In the current digital age, content creation should be a primary focus of your inbound marketing efforts. It’s equally important to understand that it cannot stand alone. In order for content to have the desired effect and yield results it needs to be used in conjunction with a variety of different marketing tactics. Quality writing with a focus on educating your audience will provide much better results than self-promotion. Your content strategy should also aim to entertain your readers while engaging them through a diverse set of offerings. Some of the points made in this article may seem obvious, but the reality is that very few marketers are following through with the basics of an inbound marketing strategy.
Educate
Rather than promoting your company’s products or services you should focus your efforts on communicating the need, uses and future of what your company has to offer. A blog post that provides value to your prospects is more likely to be read and will encourage readers to download premium content offers. Gated content should include more in-depth information, convey thought leadership and have enough value to warrant a visitor providing their prospecting information. Research your target audience to determine their pain points and interests. This will allow you to create relevant content that resonates with your visitors, which will provide more qualified leads.
Engage
Engagement is driven by creating interactive, thought provoking content and by utilizing a variety of distribution techniques. Interactive posts such as quizzes and contests draw interest but simply posing a question along with a blog post will encourage people to chime in with their thoughts. Your content should be distributed through all available platforms while employing a multi-channel marketing strategy. This gives your audience a chance to interact with your content on a variety of different platforms. Be sure to respond to all comments and reach out to those that like your posts or follow your company. Each interaction is an opportunity to direct a prospect to your website and develop a relationship. Follow ups should be done periodically and through your prospect’s preferred platform.
Entertain
The ability to entertain your audience largely hinges on creating diverse content. Video, infographics and creative memes should be used to avoid the monotony of a strictly written content strategy. Including humor and provoking your audience to share their point of view will increase the entertainment value of your content and increase its reach. Certain posts should be written with a sole focus on entertaining your audience. This can be done through industry humor and editorial opinion pieces. Having a variety of writers and graphic artists will help to diversify your content through different perspectives and personalities.
Founded in 1990, Winn Technology Group is a leading provider of global, multi-channel marketing solutions for the technology industry. For both direct and channel sales, Winn supports demand creation, account-based marketing, channel management, digital marketing, social media, teleprospecting, lead nurturing, event marketing, database services, and inbound response management.
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