Studies show that sites which post content every couple of days get 3 to 5 times as much web traffic as those who rarely post.
That’s a huge difference. Posting content doesn’t mean you can just throw anything out there, though. The content needs to be relevant and fitted to the audience you’re seeking.
It can be difficult to think up the best content marketing strategy possible, but it’s essential if you’re looking to get significant results. We’ll cover how you can create the best content marketing strategy for your site, as well as ways that you can implement that strategy.
How to Create the Best Content Marketing Strategy
Regular content is one of the keys to growing your business. There’s no getting around it in today’s web-landscape, and those who don’t post regularly have little chance of competing.
Before you start generating posts, you have to have a purpose.
Know Your Niche
While creating content off the top of your head is a nice idea, it isn’t going to be that easy. Your insight into your site’s niche doesn’t necessarily equate to knowledge that you should put into a blog. The posts you make should be informed by a few things.
First, you should know your target audience. The people who visit your site are going to have similarities that draw them to your content. An audience usually adheres to the same patterns and interests, which is why you can strategically create posts to fit those interests.
You can gauge the interests of your audience by researching the keywords that they’re using online. A list of popular keywords will give you an insight into the problems that your audience is having at the moment. Your goal should be to solve those problems.
Keeping Up on Keywords
Following keyword trends is an essential method of knowing your audience. There are surefire ways to keep up on keywords, but your methods might need to be tailored to specific situations.
For example, you might post frequently on a few social media sites. The users on Pinterest are going to search different things than those on Twitter. Whether or not you want to create multiple content marketing platforms for different sites, but the method of creation should be the same throughout.
Keyword research tools are going to be your bread and budder when it comes to keeping up. Find a tool that works for you and use it regularly– you’ll use keyword trends, as we’ve mentioned, to assess the problems that users are having.
Let’s say that “brake pad maintenance” is a trending heavily within your niche. There’s a whole lot that you can do with that. Use those three words to infer what your users are experiencing at the moment.
You can start by producing an article that only discusses brake pad maintenance. After that post, you can create a post that details the most popular brake pads on the market at that time. Following that, you can create an article that talks about ways of driving that are easiest on your brake pads.
Whenever the keywords change, you repeat the process to accommodate the needs of your user base. This is the general formula you can use if you’re creating content yourself.
Going Beyond Keywords: Search Behavior
While the keyword is essential in modern SEO, there seems to be a new trend happening. Search engines are becoming more personalized, and our content marketing should try to reflect that.
Once upon a time, you had to type things like “restaurants in Stillwater, MN” and Google would pull up a list of good restaurants in that area. Those would be the keywords that sites would focus on and Google would reward the sites that best captured what users were searching.
Google is now more geared toward intent. This means that, instead of searching exact words to describe what you’re looking for, you can pose a general question to the search engine and it will fill in the blanks for you.
For example, you can search “where should I go to get my car fixed” and you’ll end up with a list of local mechanics that will apply to you. This is extremely relevant to you.
In the face of this knowledge, you might want to adjust your content marketing strategy. Instead of writing posts that are geared toward the thousands of trending keywords on the market, you may be better off tailoring your posts toward more foundational ideas.
Instead of writing posts that tailor to the best restaurants, new food trends, grocery shopping tips, tipping etiquette, and more, you might consider writing an article that addresses the long-tail keyword, “where should I eat tonight?”
Topic Cluster Model
Tailoring your posts to these general searches is called the “topic cluster model.” This method is a more organized way of creating content that reaches your audience.
Your niche probably has three or four primary search categories. Let’s say, for example, that these are country music, rock music, rap music, and jazz music.
Those categories are your main “pillars.” The topic cluster model typically entails having one “pillar” article that addresses the primary question, similar to “where should I eat tonight?” For jazz music, that might be “what is the best jazz music?”
The pillar article will be your foundation upon which the rest of the articles in that category stand. After you write the pillar article, you’ll write more content that pertains to the trending keywords in that category. For example, “best jazz pianists,” “best jazz bass player,” or “jazz songs with guitar.”
Your pillar article will link to the secondary articles and vice versa. Further, you’ll do this with all three or four of your primary search categories. In this way, when one of your articles is successful, all of the articles in that topic cluster benefit as a result.
Determine How You Want to Create
Creating regular content is a very involved task. It’s not likely that site owners have the time needed to research, write, and post quality content to their sites. For that reason, it can be helpful to employ a little help.
1. Hire a Content Marketing Company
The most common route to take is to hire a firm that does the work for you. These are people who have the expertise needed to research, write, and post content for you in a timely fashion.
Entirely turning the responsibility over to another company takes a lot of pressure off of you. It will cost you a little money, but the results that you get from professional help will be well worth the money.
Another benefit is that because these people are solely dedicated to content production, they’ll be up to date on the latest trends and SEO strategies. They’ll also give you the option of working on multiple platforms for your respective social media accounts.
2. Take on a Freelancer
Another common way to produce content is to hire a freelance writer. Freelancers are typically looking for work, and they’re not likely to cost as much as content marketing firms.
That being said, you’re taking a risk when you hire an independent writer. Make sure that the person you hire has experience with SEO and content production, and can create content with sourced images and quality research.
Have your applicants send resumes and a few samples of their optimized content. If their stuff looks good enough to put on your site, give them a shot. The nice thing about freelancers is that you can hire them per-article, giving them a fixed amount of work per week or month.
There are a million freelancers out there who want the work, so if one person doesn’t work out, you can always find another.
3. Hire a Writer
Finally, you might want to consider the idea that content production is going to be important for years to come. Instead of paying high fees for outside writers and firms, consider hiring a writer to take on full-time.
Even if you only have part-time work, you could still benefit from hiring someone. It would be much the same as hiring a freelance writer, except you’ll have the ability to train an employee for the long run. If you have a person working with you for three or four years, your content is going to be head and shoulders above the competition.
Use a strict application process if you do this, though. You wouldn’t need to have the person present to do the work, either. All work could be completed remotely, and you could even pay the employee through Paypal.
All of these options are viable ways to achieve regular content production. Remember, the more quality content you can produce, the better.
Need Help With Your Content?
It’s not likely that you have the resources to create a strategy all by yourself. In order to achieve the best content marketing strategy, you should look to the professionals for input.
If you’re in need of assistance with your content production and marketing, contact us and we’d be happy to help.