4 Content Marketing Tips You'll Wish You Knew Sooner

Are you looking for a way to get more sales and conversions from your company blog? If so, you’re not alone. Business owners around the globe understand the importance of a strong content marketing strategy.

When consumers find your website for the first time, you want to show that you’re committed to providing unmatched value before they ever pull out their wallets. The easiest way to do this is through your written content.

Research and personal experience show that blogging is the ideal way to build your audience and take your business to the next level. On average, companies that blog receive 55% more traffic when compared to websites that don’t.

More importantly, a blog can give your business a personality. If consumers relate to your brand and products, there’s a good chance they will want to come back for repeat visits.

Today we are going to go over 4 tips you should keep in mind if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy.

Improve Performance and Streamline Navigation

The performance and useability of your blog can have a significant impact on how users perceive your business. Factors like loading times, menu accessibility, and mobile responsiveness all play a role in building a stellar customer experience.

Improving your loading times, for example, can help reduce your bounce rate and keep users engaged with your brand. On average, consumers expect websites to load in 2 seconds or less. If your site takes longer, you could lose out on a significant portion of your traffic.

You can speed up your website by installing a caching plugin, optimizing your images, and reducing the amount of text shown on each page. As your performance improves, you’ll see more blog engagement and conversions.

It’s possible to streamline the ways users browse your site by simplifying complex menus, adding mobile responsive features, and using white space to make your site easier to scan.

Slowly improve your site’s performance and navigation, and there’s a good chance you could see rapid growth throughout your content marketing campaigns.

Write for Your Customers

Next, let’s talk about the importance of writing content that resonates with your target audience’s goals. There’s a good chance you’ve developed customer personas that detail your customers’ personality traits and buying habits.

You can use this data to enhance your blog and make it more valuable for your readers. When you consider that 80% of daily blog traffic consists of new users, it’s easy to see the value of writing high-quality posts. New visitors will likely want to know more about your products and the industry as a whole.

When a user finds your company for the first time, it’s usually because they were looking for a solution to a problem. The way you structure your content will determine if they come back when they need help in the future. We’ve always heard about the importance of making a good first impression, and blog content is no exception to this rule.

We recommend sending out feedback forms so you can learn about the various goals and challenges of your audience. Use this information to plan future content for your blog. If most of your readers mention the same problem, you will likely see success when your related post goes live.

Optimize for Search Engines

Did you know that 68% of online experiences start with a search engine? In other words, you’re going to have a hard time growing your business if you’re not optimizing your blog for searchability.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can actively improve your on and off-site SEO. The first thing you should do is optimize your posts’ title and the meta description for your chosen keywords. If you want people to find your content, you have to choose a catchy headline that features words or phrases your target audience types into search engines.

We also recommend interlinking to other posts on your blog and other credible sources. When you link to your own posts, there’s a good chance a new user will click through and read your next posts. This step also makes it easy for Google crawlers to navigate your content and determine intent.

Linking to high-profile businesses can help improve your searchability and build social proof for your brand. Imagine visiting a website for the first time, and all of their sources are linked to highly reputable universities and companies. Odds are, you would instantly trust that business more than if they had a wall of text with no outbound links.

It’s worth noting that your search ranking will not likely change overnight. You have to consistently write high-quality, keyword-rich posts if you want to see your site rise through the ranks. This tip requires patience, but it’s also one of the best ways to consistently improve the effectiveness of your content marketing.

Start Building Lead Lists

Once your content starts bringing in more visitors, you have to establish how you want to keep them engaged with your brand. Business owners have a wide range of options they can use, depending on their budget and needs.

The most common way to start building lead lists is email marketing. You can use email marketing software to track, segment, and send emails to your audience. The thing is, most people are not willing to subscribe to an email list unless they are getting something out of the deal.

You can offer a lead magnet such as an exclusive piece of content or offer. Consumers will happily subscribe to your email marketing list if they plan on making a purchase, and you’re offering a 25% discount to new subscribers.

When you’re writing content, think about the offer you want to include at the end of each post. For example, if you have a gardening blog, you may want to consider developing a comprehensive infographic that shows the best time to plant vegetables. Users that find a value-packed post will likely subscribe if they were impressed with your other free content.

It’s also possible to grow your social media profile from your blog. When we hold our monthly giveaway, we include an alert at the bottom of posts with topics relevant to our prize. If someone cared enough to read a post about a product, they would likely subscribe to your social media if it means they have a chance of winning that item.

Finally, we’ve had tremendous success with push alerts. You can create personalized push notifications for subscribers when they opt in on specific blog pages. So, if a user subscribes to push alerts after reading about a particular topic, you can send them more posts under that subcategory as they go live. Because the user already showed interested in this topic, there’s an excellent chance they will click the alert and visit your website in the future.

Final Thoughts

Content marketing is essential for digital marketers in 2021. If you don’t have a ton of content on your blog, now is the perfect time to get started. Commit to writing one post a week, and you will slowly see your traffic and sales increase. As your business grows, you can hire writers to publish high-quality posts at an accelerated rate, which will lead to more engagement and happy customers.