What’s the first thing you do when you start to think about making vacation plans? Lots of folks get on the internet, look up places and start reading reviews. Why? Because you want to get a picture of what’s out there and what others are saying.
Content Marketing Stats and Trends
Here are some interesting statistics to consider as you look at content marketing as another strategic approach to your overall marketing plan:
• Businesses report that adding a blog increases site visits by 55%
• Companies with blogs bring in 97% more inbound links than companies w/o blog
• Content can improve sales—67% of Twitter users report they are more likely to make purchases from brands they actively follow
• 60% of consumers say they feel more positive about companies after reading a website’s custom content—blog/Twitter feed
• 70% of customers say they would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements
And here are some interesting trends of note from the same source:
• Companies are increasingly spending more on content marketing: 2011 figures exceeded 2010, 2012 figures exceeded 2011 and 2013 is trending to show an increase as well
• Large businesses report using up to 18 different content marketing tactics
Content Marketing Goals
One of the top goals that companies report having for their content marketing efforts is to increase brand awareness and share of voice. An interesting development for us at Slice-works has been that our content shares, including our blog and Twitter posts, are now being shared regularly by several paper.li content aggregators. Paper.li is a free publishing app that allows you to “publish and promote engaging articles, photos and videos from across the web.” It has been a great way to amplify our reach beyond our immediate twitter audience!
Other possible goals to consider for your content marketing are:
➢ Acquiring customers
➢ Building community
➢ Increasing website/blog traffic
➢ Shaping thought leadership
➢ Increasing customer loyalty
➢ Increasing customer retention
Content Marketing—Approach Overview
If the goal of your content marketing is to move prospects along a pre-determined path of behavior, then you want to have a process and framework for building your content marketing. One of my foundational business principles is that you can’t determine that you’ve been successful if you don’t first decide what success looks like. The second principle is that without a roadmap, you can’t tell when you’ve arrived!
These are the four key elements for building a sound approach to your content marketing process:
1. Knowing your audience
2. Conducting a content audit
3. Mapping your content to your prospects buying cycle
4. Creating an editorial calendar
In our next post we’ll look at what “knowing your audience” means and how to use personas to decide what types of content they’re looking for.