4 Ways to Upgrade Your Content Marketing
From leveraging subject matter experts to answering the questions that matter most, these strategies can help you build your audience.
Content marketing is an ever-evolving field. If you’re having trouble keeping up with the trends, you’re not alone. The most important element of content marketing will always remain the content itself. It must be engaging, meaningful to the audience, build that audience and strengthen the brand. Skip the trendy WordPress plugin, and hone in on these strategies that are sure to upgrade your content marketing efforts this month.
1. Be ready to tackle the next generation of your customers.
Time marches on, and even if a brand’s demographic stays largely the same, a new generation ages into that demographic. But a brand still has to work to reach this fresh audience. Marketing has to evolve tone and voice with the times while still holding court with brand diehards. We’ve been working younger millennial- and older generation Z-targeted content into the editorial calendar for Farm Bureau Financial Services. We love the new take on age-old topics like finances, entrepreneurship and more that hones in on ultra-specific demographics, like women planning for retirement.
2. Paint a detailed lifestyle picture in content.
When it comes to travel content marketing, the easy-to-digest listicle has long been king. But that’s never an excuse to get stale. We’re always challenging ourselves to deliver the local insider knowledge and the storytelling behind the places. That’s important. What we’ve learned while working with Explore Minnesota is that travel audiences want to visualize themselves doing the activity specifics and seeing the sites. Details matter. Guides that offer the reason behind the escape (example: a Girlfriends Getaway) and the unique possibilities — or the achieved-here-only themes — truly resonate with would-be wanderers.
3. Leverage subject matter expertise to the fullest.
Most brands have subject matter experts. We love to draw on those in-house specialists for in-depth insight and direct quotes to bolster content. In our work with EXOS, a health and wellness company with a corporate wellness sector, we’ve been wowed with the level of detail their subject matter experts provide. It’s our job as content developers to morph jargon-laden info into a conversational narrative, but we’ve learned that the more we have the better. Not only can we provide highly relevant content to the brand’s audience (about corporate wellness metrics, for example) but we can also use additional information to build out stronger editorial calendars tailored to very specific business goals.
4. Answer the need-to-know questions in content.
For many of our healthcare clients, we create content hubs that help position a hospital as a regional wellness leader. We use various content styles, ranging from compelling storytelling to visually appealing infographics. But the biggest factor in driving readership to these blogs and generating patient leads? Taking hot healthcare topics and answering the questions readers want to know right now. These pieces really hit the mark: Who should be screened for lung cancer? or Should teens get the HPV vaccine? Direct answers (backed with the reasons why and paired with actionable steps) build true ties and trust with the community.