CONTENT MARKETING IS (STILL) KING

Here ye, here ye! Content marketing is still King!

From captivating case studies to viral videos, your content marketing strategy can make or break your company’s visibility online. To understand this better, lets start off with the most important search engine statistic related to content marketing:

72% of users click on an organic search result vs. 28% on a paid ad.

Publishing valuable, original, frequent, optimized content is the most effective way to increase visibility of your website in search results. This is not a trend. Content marketing gives you the opportunity to stop selling to your audience and start teaching them. This will give your brand personality and a voice that can build a closer relationship with the consumer. Writing unique blog articles, posting informative videos or in-depth case studies your target audience wants to read, share and remember builds a closer relationship with the consumer and establishes authority online.

Online video now accounts for 50% of mobile traffic.

This means two things. Your website must be mobile-optimized and you must have a video marketing strategy. From tutorials and video blogs, to product features and an inside scoop on manufacturing or daily operations, there are many opportunities to create engaging video content about your brand. Of course, professional video, audio and editing will enhance the perceived value of your brand’s communications, but a video blog recorded from an iPhone is better than none at all. Who wants to read blogs when you have Periscope and YouTube?

Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links.

Blogs are like books, and everyone has a favorite author. This is your opportunity to educate, entertain and evoke an emotional reaction from your audience. Being more informative and more frequent than your competition will go a long way in search engine results. And you don’t need to hire J.K. Rowling to engage your readers or have impact. The most successful bloggers aren’t famous celebrities or studied professors, they are business owners and employees who communicate well to others their passion or profession. Considering 80% of all blog visits are new visitors, this is the perfect chance to make a great first impression with a majority of the audience.

Less than 10% of users advance to Page 2 of results.

Creating clickable content is great. Having a keyword strategy and optimizing your content is better. Knowing what an ALT tag or meta description- well now we’re just talking crazy. Your digital content needs to speak not only to consumers who have feelings and make irrational purchases, but a highly sophisticated robot who needs analytical data about this media to judge its worth to search engine users. If you are not familiar with digital asset optimization and long-tail keywords, hire a professional. One of the biggest mistakes we see business owners making is trying to learn website design and optimization to save a few bucks, they usually spend a few years doing it wrong and taking energy away form running their business.

Businesses with 401-1000 page websites get 6x more leads than those with 51-100.

Forward-thinking companies who succeeded in converting their print media to web pages, gated content and downloadable PDF’s a decade ago put themselves ahead of the curve by serving the consumers needs by allowing more access to information about their products and services. This naturally created more pages and digital content than their competition, which added to their domain seniority. They are now rewarded by placing higher in search engine results for having a large library of reliable digital content available. A company blog, gated content or personalized landing pages will help build the number of web pages quickly and effectively.

Remember, your content marketing strategy is a long-term investment. Decide on a message, how to most effectively communicate that message, and start the conversation.

Jason McSweeney is the founder, Marketing Mastermind and lead content curator here at www.dream2ink.com His number one goal is helping businesses build their brand with creative, effective and memorable advertising.