Content marketing has been around in different forms for ages. Some might know it as custom publishing, custom media, or branded content. It's as if we actually go out in some persuasive way to try and convince someone, without interrupting them, that our service is better or perhaps the best. Content marketing is all about introducing your product, in a somewhat indirect way, to those who are mainly concerned with something rather different. A young lady who is watching a thriller can be easily attracted to a new brand of shoes worn by the leading character. While her original idea was to relax for two hours and enjoy, she might end up thinking about how to buy that new pair of shoes. Content marketing requires talented "storytellers" who draw their audience's attention to an interesting story and introduce a product to them within that story in a way that they neither feel interrupted nor cheated. It might sound quite easy but it is in fact a highly demanding job. In this article, we guide you through the main steps of successful content marketing and the services that you can provide through it.

Targeted Audience, Appealing Content

With billions of channels, websites, and blogs around, you need to know that many people are not going to visit your website as they are busy surfing elsewhere. Therefore, you must write for a small number of people. A specific audience who is highly interested in one subject, say football or sports in general. It is rarely recommended to cover a variety of topics such as sports, fashion, health, and livestock in your blog/website unless you are totally confident that a considerable number of your viewers would certainly love what you have written. For those who have a limited number of viewers, it is highly recommended that they only focus on those viewers and write about topics that feed their interests. It is also important to realise that all topics are of interest to many individuals, however, you need to know firstly what concerns your special audience and secondly, how to write in such a way that are engaged deeply in your content and wait for more. The first issue depends mainly on how much information you have gathered about your audience while the second one depends mainly on your writing style and how up-to-date you are.

Establishing Trust

Obviously being cheated hurts badly. Remember, your job is not to "get in" to your customers, for they have already let you in by visiting your website. The key point here is not to abuse their trust. Keeping this in mind, you need to convey the idea that your viewers and their trust in you are very important to you and you are not going to lose this by writing fake, unreal or outdated stuff for them. Little by little, they will realise that you are trustworthy and that will certainly make them share your content (which is what you truly want) and visit you more often which, in the long run, improves your websites' ranking and credibility.

Attempt Solving Your Customers' Problems

More often than not, internet surfers go online to find answers to their questions or solutions for problems they're facing. If you organise your content in such a way that solving a problem seems to be the main focus there, then it will most probably attract more readers. The rule of thumb here is for you to select a topic that is of interest to many of your followers and you have enough information about it. Then you should look for the most reported problems or concerns regarding that topic and gather as much information as you can about the available solutions.

Content Marketing Services

You could provide your clients with a variety of content marketing services. Here is a summary of the main services that a typical company should offer.

1. Deciding on the Content and Keywords

As a good content marketing team, you should take time to learn about the business you are going to promote and then decide on the type of content that helps promote that business. Although the content is not written in this phase, its different aspects should be examined and content keywords should be decided upon. Your team should come up with a strong list of keywords after examining the most repeated phrases and sentences recorded in search engines, then you should select the more appropriate ones as content keywords so that your customers' website has a better accessibility and a higher rank among other websites  

2. Developing Content

Developing content is different from writing it. Here the content marketing team should decide on all issues regarding the content before it is written. Some of the main issues which you need to take into consideration are as follows:

  • How many pieces of content should be written per week/month?
  • When is the deadline for writing the content?
  • When is the deadline for delivering it to the reviewers?
  • When should the content be published?
  • What is the minimum/maximum word requirement?
  • Is the content going to be published as an article, infographic, or a blog post?

3.  Creating the Content

This is where the actual writing of the content takes place. If the first two stages have been managed properly, the writer knows exactly what to do and how to do it. As an example; if the content is going to be in the form of an infographic, the writer knows that he cannot use too verbose. Instead, he should use a certain number of pictures related to the topic at hand and use a limited number of words to convey his message. If, on the other hand, he is required to write a blog post, he has more freedom in terms of text length and less so when it comes to using pictures.

4. Optimising the Content

 By far the most important task among content marketing services that you should provide. Apart from being optimised for search by the writer, a text should also have a strong title tag and a proper meta description. These are normally done by an account manager. What happens here is that your text is optimised for both users as well as search engines which means that a greater number of people will read your content.

5. Promoting the Content

Similar to a tree that needs care and attention after being planted, a text, no matter how skillfully it's been organized, needs some care. In order to compel people to buy the product you are advertising, your content needs to be seen by them as often as possible. This necessitates its distribution through various platforms to potential customers. That is what a professional and dedicated team of content marketing services does so as to promote its clients' businesses.

6. Reporting the Results

Perhaps one of the most noticeable services that only a professional content marketing team provides its customers with. They may not be expecting it, but you need to show them how effective your work has been and, more importantly, how truly you care about their business. You are highly recommended to provide your client with a monthly report which helps to improve their business. You could, for instance, tell your client about the changes that have taken place in other competing websites, factors that have resulted in getting/losing customers, your client's share of the market, and so forth.

If you are just starting, you need to understand that it takes a while before you completely learn the nuts and bolts of content marketing. However, you will save tons of time if you consider the above-mentioned points which we gathered after consulting numerous sources. Hopefully, it works well with your business as it has with ours.