You may love or hate it, but you can’t escape it. Content marketing techniques are here to stay.
Through the years, content marketing has proved to be one of the most powerful and profitable marketing strategies in existence.
Whether you’re already crushing it in this area or you’re just starting to master this marketing phenomenon, it’s critical that you stay on top of current trends if you want to make your coaching business work - especially if it's online.
Nowadays, everyone's talking about SEO and how SEO is changing the game of content marketing. And yes, that is true. But focusing on SEO optimization is not the only missing piece of the puzzle.
Here are 6 game-changing content marketing techniques you need to know about to play the social media game right. These techniques and strategies will help you kickstart your journey to content marketing mastery so you can crush it.
Content Marketing Technique #1: Get Interactive
Blog posts, social media posts, infographics and other types of static content will remain popular, especially for platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook, but interactive content is the one standing out more than any other.
Videos - especially short and fun - prove to be the most viewed and engaging in platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. These social media channels have been growing in popularity for the last few years and the trend seems to continue in the upcoming year as well.
Here’s a helpful hint…
Look at ways you can repurpose your existing content for that added interactive element.
For instance, could you transform a long social media post or popular blog post and create a video out of it for YouTube? Or if you have an existing long form YouTube video, how could you break it down in smaller, fun short videos that could work for Instagram?
Test different approaches to creating new content or repurposing old content, but adding the interactive element to engage with your audience, and get comments, feedback, and input from them to fuel whatever you create next!
Content Marketing Technique #2: Pay to Play
Google and Facebook are changing their algorithms all the time! Which impacts other social platforms they own, such as Instagram and YouTube, as well.
This means that it’s getting harder and harder for your posts to get into the spotlight even if you write amazing copy or share beautifully-done videos.
Whatever used to work for you, may suddenly stop working for you anymore. You'll have to re-evaluate your content strategy and test new ways to make it work.
But one straight-forward solution to all this is to pay to play.
Don’t shy away from this.
Facebook and Google re remarkably powerful marketing platforms you can use to attract ideal customers and build an ever-growing tribe of loyal fans.
So, think about allocating a percentage of your business budget to Facebook or Google ads if you’re serious about expanding your business.
Content Marketing Technique #3: Streaming Rules
If you’ve been avoiding it, now’s the time to get off the couch and start doing it…
Live streaming on social media has become incredibly popular especially during the pandemic, and now it's such an importance piece to engage with your audience on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
Think about it this way…
Live streaming is the closest thing to in-person communication.
Yes, it has its limitations but streaming allows your audience to feel connected to the real you.
This creates a level of connection and context that is hard to match — except via face-to-face conversations, of course, but the reach is much larger!
Either way, streaming can help you get closer to your customers and create relationships that can lead to increased conversions and repeat buyers.
Content Marketing Technique #4: More Than Numbers
For quite a few years now, marketers and entrepreneurs have focused on increasing the number of subscribers on an email list or increasing social media followers.
This remains essential but there is one element that is just as important…
Engagement.
It’s no longer enough to increase the number of people in your audience to boost growth and sales.
It is now critical that you motivate and inspire your audience to engage with your posts and emails so you know you’re creating the kind of content that will attract and retain loyal customers, clients and buyers.
To do this, you need to look for ways to optimize your content.
The best place to start? Analyze your past posts and videos that attracted comments and inspired interaction.
Look at the topics, the headlines, the length and other aspects of the content that fired up your audience and motivated them to engage with your content.
Then repurpose this content. Use variations of it to reignite engagement and connections, months and even years down the line.
Remember, there is no rule around re-using content you’ve already shared.
So go ahead and connect with your audience using repurposed content that you know will inspire and ignite engagement.
Content Marketing Technique #5: Picture This…
Content that’s heavy on images will play an increasingly important role.
Search engines are getting better and better at analyzing still and moving images (including infographics and GIFs) which will allow for greater search capabilities and higher SEO rankings.
This is great news for entrepreneurs because images are a great way to attract and capture your ideal customers’ attention. Now that you know it’s also good for SEO rankings, you have one more reason to weave pictures, photos and other relevant images within content that you share.
It also helps keep your written content light and easy-to-follow, which will engage your readers to stay on your page for longer.
Content Marketing Technique #6: Follow A Calendar
One big mistake many coaches and entrepreneurs make in content marketing is focusing so much on creating the content itself and making sure it's SEO-"perfect", that they forget about distributing it!
Even if you create the most amazing blog post or video, if your audience doesn't see it, it was a waste of time and great content.
So, when you're planning your upcoming new content, put together a content calendar for when you'll release each piece and how will you distribute it.
What platforms will you share it on? Do you have an active email list to share it to? How will you share your new content piece - through a direct link, an infographic, a video snippet? How many times will you share in how many days?
Having a great distribution plan in place with a content calendar will help you maximize each content piece you create and ensure you can drive more traffic to each piece and, ultimately, your business.
It's all about being creative and repurposing your content in different formats that will feed your entire social media ecosystem.
Where To Start?
Don’t feel like you need to implement every single one of these content marketing techniques right away.
Always keep in mind that you know what’s best for your business. You know the strategies and connections that work for your audience.
Use this knowledge and choose the content marketing techniques that will work for you. Start by choosing one or two only and test that.
Then measure the results.
Make sure that you’re getting the outcomes you’re hoping for. Keep the ones that work and forget the ones that don’t.
You’ll quickly create a powerhouse toolbox of content marketing techniques that you can use to achieve exponential income, reach and growth for your business this year and beyond.