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Content marketing can be a very challenging task if you are new to the process, but even if you have experience in the field, it can still be stressful.
If you have a lot of options to choose from, choosing a content marketing topic can be challenging enough. On the other hand, if you have no idea where to begin, choosing a topic can be utterly impossible.
It is simple to mix up content marketing and digital marketing. However, in reality, content marketing and digital marketing are not the same. Both strategies eventually aim to expand a company by increasing revenue and consumer traffic.
Digital marketing refers to any form of online advertising, especially online content promotion. Examples of digital marketing include SEO, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, video marketing, and other techniques.
Content marketing refers to the process of creating content with the goal of raising awareness, attracting consumers, or promoting a product or service. Examples of content marketing include blogging, creating educational articles, sharing images and videos, and utilizing other forms of social media advertising.
Following these 10 guidelines for selecting content marketing topics will assist you in successfully and almost seamlessly accomplishing your content marketing goals.
1. Define Your Marketing Goals
Your content marketing and overall marketing goals must be defined in detail first. Creating a solid foundation and establishing a thorough understanding of your corporate strategy is the first step in selecting appropriate content marketing topics and setting a clear goal for your content.
By outlining your marketing goals, you can see the greater picture, and by defining your content marketing goals, you can connect these minor, more specific goals with the bigger ones.
Additionally, identifying your content marketing goals will enable you to come up with appropriate topics by enabling you to comprehend what you want to accomplish with your content.
First and foremost, why do you have a content marketing strategy? Lead generation, raising brand recognition, and boosting engagement—you name it—could be the top organizational goals for many B2B and B2C companies and brands.
Consider what you want to accomplish with your offline and online marketing as you develop your marketing objectives. Your main objective will probably be to increase sales, but you can also consider other factors like expanding your customers or increasing brand awareness. The next step is to specify your content marketing objectives. These can range from boosting your social media following to creating a strong backlink profile for your website.
2. Look at Your Current Analytics
When making decisions about your content marketing strategy, analytics can be a good starting point.
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Looking at your existing analytics will give you a better understanding of what works and what doesn't when it comes to your content specifically and the audience this content reaches if you are already using content marketing and actively posting content online.
Utilize your statistics to determine what your audience prefers after reviewing the organizational goals for your content marketing strategy. Analytics are clearly some of the most accurate tools you have for figuring out which topics are effective and which are not.
3. Focus on Your Target Audience
Speaking of analytics, focusing on your target audience might be even more beneficial because you will be directly addressing the viewers, readers, or listeners who will be consuming your material.
Consider your target audience's fundamental aspects before focusing on them. What are their age, gender, and other attributes? What are their profession, level of education, and family background? The next step is to examine their more in-depth data, such as their interests, likes, dislikes, values, and life goals. If you can, make sure to explicitly ask your audience what they want to receive from you, including what topics you should include in your content.
4. Ask your audience
Another tip for selecting the ideal content marketing subjects is to ask your audience. The people engaging with your content are ultimately your audience, therefore it's critical to understand the types of content they enjoy and find interesting.
There are several approaches you can take. Setting up a poll or asking a question on one of your social media networks can work. Leave space for open-ended responses when you ask your followers what kind of content they would like to see.
5. SEO and Digital Marketing
Due to improved data collection and tracking, digital marketing is now capable of targeting specific advertisements to people based on their particular histories of online purchases and web searches.
search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the major parts of digital marketing. You can boost your efforts with SEO. Keywords are the foundation of your SEO effort. These all-important words and phrases are the terms a prospect types into a search engine when they’re looking for a company, product, or service.
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Blogging, backlinking, and internal linking are all part of SEO. Search engines will crawl and rank your site when you've finished optimizing it. If you have great content, customers will ultimately find your website when they search for the keywords you've selected.
Your website needs to be optimized. Customers won't find your website if it isn't optimized. And, no sales will be made. It's that easy.
6. Break Up Your Goals by Piece
Going back to your goals, one interesting strategy you can do is to split them up into different types of material. This will benefit you in a number of ways.
First of all, you will be able to focus on smaller, more achievable goals.
Second, it will be simpler to arrange and work with these goals separately.
Thirdly, each content piece will have a distinct goal, allowing you to simultaneously pursue several goals.
Your goals can be split pretty simply. Most of the time, the specific piece of content you are working on already has a certain goal in mind.
7. Remember About the Competition
Not only is it crucial for you to stay current on all industry news and trends, but it's also important for you to be aware of what your rivals are up to so you can apply this information to develop your own strategy.
Even if you don't have to follow their lead exactly, learning from their failures and accomplishments might help you direct your own actions in the proper direction.
8. Try Various Format Types
You could be motivated to select ideal topics for your content marketing by experimenting with various format types. Given the wide variety of format types currently accessible, you are sure to find something that meets the needs, capabilities, resources, and expectations of your target audience. Pros from the list of the best writers frequently employ the following content forms, which you can experiment with:
Blog Posts and Articles
Images and Photographs
Social Media Posts
Guest Posts and Shoutouts
Interviews and Collaborations
Giveaways and Contests
GIFs, Videos, and Animations
Live Streams and Podcasts
Quizzes, Polls, and Surveys
E-Books and Webinars
Wish Lists and Checklists
Infographics, Charts, and Presentations
9. Update Your Previous Content
Although it might not seem like the most obvious approach to coming up with fresh content topics, adapting your previous works can be a surprisingly powerful method. You will learn about the topics you may have forgotten about by going back and reading your older stuff. Additionally, already published content that has worked well could simply be updated with the most recent research and statistics to keep updated.
10. Digital Marketing Objective
Set a digital marketing objective for each unique content piece. Consider the topic for each piece of content you create and how it relates to each of your corporate objectives. This will also assist you in choosing the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor and assess.
For instance, if generating leads is your primary organizational objective, your content goal should be to appeal to customers at various phases of the purchasing process. E-books, white papers, or case studies may be examples of content types in this circumstance. The content you pick must increase sales if that is one of your main organizational digital marketing goals. Good content that increases sales not only educates but also fosters trust.
Consider brand recognition as an additional organizational goal for your business. Your content's objective in this case may be to attract referral visitors. Guest articles or influencer content are two content formats to take into consideration.
To implement a successful content marketing strategy, it's critical that the topics you select align with your organization's goals.
Content Marketing Ideas
There are numerous things you can attempt if you're seeking a few particular content marketing ideas to assist you to enhance your content marketing. Here are a few suggestions to spark your creativity.
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- Turn your top posts into a slideshare
Outdated material can be given new life by choosing the best-performing blog posts on your site and creating a SlideShare presentation with them.
- Highlight a weekly question
Look through any user questions you have had in the most recent week; you're likely to discover some content marketing ideas there. Many customers will have the same question that one client does, making it a great topic for a blog article or social media update.
- Capture the "Behind The Scenes" acts
Why not let your customers know who is behind your company's name and products? Make a short video of activity on your shop floor or take a few selfies of the workforce.
- Consult professionals
The potential of the traditional expert interview should be used more by content marketers, despite the fact that this could result in posts that are quick to create and successful. You could publish it as a simple question-and-answer session or even as a bit of audio or video content.
Video Ideas
If you want to create content that will capture and retain the attention of your audience, video creation is an attractive and effective option. While not everyone has the time or desire to read a blog article, almost everyone will watch a video for a few minutes. Here are a few concepts for creating your video material.
- Give others a glimpse into your daily life
A quick video of an interesting part of your company that the public wouldn't have access to is a great way to build your audience's trust and foster a deeper appreciation of your work and products, just as posting a photo or two of your team or your procedures can draw attention to your platforms.
- Bring some humor to what seems boring
You could doubt the star power of your product. The quality of your industrial product can always be promoted, but making it seem entertaining and engaging is a different story. You have the chance to achieve that using video marketing. Great video content has the ability to give new life to any product, but it will need some creativity and unique thinking to pull it out.
- Instead of merely "showing" your audience content, engage them in it
Every media use should strive to be interactive. Create engaging content if you want your audience to be involved in what you do. It's not necessary to use virtual or augmented reality to do this. Your audience will expand and be retained to a large extent if you provide compelling video content that is intended to boost user engagement.
Social Media Ideas
Discover the languages and ways of thinking of your audience so you can communicate with them effectively.
Brands and communications that appear to be speaking directly to audiences will be positively received by those audiences. Knowing how your audience thinks can help you create content that looks like they are directly aimed at them.
- Attempt to evoke the viewer's emotions, not their minds
Speaking about the advantages of your product is one part of directly targeting your audience. If you want to capture viewers' attention, you must make them feel something. Playing with words is important in marketing content, but dealing with emotions is much more important.
- Bring life to your brand
Mascots have always been a crucial component of marketing, and there's a good reason for that: they help your brand stand out and be more engaging by giving it a personality and a memorable mascot. Consider developing an entertaining influencer that your audience can view and engage with. The engagement and brand loyalty it fosters will grow significantly.
Conclusion
It needs strategic preparation to map out and select the appropriate topics for your content marketing strategy. Content marketers have a specialized approach to marketing companies. One method, or a mix of many, may be preferred by digital marketing professionals. Although they may be competent to manage content marketers in a large-scale campaign, digital marketing experts frequently lack the same specialized knowledge as content marketers.
Overall, it's generally important to consider that acquiring all the necessary skills takes time when selecting topics for your content marketing strategy. Evaluate which content engages your audience the most and what performs well. Use the suggestions in this article as a starting point and a guide when deciding on topics for your content marketing.
Remember to keep track of your content marketing strategy's modifications as content changes happen. A successful content marketing strategy must start with selecting the appropriate topics for content creation.