How To Create A Successful Content Marketing Strategy For SEO

Creating a successful content marketing strategy is the most important and influential form of digital marketing for the last several years. According to market research, that is set to continue as the savviest marketers and businesses are investing more than ever into this practice.

So, what is content marketing, and why is it such a big deal?

Essentially, creating a successful content marketing strategy means creating new content for your business and then using this to grow your audience as well as build trust and authority.

The most obvious form of content marketing is written content. This will mean creating a blog post every week or even every day. And then sharing it online through social media and other platforms.

This has many different benefits. On the one hand, content marketing is a perfect companion for SEO and social media marketing. Any SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) worth their salt knows that Google runs on content. The very purpose of Google is to pair its visitors with the right entertainment and information. This is what we call content.

Thus, for Google to share your site with people, you need to ensure you create high quality content. You need to carefully utilize the right topics and search terms so Google will know what your content is about. Then, be able to pair it with the right visitors.

The Quality Of A Successful Content Marketing Strategy Matters

Google is all about content quality these days. And if you can demonstrate that your site is a source for high-quality information, then you’ll be much more likely to start gaining visibility. in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

At the same time, content is also going to help you a great deal to promote yourself on social media. People will follow you on social media because they want to be informed and entertained. Thus, if you share interesting content on your site, you’ll be able to promote those posts on Facebook and Twitter. This gives your users a reason to follow you as well as have new users follow as well.

But true a successful content marketing strategy doesn’t mean using content to boost your SEO and social media. Instead, a true successful content marketing strategy means thinking of content as an end in itself rather than a means. After all, the whole reason that content can boost your SEO and social media is that content has inherent value. Content is what people go online in the first place!

Therefore, if you add content to your site, you are adding value to your site. And when you add value to your website, give your visitors more reason to keep coming back.

More to the point, though, you also demonstrate to your readers that you can entertain and inform them, and that way you build trust. Thinking about your content in this way is the best way to ensure that you make the most of it. But in this report, you’re going to discover how to take it even further…

How Does Content Marketing Work Psychologically?

Content marketing – when done correctly – should work overtime to gradually convince visitors to your site to become long-term fans. Fans who are loyal to your brand and who are excited to buy pretty much anything that you recommend.

But how do they make this journey? And what is the precise role that content has to play in the transition?

At first, your content will work to simply to increase your visibility and help in your discovery. As mentioned, content is what people search for, and the more of it you have on your site, the more likely you are to get visitors.

So, someone searches a topic relating to your topic. Then they might see one of your links in the SERPs. Perhaps they click this link and get taken to your page. What do they find here?

Successful Content Marketing Strategy Process

Hopefully, they will read your blog post or article, and they will enjoy it. But don’t think that you’ve made a fan overnight. In all likelihood, they won’t even look at the name of your site. Or where they were when they read your post. After all, most of us are in a hurry. Onw thing that your audience wants most is to get the information they need and then leave.

But over time, there’s a good chance they may discover your page again. Especially if they regularly read about the niche that you are writing in. If the information in the content impresses your reader, they are more likely to recognize your page next time.

And if this happens a few times, they’ll probably take notice of your brand, and they’ll remember that this is a site they can trust and that shares information in a way that they find entertaining and engaging.

Now, if that user searches Google and sees a selection of sites offering the information they’re looking for, they might gravitate towards your blog. The more this happens the easier it is to establish trust and authority. Your visitors may start to type in your site and search for the content they want.

Eventually, they might bookmark the page. And they might decide to check it regularly to see what new content is there!

Suddenly, you have a fan. You have someone who enjoys what you have to offer and who trusts you as a creator.

Now, if you promote a product or mention something you’re working on, there’s a good chance they’ll be interested. All that free content demonstrated how much knowledge you have and how much you care about providing value. As a result, when you charge for something, the reader will think that it must be good.

Successful Content Marketing Strategy Ideal Flow

Let’s imagine for a moment that you have a site all about website design. You provide lots of useful information about visual hierarchy, about using Illustrator and Photoshop, about coding and security. These things are written such an engaging manner even people with no interest in web design become regular readers.

Imagine fans read that site every day, and one day they need a help with web design. Where are they going to look first? Who would be their ideal choice for a well-designed website?

You guessed it!

Earning the Right to Sell

Providing free content is not just how you are going to offer value and build trust. It is also how you earn the right to sell to your audience.

This is the entire notion behind a sales funnel. A sales funnel a sequence of interactions with a visitor that has been meticulously set up by a creator. The aim is to take your visitor from a stranger (a cold lead) to someone ready to spend lots of money.

And while you might not like it, Thai Lopez is a perfect example of this!

If you’ve ever been on YouTube in the past year, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered Thai Lopez. He is an internet marketer who has spent copious amounts on advertising on YouTube. Therefore, he manages to appear at the start of hundreds of videos.

The most famous of these videos was the ‘Here in my garage video.’ For those who haven’t seen it. Thai begins the video by showing off his fancy cars. Then goes on to say how he loves books. After that, he talks about the three tips he learned from his five gurus, which will share with you for free from his website.

What A Successful Content Marketing Strategy Can Accomplish

So, what is happening here? Everything has been meticulously planned and meticulously staged. Did you know, for instance, that the human brain prefers lists of three and five? How convenient than that Thai had five gurus and learned three tips…

More importantly, Thai starts by immediately trying to establish some authority. He does this through his cars, and by mentioning a TED talk, he did. This gives him credibility, but we’ve never encountered him before, and it’s still not enough for us to consider buying from him. If his call to action at the end of the video were to buy his ebook, then his ads would have been a bust, and he wouldn’t be everywhere…

Instead, Thai smartly recommends going to his website where you can watch a 50 minute+ diatribe on marketing. This is his chance to demonstrate the value he is capable of building and create more familiarity, trust, and authority. It’s this crucial step that will prepare us to buy from him at the end of the video when he starts promoting paid services and products.

He could only do this after he built that relationship with the viewer.

And that’s precisely what you do with content marketing on your website or blog. You familiarize the viewer with who you are, your values, and how you can help them. You demonstrate value, and mostly you show what your brand is all about.

Now your audience will know whether or not they want to buy from you.

Content Marketing vs Sales Page

Compare this to a site that launched straight into a sales pitch. If you clicked a link on Google and it immediately tried to sell you an ebook, would you buy it? Or would you write it off as spam and just leave to look elsewhere? We don’t like cold sales, and we don’t like buying from people and brands we don’t know.

I liken this to the dating game. You can’t just go up to a woman or a man in the street and ask them to come home with you: you’ll get slapped!

Instead, you first need to build that familiarity and show that you are fun, sexy, and trustworthy. Only once you’ve put in the groundwork can you ask for a number and invite them to your place for some Netflix ‘n chill.

The same thing applies to your website. You are going to use content to build that relationship and show what you’re all about, and then you will be able to earn the right to invite the reader to buy from you or to sign up to your course or your mailing list, etc.

This is why a content marketing is so powerful. Whereas SEO and advertising focus on getting people to your site and making them aware of you, a successful content marketing strategy concentrates on creating real relationships, brand integrity, and more.

How to Get People Behind Your Brand

There is an awful lot of work and technique that goes into creating the right kind of content that will allow you to get people invested in your brand.

It is certainly not enough to just create any type of content and then hope that people will fall in love with what you have to offer!

One of the most important tips is to try and create content that qualifies users, and that targets a particular type of person. The biggest mistake you can make is to try and appeal to everyone. This simply makes your content generic and ensures that most people won’t care about it much.

To get people on board with what you have to offer, you need to have a message, and you need to have a clear ethos.

For example, if you have a health site, then you might want to decide whether you take a very scientific approach and only recommend techniques and diets that are backed by research, or whether you take a more naturalistic approach. You recommend things that are natural and don’t include chemicals.

One of these options you choose will depend on your own beliefs, but all that is important is picking one. This way, you can help people understand what your site represents, and that way they’ll know roughly what to expect if they buy an ebook from you or if they use a product you recommend.

Your Content as a Product

The best way to get more from your content is to start thinking of it as a product. Instead of thinking of content on your website as something that you churn out over time, instead, think of it as an exciting event and as a great value proposition that you can pitch to your audience.

How does this change things?

First, think about how you might typically approach your content. You probably write several hundred words each time, churn it out in a few hours with some keyword optimization, then publish it and share it.

Instead, I want you to take a little more time and care over the entire process.

First, you are going to start building buzz and anticipation. That means that you can begin to mention the post you’re working on in your other posts and through your email marketing and social media pages. This is something that a company will often do with a new product but that you rarely see when it comes to content.

This is powerful stuff, though, as it will get your audience ready for the material coming, and it will make it seem much more important and exciting if it is worthy of buzz!

Apart from anything else, people want what they can’t have.

In product marketing, we tend to think a lot about the packaging and the name. In this case, the packaging is similar to the design of your page, the way you layout your writing, and any images that you choose to add. Either way, if you take more time and care in the presentation of your content, then it will leap off the page, and it will seem much higher value.

If it is adorned with high definition images and uses an attractive font, it will be more enjoyable to read, and it will seem more professional. Your audience will feel they are reading something more exciting, and in short, they will be more likely to come back and trust what you have to say.

Unique Selling Point (USP)

The ‘name’ of your product, in this case, is going to be the title. The title of your article should be something that conveys the inherent value, and this is where we are going to use another product-related term: USP.

USP is ‘Unique Selling Point’: this is what sets a product apart from the crowd and ensures it has value. This is just important when it comes to writing blog posts because if there’s nothing unique about your content, you aren’t giving your visitors any reason to read it. You will be greatly diminishing the potential value.

Think about it: gold is valuable because it is rare. If we were to discover vast reserves of gold, then all gold would go down in value.

Likewise, articles on ‘how to get abs’ aren’t all that valuable because the reader can get them anywhere. Articles on a specific and lesser-known technique for weight loss such as cardio-acceleration and rarer, and as such, they are more valuable.

You need to convey this unique selling point in your article title, and you need to make sure that your audience knows what the article can do for them and why that is a big deal. Hit on the ‘value proposition’ and the emotional hook.

Finally, you are also going to approach the way you similarly market your content to how you would sell a product. That’s right: you are going to promote each blog post you create, and that means sharing it on social media, talking about it in forums and posting it to Reddit, etc.

Try to sound as excited about this new blog post as you would be about a brand new product. And iterate that this fantastic, beautifully presented information is free.

What’s more, you don’t have to promote your content once and then be done with it. Just like a product, you can keep on promoting it for years to come. There’s nothing wrong with occasionally reminding people about an old ‘evergreen’ post.

Repurposing Content As Part Of Your Content Marketing Strategy

Likewise, you can also work on your posts to improve them, to bring them up-to-date, or to slightly change the tone. This then gives you a free license to give them a new shout out and to find a newer, bigger audience for them.

As you can see then, content really can change the way people view your site – but first, you need to change the way you view content. This isn’t just something you’ve to do,’ this is a ‘loss leader’ – it is a free product designed to demonstrate your expertise, care, skill, and brand so that people can decide if they want to follow you.

As such, you must put your best foot forward. Content should be engagingly written, entertaining, and beautifully presented. Each blog post should feel like a project and should get your audience excited to read on.

And each blog post should be promoted as such. If you want to learn more about how to write content engagingly, how to present it, how to promote it, and how to make sure that all this hard work pays off, read the full book: Content Marketing Blueprint. Otherwise, the best advice I can give you is to start writing your very best content. Then commit to keep doing this and to focus on providing fantastic free value rather than thinking about the short-term bottom line.

That’s how global brands are born!