How content strategy can improve your customer engagement

Have you found yourself caught in the trap of rushing to produce blog posts each month, or social media posts every few days? Do you know how your content is benefitting your company, or is it just an exercise you complete because you think it should be done? If this sounds like you, then chances are you need to formulate a content strategy. 

What is content strategy?

Content strategy is much like having an advertising campaign strategy. You need to plan, create and distribute content at the right time on the right platforms in order to reach the goals you set for yourself. These could include increasing brand awareness or converting more people into paying customers.

Now content doesn’t just mean blog or social media posts. It can include creating copy for landing pages, ebooks or infographics. 

Why is content strategy important?

1.Regular, scheduled posting

Having a strategy for what content you are putting out to the world creates order and cohesiveness to the messages you are trying to put out. You won’t be fumbling around at the start of each month to find a topic for the next blog post or worrying about what you need to post to Facebook and when. Creating themes within your content can help ideas flow for what you want to produce. For instance, you could start a series of ‘how-to’ blog posts, a meet the team series on Facebook or YouTube, or even just an order in which you want to develop the content on your own website. 

2. Increase your visibility on search engines

The more content that bots have to crawl through on your website, the higher you could rank on search engines. This is because you are likely to include more, relevant, keywords that can be searched for, and it will give you authority through creating relevant content. 

Implementing a content strategy can also help you to consider the keywords that you want to use in your content so that you avoid using tactics like keyword stuffing or using incorrect tags to include keywords. Using search terms with high search volume but low competition, as well as long-tail keywords within the copy, will drive more traffic to your website.

If you’re stuck on where to start with Keyword research you can check out our blog How to do SEO Keyword research to get you up to speed on what SEO Keyword research is and how you can use it to benefit your website.

3. Building trust in your brand

Have you ever visited a website that has very little information on the page? Or brands without social media content? If you have, then you probably had doubt in your mind as to how trustworthy those brands are. Being able to consume relevant content from brands is one of the most important factors customers use to determine whether they believe the brand to be genuine and therefore make a purchase from them. If a customer can’t learn from you, see what your company stands for or general information about your place in the industry, then they will likely move on to one of your competitors. 

One way to gain this trust is to create content that educates, inspires and entertains your audience. By creating content that isn’t heavily sales-based, you are more likely to attract potential customers that have a genuine interest in your brand and will therefore convert to paying customers further down the line. 

Things to keep in mind

1. Review your content

Content marketing strategy isn’t just about creating a piece of content and then releasing it into the world, particularly with content on your website. Web pages need to be reviewed and optimised over time- what is relevant and accurate one month may not be in the next. So have a look at your blog posts and content for landing pages that have already been published. Are they all still relevant? Do they all still have factual and up to date information? Do they use specific keywords that show up in common searches on platforms like Google and Bing? If not then consider going back to them and changing any details that might need updating, or adding in keywords. Just remember not to overuse keywords as that could actually damage your authority on search engines. 

2. Know your reasons

All content creation is useful, but what is more important is the reasoning behind creating that content. Putting the focus on what is going to get you in front of the audience you are trying to engage with is essential. 

Think about your audience and what content they want or need to consume, and how they might consume it. Is your audience teenagers who prefer visuals over text? Chances are you would reach them better on social media sites such as Instagram or Facebook rather than a blog post on your website. Or is your audience men between the ages of 30-40 who like to research a product fully before committing to spending money? In this instance, articles and well-written landing pages would be best to utilise. For more information on knowing your target audience, check out our blog post!

3. Repurpose content

This isn’t to say that you need to be producing multiple pieces of content every day. Some of the content you create can be used on different platforms or in different ways- you may even already have content that you can repurpose for different use. For instance, your website is a good place to start with thinking about blog content ideas. Take a popular service or product, find the most common questions you get asked surrounding it and turn it into a blog post to educate your audience. You can use information from your website and any documents attached to it so it doesn’t feel like you’re starting from scratch. 

Blog posts can then be reposted to social media with a call to start a conversation in the comments section about what you have written. This then gets you directly in contact with those who are interested in your brand and what you have to say.

Brands that succeeded at Content Marketing

Old Spice

If you’ve ever seen an Old Spice advert, you will know that they stick around in your mind for a long time. Their unique use of humour and imagery makes them stand out from their competitors, and even have over a 55million views on some adverts on their Youtube channel. 

They changed their marketing strategy back in 2010 to be more relevant to younger viewers, and since then their sales have increased dramatically.

Hubspot

Experts in the Digital Marketing industry, Hubspot increased their success by optimising their blog posts strategy and even broke their own record for sessions with this technique. They focused their content on building organic search traffic and found that the number of visitors to their blog increased, as did the number of people consuming their downloadable content. 

Headspace

The content put out by Headspace is incredibly unique, so when you see it you know it is from that brand- even if the name isn’t mentioned. Their use of branded colours and illustrations makes them stand out from other adverts for apps. 

The content they put out on their website and social media aim to soothe the consumer and guide them towards downloading the app, all while educating about their product without leaning too far into a sales pitch. 

Whether you’re just starting out in your business or you have been running for years, ensuring your content has thought and intention behind it makes all the difference in how it is received by the consumer. Remember, if you can educate, inspire and entertain your audience, you’ll quickly find yourself with more leads. 

Download our Content Strategy Checklist to get started today!