Content Marketing
The Importance ofSocial Media and Creating Content
What isContent Marketing
When we speak of content or internet marketing, we are not just talking about writing a few blog posts. While blog writing is an important piece of the puzzle, many other types of content should be implemented within a comprehensive digital marketing plan. Neil Patel is a well-known digital content marketer who has successfully marketed many famous brands and brought them to a new level of success. He owns the Kissmetrics platform that focuses on monitoring and analyzing results.
Peter Drucker once said, “What you can measure, you can also change.” This idea is applicable today when it comes to keeping track of your online marketing activities so that you can decide which ones are working the best. Without knowing how your ad campaigns are working, there is no way to measure your progress or to know what has increased your sales. You need to not only develop excellent ad campaigns and media marketing strategies but also to create a system that allows you to measure the progress of your campaigns over time so that you can improve them as you go.
In this post, we will discuss the various types of content that you can incorporate in a digital marketing plan and how you can utilize the tools of content creation to build your brand online.
The Importance of Social Media Platforms
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram cannot be overrated. The power that these platforms bring to your web presence and your products and services is equal to none. When you create a post on Facebook on your business page, you can increase your potential audience exponentially by many times more than what you can do alone.
Facebook has a multitude of ways that you can create hype for your brand including customized ads, pay-per-click ad campaigns, and much more. Simply posting once a day on Twitter or posting pictures on Instagram can also go a long way toward promoting your brand on your pages.
Frequent Posting Works Best
The Benefits of Using Social Media Platforms for a Business Today
There are many benefits that businesses will get from using media platforms on a regular basis. Some of the most important ones are listed below:
- Creating a fan base and generating leads – These platforms can help you generate more new leads while helping you create a fan base on your social media accounts. Businesses should create a unique page that is specific to their brand so that people recognize it on various platforms. Create a logo that represents your brand and include it in your online profile and posts.
- Promoting new products and services – If you have a new product or service you want to promote, what better way to do it than with these platforms. Facebook and Twitter are where most of our potential customers are anyway, so why not find them where they spend the most time.
- Broadcasting “live” with updates – One of the best things about these platforms today is the additional streaming media tools that they provide. Business owners can use the “live video” feed option to connect directly to your customers who are on Facebook. When you create a live feed, your followers will automatically get a message that says you are “live now” and it invites people to join the feed. Chat is automatically enabled as well when the video feed is running, and people can interact with you and ask questions as you host your broadcast.
- Staying connected to your customers – Building relationships is what business is all about. This helps you do this by keeping you connected to your target audience on a consistent basis.
- Increasing sales through call to action – Don’t forget a “call-to-action” within your posts. Posting information about a product is good, but make sure and include an invitation to take action on your post. Whether it’s for a purchase, a subscription to your newsletter, or other action, include a call to action in every post.
The Importance of Creating Content
Once you get your fan business page setup and you are making regular posts, remember that it is important to keep your content fresh and unique. Your followers want to see new information about your business and about topics that are important to them. By creating consistently new content and adding more media to your content, you will increase the level of interest of your target audience.
Types of Content to Consider
There are many different types of content that you should consider creating to keep the interest of your target audience. You never know where your customers will come from to view your content, so it’s a good idea to have some content on each of these types of platforms and to produce a variety of different kinds of media.
1. Blog Posts
Blog posts are an excellent way to keep your customers informed about your products, services, and brand. You can include your company logo on your blog; you can write posts about topics that your customers care about, and offer them an opportunity to comment on your posts.
Within a blog, you can also include links to your profile and pages, links to videos on your YouTube channel, and much more. Include photos and podcasts, as well as other types of media to increase your readership.
2. Media Posts
As discussed above, this is one of the most important types of digital advertising, whether you create free or paid posts. Getting your posts out to scores of people is the biggest payoff when using online social platforms. The sharing feature of Facebook and Twitter and other platforms have made this possible.
Creating shareable content is important if you want to grow your brand and increase your web presence online. Consider the establishment of content with an extra incentive such as getting a free eBook in return for sharing your content with others on Facebook and Twitter. If you can get your fans to share with others, you can see an increase in your ROI (return on investment) at a much higher rate. Make sure and include a link on your main website, blog, and other pages.
3. Videos
Video marketing is one of the most powerful types of media marketing that you can do to promote your brand. Statistics show that up to 65% of people who view a video on a product make a purchase right after seeing the video. There are many other video statistics that business owners should be aware of regarding the power of video marketing. (Insignia)
If you are not creating original video content for your business, you may want to consider adding this to your digital content. You can create animated videos using whiteboard technology or motion graphics if you don’t want to film live action videos. Customer testimonials can also be recorded using video to help increase your ROI.
4. Podcasts
Podcasts are another way to increase your loyalty among customers and visitors. By creating regular audio content that they can take with them or listen to on mobile devices, you can create an entirely new level of interest in your brand.
Many business owners start by talking about topics that interest their target audience. Then they may add interviews with other influencers in their niche area later that can add credibility to their brand by associating themselves with others who can bring a renewed interest in a particular industry or topic.
5. Infographics
Infographics are a unique type of digital content that combines excellent graphics with data and information that is in a form that is easy to take in and digest. People on mobile devices are in a hurry, so they often don’t have time to read an entire blog or post. By placing an infographic on your pages, you can attract the attention of those users who might be interested in what you have to say but don’t have the time to read long posts.
6. eBooks and Audiobooks
If you have not written an eBook about your specialty area, you may want to consider doing this. Once you have written a book, you can promote this on any platform that you are on to capture the interest of your audience. Self-publishing has allowed anyone to be an author. If you are a business owner, you should look into this as an option to help build your credibility in your niche area. Offer your eBook free on your website as a way to capture email addresses to increase your fan base and leads.
7. Email Campaigns
Email campaigns are also an important aspect of creating content for your brand to promote your products and services, but it is also an excellent way to stay on the radar of your target audience.
When you send emails to your target customers, why not include a link to a video on YouTube to watch about your new product or about your business that will help your clients. If you give them something free, you may be surprised how much they are willing to buy from you later.
What is Targeted Traffic?
Many business owners fail to have an understanding of targeted traffic. When we speak of “traffic,” we are referring to general traffic. But general traffic is not enough to increase your conversions or to bring more customers to your site. At best, creating more general traffic will only serve to move your traffic counter up a bit or to introduce a few strangers to your website. To make an impact with your brand, you need to connect to your audience. This means focusing on targeted traffic.
Targeted traffic is that isolated segment of the population that will have the most interest in the products and services that you offer and will respond in a favorable way to your ads and posts.
How to Increase Your Targeted Traffic through Digital Content
Now that you know many of the different types of content that you can create to promote your brand let’s talk a bit about marketing that content. If you want to increase your traffic for your website and increase sales, you need to understand the importance of marketing your content.
It’s not enough to just create great content. That’s just the first step. Once you have created it, you need to think of ways that you can promote and market that content to connect with the people who are most likely to act on your content or follow up on your “call-to-action”.
What can you do to achieve this? Here are a few tips on marketing your content once you have created it.
- Create a YouTube channel and update it frequently with new content. YouTube has over 4 billion video views per day! With that many people on both desktops and mobile devices, there’s a good chance that your content will be found by at least some people who have an interest in your brand.
Don’t leave it to chance, however. You can actively market your videos to your target audience by choosing valuable keywords that your audience uses when they search for your content. Then make sure and use these same words in the description of your YouTube videos and on your website, as well. Being consistent with your keywords in an organic way (without keyword stuffing) is the key to increasing your leads and generating sales through media marketing.
- Post YouTube videos on your platforms and channels. YouTube is a social platform itself, and it will get you lots of views simply because it is tied to the powerful Google search engine. However, you will want to place your links to your YouTube videos on your other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to maximize the impact you have with your target audience.
- Optimize your content for mobile users. It’s important that your content appeals to mobile users. Mobile users are the single most growing group of users online today. It is predicted that there will be over 5.07 billion mobile users by the year, 2019. Currently, it is around 4.77 billion, and the trend will continue to grow over time. People shop, chat, share and communicate more with mobile devices than with traditional desktops or other home systems.
That’s because people are more mobile today than they have ever been before and they can take their technology with them anywhere they go. To make sure your content is mobile-friendly, use this Google mobile-friendly test. It’s important to make sure your web content is up to par with Google’s requirements to stay high in the rankings for customer searches and to make yourself user-friendly for mobile users.
- Create some PPC ads for Facebook and Twitter or Google AdWords to find your target audience. Pay-per-click advertising is a good way to increase your views and subscriptions quickly if you don’t want to wait for organic SEO to start working. It is advisable for business owners to use both natural (SEO techniques) with paid advertising to achieve success and visibility online. PPC advertising can be done using Facebook ads, Google Adwords, and other paid ad platforms to promote your ads.
- Offer incentives to your customers for sharing your content. If you want to promote your business or products on these sites, you need to create shareable content. Shareable content is content that people want to share due to its value to them. When you create videos, podcasts, or photos to post on social platforms, think about what is unique or special about the content and what would make others want to share it with their friends.
Offer incentives, if necessary, to encourage others to share your message and posts with their friends so that you can truly profit from the exponential factor of social platforms.
How to Increase Conversions with your Content
Once you have an idea of how you should proceed with your online marketing plans, how can you increase your conversions as a result of your content? Increasing conversions and generating leads for new customers should be the number one goal of your digital marketing plan for your business.
There is no “magic bullet” for increasing conversions. The key to success is to start creating new content including all of the components we’ve talked about today include videos, podcasts, blog articles, infographics, and any other type of media that will appeal to your target audience. Then you need a plan to market them in the right places and platforms to meet customers where they are.
Mobile users must be a primary concern since there are so many mobile users who are online looking for content. Getting your message in front of your primary audience is the key to increasing conversions.
For business owners, it is also important to know how to get the most “bang for your buck” regarding your online marketing activities.
An Integrated Approach
The only way to see a big increase in conversions due to your online marketing campaigns is to create an integrated approach to your digital content by combining the best types of content on the right platforms where it will do the most good. Rather than starting a Facebook or Bing ad campaign and hoping for the best, it’s best to have a complete, well thought out plan as to how to approach your marketing plan so that you can systematically reach your goals.
A hit-and-miss approach does not work when it comes to marketing our content. You need to think about how much money you want to spend in different areas and get your ad in front of the people who are most likely to purchase.
Knowing the Requirements
One of the aspects of digital media marketing that some business owners are not familiar with is the fact that various platforms require specific technical requirements for posting things on their site. While Facebook is fairly simple regarding knowing what you can post, if you have created an infographic or another form of digital content, you’ll need to know the exact specifications that you can use on each different platform before you post.
Knowing this ahead of time will save you a lot of time and frustration in having to redo your photos or other media when uploading to Facebook.
YouTube is perhaps the easiest platform to deal with since they automatically convert your content to optimal specifications for their platform. However, it’s a good idea to study the specifications of optimal video quality on YouTube, as well, so that you will be able to present your videos in the most professional-looking manner possible.
The Importance of Tracking Your Results
As mentioned before, it is important to track the results you get from your online ad campaigns. When you are aware of how your ad campaigns are working, you can adjust them to meet your needs and improve your results. But it helps to understand the process of online marketing and to perform experiments on your ads to see what works best.
One way you can do this is to create A/B split tests. This process involves creating two versions of your website (or at least one page of it) and then observing the results in your analytics tools to see which one works the best and is most effective in increasing your conversions.
Google Analytics has an experiments tool that allows you to create these types of split tests to see which version works the best. By studying the results of both versions, you can study and observe how others react to your content and decide which style works the best in attracting your target customers. The more you know about your potential audience, the more you can create your ad campaigns to meet the needs of your customers and your business.
If you do not measure your progress on your digital marketing campaigns, there is no way to know how well you are reaching the people you need to reach and improving your ROI. If you want to increase your return on investment, you need to know what works and what doesn’t. This takes time to figure out, and a knowledge of the various social media management platforms, file types, and marketing basics is necessary to achieve success with online marketing strategies.
How We Can Help
Many businesses can figure out how to market their videos or other digital content on some level to see a slight improvement in their online conversions and leads generation. But creating a truly successful digital content strategy takes a combination of techniques, tools, and actions that all work together to create the best marketing plan.
That’s where we can help. We are your social media marketing, content creation, and marketing team that covers all of the bases for you. We consider conversions the key to our success, as well as yours. We understand the importance of creating a complete 360-degree marketing strategy that includes video production and commercialization, marketing, optimizing your content for mobile users, and much more.
Our site is called Create the Movement and we specialize in creating integrated ad and marketing campaigns using all of the tools you need to create success and appeal to your target audience.
If you want to increase your targeted traffic, you need us on your side to utilize all of the tools needed to reach your target audience.
Contact us at createthemovement.com for more information and to get started on your digital marketing plan. When it comes to content marketing and social media management for business, we wrote the book! Let us know how we can help and we’ll get started on your internet marketing plan right away! It’s up to you to start. Let us help you create the movement!
