes.
The rest of the information is just chatter employed to eat up a word count.
Word Count Targets Can Hurt Content
Often, content written for a word count bogs down, gets repetitive, or ventures into the irrelevant. Those three outcomes can lose viewers and readers. In the worst case, the narrative irritates the consumer and drives them towards a more user-friendly site.
Your content should focus on the value you provide the reader or watcher. That means sticking to the topic you promised to cover.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing underscores the saying that “there is nothing new under the sun.”
Online content marketing is just the latest iteration of the concept. If you keep that in mind and employ these age-old tips for successful content marketing, your content will make you stand out, no matter what you are marketing or selling.
I hope you find this article helpful.
My name is Arinah, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia I’ve been involved in marketing since 2013 at IMAN Media Group Sdn. Bhd.
Throughout the years, I have collected many tips and errors along the way. I also lead a multi-talented team and help turn a start-up company (5 figures a month) into a hyper-growth company (7 figures a month) in less than 5 years.
Now, I want to share this journey with you.
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Hi, my name is Arinah. 