There is no denying the importance that a first impression can make. And in today’s tech-driven world, in which impressions can be made in an instant, it’s vital that you are using content that is making a positive and lasting mark on your audience.
If you notice that you aren’t getting the type of traffic that you’d like, it might be time to evaluate the quality of your website. In your evaluation, ask yourself:
» Does the site look physically appealing for viewers?
» Does the site load quickly on different browsers and platforms?
» Does the site offer content that attracts people and sticks in their minds long after they’ve left?
If your answer is no to any of these questions, it’s time for an overhaul of your content marketing strategy.
The good news is that there are plenty of options from which to choose when trying to improve your strategy. The bad news is that the multitude of options makes it hard to narrow down the choices that might be best for you. To help with the process, here are the top seven ways to improve your content marketing strategy for your brand, product or service.
View from a Customer’s Perspective
Before you start doing anything with your new content marketing strategy, it might be time to look at your entire approach from a different perspective.
There is the possibility that you’ve been looking at your content strategy for too long as a member of the business. This may lead you to become biased or judgmental to certain parts of your website. In doing so, you’ll lose out on the perception that your viewers and customers have.
To do a better job of viewing your website from a customer’s perspective, be sure to ask plenty of questions and be open to honest feedback from others. If you fail to realize that your audience isn’t interested, or maybe it simply isn’t seeing your content, then you will have an incredibly difficult time trying to maximize your marketing strategy efforts.
Know What You’re Getting Into
If you plan to improve your online content strategy through blind luck, you may want to think again. Instead, you’re going to want to ensure that you put in plenty of research into your content marketing strategy before you get yourself too deep into anything. Reading this article is a great start, but there’s plenty more that you can do as well.
For beginners, look up the keywords that you plan to use and how you think those will be most useful with your specific site. By using a program like Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you’ll be able to create strings of keywords that are likely to bring back the best results for your website.
The more likely it is that someone is going to put in the string of keywords that you have, the higher likelihood that you’ll get visits to your site. Therefore, do enough due diligence beforehand to ensure that you know what you’re getting yourself into before starting your content marketing strategy.
Look for Cohesiveness Across Platforms
Remember earlier when we asked if your site looks good across platforms and on different browsers? Well, if it doesn’t, now is your time to get this figured out. You never know where your audience is coming from when it’s viewing your content. Visitors may be looking with their phones, their tablets or their computers, and there are also plenty of Internet browsers that they could be using as well. This is important because each browser works and functions differently, which may affect how your site runs.
Therefore, you should look for cohesiveness across all platforms for your website. The more smoothly your site runs on multiple browsers, the more likely it is that people will trust that they can visit your site no matter where they are coming from.
Allow Customer Feedback
Your customers want to let you know how you’re doing. If you don’t listen, you’re missing out on a prime chance to learn how to improve and make your company better. Therefore, a great way for you to improve your content marketing strategy is by letting others provide you with feedback.
Not only does feedback give you a better idea of how you can improve your image and what you can do better, but it also will help your SEO rankings. Finally, by having updated content in the form of customer feedback, other people will see that you make a diligent effort to provide the best service that you can for your clients.
Have A Personal Blog
A personal blog is another great way to improve your content marketing strategy. Since search engines like Google give priority to sites that are regularly updated, a blog is a great way for you to continually update your content. In addition, a blog is an ideal way for you to connect with potential clients who are looking to learn more about your business.
Get Social
Social media also take a big piece of the pie when you are looking for important factors for content marketing.
If you have Facebook and Twitter profiles, that’s a good start. However, do something about it and keep your account as active as possible.
Interacting with clients through social media will help to generate traffic to your site, and it’ll also boost your online web presence in the process.
Always Build Trust
No matter what you’re doing, your goal should always be to build trust with your clients. Every blog post, status update and change to your website should have your clients and customers in mind. Your content marketing strategy should be geared for the long run, which is going to require a lot of trust between you and your audience. Therefore, make sure that you continue to do the right thing in the eyes of your audience, and you’ll notice more loyalty on their behalf.
Content is king in today’s online world. But instead of just throwing any type of content out there, you need to have a precise strategy that will work. With the seven tips, you’ll be able to improve your content market strategy and build strong relationships with your audience.
— Taylor Reaume is an e-Business coach and founder of Search Engine Pros. He can be contacted at taylor@thesearchenginepros.com, or 1.800.605.4988. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
We recently followed your advice and setup a customer feedback option, where we email the customer so many days after a purchase and allow them to leave a review and/or contact us directly and let us know how the experience went. You wont believe the response we got. It builds your confidence knowing so many people are satisfied (if its going that way) with your business, and it gives you the one on one with the customer so they can help build your brand by word of mouth.
Following your suggestions we just started a blog on our website and we are actually getting responses on it that are important for our growth. Customers have been writing in recommendations to which is always helping us for the future. It’s great to see people discussing our products and sharing with other people how well they are working for them.