A beginner’s guide to become content specialist

Content plays a major role in getting customers to be interested in your business campaign. Formulating just a plain content may not attract relevant traffic to your digital marketing campaign. Does this mean it is very tough to plan out content marketing strategy? No, while content creation can be a difficult task, with proper planning it can be done right. If the problem still persists then one can always get in touch with a specialist. You can always look for certain skills when hiring a content marketer. This will help in solving key challenges, business goals, converting visitors to customers, increasing leads in the long term. There is a great demand for content marketing skills, as 70% companies invest in content. Let’s see how you can make it work for your business or clients. When online marketing is in such demand, then a proper content also needs to be written to increase sales in the digital marketing world.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a business and marketing strategy of creating and sharing valuable, relevant, quality, and consistent content to captivate and engage the target audience to acquire new customers and keep the old ones engaged and informed. This helps in brand awareness by accustoming the customers to the overall products and services provided by your business.

The different elements of content strategy can be blogs, visual contents, data analytics, infographics, social media networks, social media marketing, e-books, webinars, etc. This can be understood with the scenario mentioned below:

Example: You are a timber merchant and run a timber industry. You have added new machines and have new product facilities. Now you want to feature these new add-ons on the website so that your customers get an idea of the new facilities you have to offer. You need to specify that you now have started dealing in hardwoods and softwoods. You have started dealing in products such as bamboo, birch, cedar, cherry, oak, pine, spruce etc. and also giving five years of free maintenance. You can mention all of this in a blog post on your website.

So you see, this is how content marketing comes to play a very crucial role, saving your time and money and making your business content reach out to your targeted audience in one or two clicks. Content is a necessary component of marketing strategy no matter what the size of company, industry, or business is.

Why is Content Marketing needed?

In today’s digital age where almost everything is getting digitalized, fresh, creative, attractive and user friendly content are in demand.  With nearly five billion active internet users and over four billion active social media users, you get a wide range of chances to reach out to a large number of audiences and expand your business worldwide. This can be done with the help of content marketing strategy.

With everything now getting ahead with tools of artificial intelligence and being available only in a few clicks, the standards of marketing are also changing and speeding up in the online field. Now most businesses have started using online portals also, so that the customers get facilitated at every step. Getting more people interested in your businesses or brand can be done with content, you can even avail content marketing services. There are many trends in content marketing, which keep on changing and proper updates from time to time can help one be ahead of their competitors.

The importance of digital marketing during Coronavirus got much highlighted at the front. While many business sectors were impacted because of COVID-19, content marketing during the pandemic played an important part to reach out to its customers with ease, meeting and fulfilling their demands when required.

Content marketing helps in bringing the different aspects of the services just in a click. Now businesses have realized the immense potential of content and have started leveraging it for generating business leads. Content helps in saving a lot of time and money, as customers get to know the services easily just by visiting the website.

Nuts & bolts of creating a Content Marketing strategy

Content marketing strategy is a strategy that takes into account your business goals. The prime focus should be on the type of content provided which will help in growing the business. With the best content, you have high chances of getting interested customers which increases your business and also meets customer satisfaction.

A good content strategy helps in competing in your industry and being ahead of others. Many points need to be kept in mind when creating a strategy. Keep below steps in mind when drafting your strategy:

• Target audience- It is important to keep in mind, who is the target audience reading your content. As more than one type of customer would be reading your content, so this needs to be kept in mind that they do not get bored, confused or annoyed. To keep the customer interested, the content should be attractive and If you find this to be tough, you can always take the services of a specialist.

• Uniqueness of content – Focus on keeping your content unique, and not to copy from other contents on the internet. This would keep your target audience interested, grow your website ranking and increase traffic on your website. The content should be original and attractive to the customers. If it is a copied content, then the user will not be interested in reading the content and all the efforts of writing the content will go in vain. Also, duplicate content should be avoided as it will be penalized by Google, as Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct content.

• One-stop solution- The content strategy should be made in such a way that the all the needs of the customers are made available at one place. All their desires are fulfilled and the strategy provides them a one stop solution on their website.

• Personalization of content – Every customer has different types of demand. The content strategy should be made in such a way so that the demand of each and every customer is fulfilled and none of them are left untouched. The content marketing services should thus be put into different categories, so that the different types of customers find products according to their choices. The technical tools can be used by the content specialist to categorize the products.

• Management of content – Managing content is also equally important as creating content. There are multiple changes going on in the market every time. To be in line always with this and with your competitors, the content needs to be managed and updated from time to time.

SEO and Content Marketing: Do they work together?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the practice of optimizing the website to improve the quality and quantity of web traffic to website from SERPs (search engine result pages). It also involves improving the websites ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, etc. to increase the online visibility. SEO digital marketing is knowing about what people are searching for online, the words they’re using and the type of content they are looking for. The use of content optimization in SEO is important so that the users get the desired result that they are searching for on the website. There are different SEO tools also which can considered while making SEO content, these tools help figure out what things need to be done to increase visitors to website.

SEO and content marketing go hand in hand. It is like body and soul; both have their equal importance in SEO Digital Marketing. In any search, keyword is the most important part, as all the search query revolves around it. So any content needs to be prepared around the keywords. Keywords play an important part in ranking of the SEO, but having a quality content strategy is also very important. Having quality content on the website that is optimized for not only search engines, but also audience. And it helps the business when a conversion action takes place. With introduction of new algorithms by Google, the content needs to be unique and creative to rank well on search engines.

SEO content writing is writing content with the goal of attracting search engine traffic, however, it is important that keep you keep in mind that organic traffic is not exactly free traffic. The content strategy in SEO marketing may take time for a beginner as several  points like keyword research, content creation, content optimization, content promotion, etc. are to be kept in mind. If any difficulty arises, you can get in touch with SEO content writing expert.

SEO digital marketing is not totally different from content marketing. It may be said that content is a part of SEO digital marketing. The different aspects of technical SEO and content marketing needs to be included, while writing content for SEO marketing. The technical skills in content writing help increase the SEO traffic, and are done by the content written for the SEO. The content optimization in SEO content writing can be done by focusing on the headings, optimizing the lengths of the posts, the growth of the business. The SEO content writing should be written, thinking like a customer. This would help in content optimization in proper title tags, use keywords strategically, optimize the images making it easier to use in the mobile or on the desktop.

A content creation strategy when blended meticulously with SEO (on-page and off-page SEO) can yield explosive results. Below mentioned are a few components of SEO that strengthen your content marketing objectives:

• Keyword research
• User intent
• Google’s ranking system
• Layout and device speed
• Link building
• Authority

By now, it has been established that SEO and content writing often overlap and none of them can be kept out in the SEO digital marketing world. If there is any further issue then the services of SEO content writer can be availed.

Types of Content Marketing

Different types of content marketing can be incorporated in your content strategy:

1. Image-based – Content marketing done with the help of images provides the visual, which the audience easily get familiar with and decide their choice with the image appearing details.

2. Descriptive – Descriptive content marketing helps to know the audience the details of the services of the services provided. They can get a detailed idea about the product, their uses, charges and other services. The user gets fully acquainted after going through the descriptive content. Thus descriptive content strategy is useful in content marketing.

3. Infographic – Info graphics are in much demand in digital marketing. They provide the data and the details all at one place making it easier for the user to know about the services provided all at one place. For more information on infographics, you can refer to the infographic we have made for this blog.
4. Video-based – The details of the products and services can be put in a video form. This would help the user get familiar with the services just in movie form. It is easy for the user to remember things in the video and the video can be made creative and attractive to keep the user interested.

5. Blog posts – Different blogs can be written and be published on social media platforms, webinars, can be advertised through email marketing, helping in increasing the customers to reach out to our services.

Goals of Content Marketing

A good content forms the foundation to attract the customers, thus increasing the business.

Few of these goals are:

• Brand awareness – With the content displayed on the website, the buyer gets knowledge of the products, their uses, cost of product and awareness about the product on how it is different from your competitors. This brings in transparency and helps in solving the buyers’ problem.
• Engage visitors – The ultimate goal of writing any content is to keep the visitors engaged, as every effort is made for the customers satisfaction. Being specific to your content, focusing on quality, content to entertain and to educate, and use of info graphics and visuals help keep the visitors engaged and prosper chances of converting the leads into customers.
• Brand loyalty – Providing discounts, exclusive offers are a part of brand loyalty and do not prosper much in the long run. Building loyalty towards your brand involves many other things such as sharing success stories to increase trust on positive customers, sharing personalized story for their feedback, suggestions for content from time to time.
• Increase leads to customers – The content should be presented in a way that, users after visiting the website, and being informed about the services, the types of products, keeps them interested in it. This helps in increasing the leads and then finally to customers. Better ranking of the website is also achieved with increase in leads.

Content Marketing skills to build

Content marketing is always a changing thing. Content has now become the essence of branding, sales campaign, lead generation due to its effectiveness.  A content specialist covers the essential roles to provide the relevant and quality content for any product or business. They need training on how to use their words to connect with the audience. The specialist needs to diversify the skills to help the business increase sales and increase profit. They need to understand the data analytics, marketing automation, demands of the buyers, project management, inbound marketing and many other services of the company. All this would help the content specialist in making a good content, and attract customers to the business. There is already high competition in the present age in digital marketing field, so having such skills not only helps in writing a good content, but also keeps one ahead  of others. There are various tips to writing a good content, and with this the traffic on the website can be increased, which finally leads to increase the customers.

Not all content writers have the same style of writing. Some have a story telling view, some are good in visual effects and some are good in email and website marketing. But building some necessary skills can help them adjust better with the industry, they are working for. Most important skill that a content specialist should always keep in mind is to keep the content original and make sure it is not copied. Duplicate content not only loses the interests of the customers but can also lead Google to penalize your website.  As content specialist are in effective demand in Digital marketing, certain skills needs to be focused on to get best results:

1. Planning skills – Before making a content strategy, a good planning on the content should be made. This should be in relevance to the content marketing services, target audience reading it, so that it converts visitors into leads, and the leads into customers.
2. Research skills – In content writing deep understanding of the content is required. A research should be done on what is to be written. In SEO content writing, it becomes more important, helping in giving better rank to the website.
3. Editing skills – Clear and quality content is important to keep the buyers engaged, while messy and error- filled content may end up visitors losing interest in the site entirely. So, editing is a necessary step to make it look more professional and polished to customers.
4. Data analysis skills – Data analytics help to analyze the industry trends, keeps up-to-date about the customers preferences. This helps to iterate the interests of the customers, keep aligned with the different customers across the globe and help rank better in SEO marketing.
5. Keyword research skills – In SEO Digital marketing the main aim is to rank website higher and keywords play a very important role in this. Proper keyword research should be done, identifying your target audience and what they are looking for. One should explore the content, build proper keyword list and should make content strategy surrounding this keyword.
6. Technical skills – In present technological age, technical skills become important as there are different types of users with different demands. This all needs to be put into various categories so that the users easily filter out what they want. SEO digital marketing requires technical aspects so that the user is getting the best knowledge of the service technically, in a lucid way and is easily understandable.
7. Content promotion skills – No matter how good content you write, it is of no use if no one is reading it. You can promote your content on social media platforms; blogging sites, email marketing and this way can increase traffic to your content.

While the above skills are a must for a content specialist, it is not always necessary that you would have time to work upon these. When that’s the case, you can always reach out to a certified digital marketing agency that provides content marketing services.

Credible Digital Marketing services

Megistron Media is a dynamic and versatile digital marketing agency, providing digital marketing services customized according to your needs. Our content marketing services can help create brand awareness among the audience and enhance your business’ online presence while increasing the conversion rate on your website.

We make strategies according to the market, and then execute it smartly to help you achieve your goals. We offer a wide range of services which include PPC services, SEO services, social media marketing services and many other services and can help you meet your demands.

Final words

Now you must have got information about the importance of content marketing and how you can get started. The skills to build in as a content specialist are important as only a simple layout presentation of the content may not keep the user interested and you may lose customers. Even if you provide quality services but are not being able to present it in a good way, the customers will not reach up, so a good content needs to be presented to keep the customers intact. It may be difficult for many businesses at the starting to create better content, so the help of a content specialist can be taken.

References:

• The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing in 2021
• Why These 5 Unexpected Content Marketing Skills Are a Must to Build in 2021