Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Previously we talked about the basics of content marketing and you can find the article (here)

This week we are going to dive into the best practises for content marketing.

1. Know your audience

We have been over this one a couple of times now in different blog posts but knowing your audience is an important part of everything marketing.

Learn Targeting

For example; if your audience is too broad, let’s say your company is in Harare and you simply target businesses in Harare. You do farming and target someone who isn’t into farming then most likely you aren’t getting the very best value for your money.

Whereas when you target based on a customer’s spending habits and interests and your content appears in front of them it should be something you already know they are interested in.

2. Consider your content format

What exactly are you creating to engage with your audience? if it’s a video remember that the average attention span of a person online is under 3 minutes but because there’s millions of content out there you need to be able to capture their attention in the first ten seconds.

3. Tell a story

People online are no longer interested in being sold to, they instead want to be able to relate to the brands that they use. Read this article on Digital Story Telling

4. Make your content useful, educational & entertaining 

Research Keywords

A keyword is a word or a phrase that your audience uses to search for relevant topics on search engines. If you are a flower shop, a relevant keyword could be “Buy Red Roses” [short keyword] or “Looking to purchase roses from a flower shop” [long tail keyword]

So using tools like https://keywordtool.io/ and Google Keyword Search tool will help you to find out what keyword phrases your audiences uses most.

Getting into the SEO a little bit is important as you can then tailor your site and your posts according to these keywords

If you know, for example that your targeted audience is constantly searching for hotel jobs, them you create a page titled hotel jobs because then it’s more likely to show up on the first search page of Google and other search engines.

Also follow industry leaders especially influencers in your industry whether local or international because if they share or retweet you it’s likely to show up to more people and the only way they even become conscious of your existence is if you are engaging with them. So you should be sharing some of their content on your own social media pages as well

So when you decide to write your content, remember the 3 Es of content marketing – educational, entertaining and engaging.

5. Create niche specific content

Creating your niche specific content will help build trust and authority within your chosen industry or field.

Another tactic is to engage a lot. Like on Twitter and Instagram, follow other people, comment on pictures and like other people’s content as well.

Don’t only post and leave. Be consistent and engaging.

The more people relate to you the more likely they are to follow you or comment on your own content.

6. Conduct in-depth research

Prior to writing your content, you should do an in-depth research of the topic you will be writing on and also back up any claims with verifiable statistics included in your content.

7. Include a call to action (CTA)

Including the Call to Action or CTA will increase the possibility of engagement of your audience with your content by as much as 30%! Examples of CTAs include.

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A huge benefit of content marketing is increased brand loyalty (a lot of people are willing to show support of brand they really like on their profile or page) for example proudly wearing a Nike shoe on Instagram or even tagging an NGO in posts, sharing content from their favourite brand to their friends and family and of course increasing online sales.

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