Content marketing consists of creating and distributing content that has value for a particular audience.
There are different ways to present content to attract the attention of an audience on digital media such as websites, blog pages, emails, social networks and instant messaging apps.
In the next few lines, we will explain in greater detail what content marketing consists of , the types of content and what are the most frequent errors when implementing it.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, analyzing and publishing useful, relevant and interesting information for a group of people, with the purpose of attracting them, building loyalty and motivating them to take a desired action.
To know what the desired actions are that you want to achieve with content marketing, you must establish a strategy and then an execution plan.
What is a content marketing strategy?
A content marketing strategy, which is not the same as a content strategy (be careful with this!), is a set of actions that are formulated and executed to identify:
- What are the results you want to achieve with the creation and distribution of content?
- Who are the people who can become leads, clients or users through content
- What types of content are the most suitable, according to the tastes of these people
- What are the appropriate channels to distribute content
In this sense, a content marketing strategy must mainly contain:
SMART objectives: they are the results that you want to achieve in a certain time; for example: attracting 1,000 new users to the website during the month of March 2018.
Other desired actions that can become objectives:
- Fill out a contact form.
- Request a free demo.
- Download a document.
- Check in.
- Buy.
KPIS
They are the metrics that serve to evaluate whether the objectives are being met; for example: number of new users on the website.
Type of content
It consists of the different formats in which information can be shared; for example: web articles. Later we will let you know other types of content.
Channels
Refers to the appropriate digital platforms for the distribution of content; continuing with the example: search engines and social networks.
What is a content marketing plan?
The content marketing plan is a document that organizes key aspects of the strategy that was designed and the activities that need to be executed to meet the stated objectives.
In addition, other elements are specified in this document such as:
- The editorial line that must be followed by who writes and creates the content; for example: writing style, tone, role, voice.
- The graphic elements that must be present in each audiovisual piece.
- The publication schedule of the content to be created.
- The budget with all the expenses of executing the content marketing plan.
Types of content
After briefly knowing what a content marketing strategy and plan is , we show you what types of content are most used to attract the attention of a target audience.
Web articles
Web articles are the most used formats to execute a content marketing strategy : they are easy to access and allow other types of content to be unified in one place; which makes the user’s reading experience attractive, dynamic and intuitive.
Web articles are easy to create and manage; although they require several practices to position themselves among the first search results.
For example: analyze and correctly use keywords in titles, subtitles, paragraphs, images and links.
Newsletters
Newsletters are emails that may contain news and announcements from a company, web articles, links to download documents, among others.
They are direct, to the point and are sent exclusively to people who subscribe to the newsletter, that is, who are interested in the information they receive.
Videos
Videos are excellent formats for sharing content, since people can better grasp a message by watching an audiovisual piece than by reading a text.
The inputs to create a video can be quite versatile and incorporate audios, animations, images, texts and audio in the same file.
They are easy to consume and, therefore, are ideal for sharing on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, either in publications or in stories.
Videos can be informative, educational, promotional and advertising.
Infographics
Infographics are images that contain a significant volume of information diagrammed and structured in a specific way so that it can be readable.
In its design, illustrations are incorporated to explain a concept, a chronology of events, or to point out tips, recommendations and benefits.
Infographics are ideal for incorporating into web articles with the purpose of complementing or summarizing the information shared.
Infographics can be both horizontal and vertical, although they are more used in vertical format.
Guides
Guides or manuals are one of the most useful contents that can provide the most value to users. They are documents that contain step-by-step instructions to carry out a specific job or activity.
They should be easy to understand and show examples of each of the actions that the user must perform. They are ideal for placing as downloadable documents within web articles.
Below, we show you other formats to deliver valuable content:
What is content marketing for?
Content marketing serves to:
- Provide valuable content on your social networks and websites.
- Keep your user community informed.
- Appear in Google search results.
- Attract users to your conversion funnel.
- Convert users into leads.
- Nurture your leads to turn them into qualified sales leads or, in the best case, customers.
- Build customer loyalty
Most common mistakes when doing content marketing
Now that you know what content marketing consists of , it is important that you also know what practices can affect its implementation:
- Not creating a strategy or a plan: as you saw, the design of a plan and design of a content marketing strategy is essential to obtain successful results, and create the right content for the right people.
- Not knowing your target audience: to know what information would attract more people to your business, you must know their interests, tastes, motivations and challenges.
- Focus on quantity and not quality: instead of considering creating a lot of content, try to make each one of them readable; have an attractive graphic design; specify the sources from which the information was extracted; report on things that are accurate and free of personal judgments. These and other extra attributes will give you the quality your content needs
- Don’t take care of the presentation: your content must be very well structured and the information must look professional.
- Not monitoring the actions carried out: during and after the execution of your content marketing plan, you must verify that the objectives and actions are being met as planned. For this, it is important that you establish performance indicators to evaluate activities.
In short, doing content marketing requires that you develop a strategy, know your target audience; select the correct formats and channels to distribute the content, according to the web behavior of your ideal audience; write and design with quality parameters; and evaluate that the entire plan has been executed correctly.
