Ever written a brilliant piece of well thought-out content only to be left perplexed when it’s failed to convert? For many content writers, coming up with and executing great content ideas isn’t a problem, however getting each piece to achieve the metrics expected of it can be a little tricky.
So, if you’re regularly coming up with great ideas, what’s going wrong? No matter if you’re a digital marketing agency or a large corporate company, when it comes to content marketing, there’s more to the process than simply writing, publishing and sharing. Therefore, before you put pen to paper – or in most cases these days, fingers to keyboard – you need to work out whether the content you’re writing is actually going to help you achieve your business goals, or if it’s simply just adding to the noise on your social channels.
1. Understand your audience
A key part of creating content that leads to conversions is ensuring that your content is targeted directly at your current and potential customers. By identifying the demographics and interests of your business’ current customer base, you’ll be able to create content that addresses your audience’s problems, provides relevant inspiration and offers useful information on topics they truly care about.
If you’re not in a position to fork out for analytics software, an easy, free way to delve into your Twitter following is by utilising the Twitter Analytics tab on your account. By taking a look at the platform’s audience insights, you can quickly gage your following’s gender split, dominant age group and top-level interests. After creating a rough picture of who your audience are, you’ll be able to speak to them on a more personal level, in a tone of voice that’s suited to them.
2. Ensure there’s a strategy behind your content
So, you’ve started writing the right content, for the right people on the right platform, but is it helping you to achieve your business goals? Before you start putting together your content calendar, you need to assess what you want the end result to be – especially as this will affect the type of content you create.
Do you need to utilise your SEO services and create content which is going to improve your rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), or are you looking to create an impactful piece to raise your brand awareness? Whatever your business goals, determining your targets will not only help you to effectively allocate your resources to produce your content, but you’ll also have a better grasp at how successful your content is further down the line.
3. Create content appropriate for your publishing channels
Although it can be tempting to share all your content on all your social platforms, not every piece of content will convert on every social media channel. Instead, you need to be a little more strategic about your approach.
It’s likely that your audiences will differ slightly from platform to platform, so once again you need to design your content around each audiences’ interests. For instance, if you’re a Manchester marketing agency, your Twitter following may be a mix of potential clients and marketing bloggers, whereas your LinkedIn audience is more likely to be a combination of like-minded business professionals. Therefore, while the former group might be likely to respond to product launches, tips and inspirational content, the latter are probably more interested in business updates and the expertise you can offer about your field.
And it’s not just what you talk about. How you convey your information on each channel, whether it be by blog, video or infographic, is also important. By ensuring your content is appropriate for each social channels’ audience, you might find your content starts performing better.
Not sure where to start? If content marketing isn’t your forte, we’d be happy to help. Get in touch to find out more about how we can get your content converting.