Content Marketing is King…..And It’s Your Move

Nowadays, it is not enough to simply fill your site full of quality information, viable links, photos, videos, and other cohesive branding material—you have actually to put it to work for you. If the material becomes disengaging and stagnant, this can actually hurt your SEO efforts. So how do you keep your information fresh and help to ensure your company shows up on the playing board? Below are a few tips to help your content move you to the head of the SERP and, ultimately, the competition.

If the content is king, then SEO is the chessboard on which it plays—and if you don’t use strategy in your moves and positioning, your end game will be a losing battle. Content is what your customers can visibly see on your page, the moves you can physically watch on the chessboard. Code is like the underlying strategy of the players. It’s the behind-the-scenes process that drives the action on the board.

Just as the king needs to move about the board strategically, so does your website content. If the king is captured and cannot escape, it is dead…..much like your content. If there is no motion or distribution of your content, you cannot capture your opponent and end up in a stalemate or, worse, defeated by your competition. The point is this—content marketing must move to be effective.

Below we offer a few key moves to help further mobilize your website’s content:

Develop a Blog: A small business blog is the easiest way for your business to disseminate the information it wants customers to see. You can use this tool to display press releases and other newsworthy information, videos, photos, customer reviews, and as a complement to your social media platforms. This is a key piece to content marketing.

Email Marketing Campaigns: E-mails campaigns are an excellent way to keep in touch with customers, increase their loyalty, and position your company as an expert in the industry. E-mail blasts offer a budget-friendly, direct-to-consumer messaging platform to highlight new products and services, offer rewards or incentives, distribute newsworthy information and provide industry-specific advice straight to consumers’ mailboxes. Including opportunities for engagement, feedback, and information gathering also provides you with valuable client data that can be used in your future marketing efforts. As a word of caution, people typically do not want advertisements bombarding their inboxes; therefore, it is essential for the content to be tailored to your audience and be as relevant and focused as possible. Do not pack too much information into a single message. E-mail campaigns are meant to be an ongoing effort, not a shotgun marketing approach, so keep your content targeted, fresh and exciting to keep customers wanting more.

Customer Review Sites: The rise in popularity of sites such as Yelp, Bing, and TripAdvisor is only dwarfed by the increase shown in their effect on consumer purchasing decisions and search engine rankings. Studies show that 72% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 70% of consumers seek out and choose to do business with a company having at least six to ten reviews. Major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing now also factor in the number and quality of reviews to determine page position within their search engine rankings. Suppose your business has a solid review base. In that case, chances are greater that your business will appear higher on the SERP (Search Engines Results Pages), and more consumers will be driven to your website—thus generating greater content mobility for your business.

Social Media Marketing: With all of the social media platforms available to consumers today, and the amount of “facetime” they receive from potential clients, your message must show up where customers are looking. As with any marketing campaign strategy, it is essential to decide on specific goals and have a way to measure your campaign’s effectiveness. Many times businesses, especially those just starting, launching new products, or looking to reposition themselves within the marketplace, are simply trying to create awareness. To effectively measure the results of this type of social media campaign, you need to focus on engagement as the most applicable metric. The goal of this type of plan would be to realize increases in the number of followers/friends and customer product or service ratings. However, if the reason for your campaign is to push consumers to buy, then the conversion rate from visitor to the buyer may be a more relevant performance indicator. Whatever your social media marketing goals may be, make sure they are measurable. In addition to providing another format in which to “move” your content, social media sites are also a valuable customer engagement tool. They can help to further increase the motion of your content by driving traffic to your blog, website, or other content-based collateral.

E-commerce is played out on a competitive field with an almost infinite number of challenges. Unlike a game of chess, where two players are challenging each other for the opposing king, the competition to become the King of Content moves at a much faster pace and involves just as much strategy—if not more. Checkmate! The key to winning is moving in the right direction and staying one step ahead of the competition.

Hiring a knowledgeable marketing agency like Luce Media allows business owners to focus on running operations and increasing the bottom line, not the latest algorithm change with Facebook or building a website. In the end, the bigger question maybe isn’t can I afford an experienced marketing agency, but rather how much am I costing myself in time, money, and lost opportunity by trying to do these marketing services in-house. Call us today for a FREE Digital and Social Media Marketing analysis of your company. Reach us at 469-907-1057.