While “content marketing” isn’t quite the ubiquitous industry buzzword that it was even a few years ago, it remains one of the very best ways to engage your audience, keep your brand relevant, and drive traffic to your website.
Content marketing can be an invaluable part of your broader digital strategy, especially when you engage it wisely.
7 Ways to Improve Your Content Marketing in 2023
What does that look like, exactly? Here are a few suggestions.
1) Use your customer’s voice.
It’s imperative that your content reflects the actual questions your target customers are asking, and the types of information they hope to obtain. Keyword research is critical, as it allows you to ensure you’re employing the words and phrases that your audience members will be typing into their search bar. It’s also important to present your content in a natural and conversational way, reflecting the speech patterns you’ll find in voice searches.
2) Consider the hub and spoke method.
Google rewards content that it perceives to be “authoritative.” One of the best ways to demonstrate your authority on a topic is to use the hub and spoke model. The “hub” is one of your primary product or services lines; basically, one of the primary streams of your business. Around that central hub, create a lot of content that addresses it from different angles, engaging with common questions or pain points. While this is hardly a new model, it remains one of the most effective ways to organize your content marketing efforts.
3) Adapt to the new SERP.
The Google SERP (search engine results page) is no longer just 10 blue links. Today’s SERP includes a rich variety of content, with some of the most notable types being short-form videos and images. To stay competitive on the SERP, you may need to branch out into different formats, including infographics or videos in addition to more conventional blog posts. Keep an eye on the types of content your competitors are cranking out, and remember that content marketing is about more than just the written word.
4) Always measure your results.
Again, this isn’t anything new, but it is critical to set clear goals for your content marketing initiatives, and to establish formal ways in which you can measure your progress and demonstrate your results. Measuring content for its ROI helps you know what’s working and what’s not; it provides direction for how to pivot or adapt your strategy; and it proves the value of content marketing to other members of your organization. Consider such metrics as referral traffic, organic search rankings, and organic conversions, among others. You can track all of these data points with Google Analytics, which is free and simple to use.
5) Be wary of AI-generated content.
One of the big shake ups in content marketing is the advent of AI. You can use artificial intelligence tools, including ChatGPT, to aid in your content development. While such tools can be useful for research and inspiration, we don’t recommend surrendering all your actual content writing to bots. Most AI-generated content sounds stilted and unnatural; it’s usually taken directly from other websites, meaning it lacks originality; and, perhaps most importantly, Google currently takes a pretty hardline stance against AI-generated content, so relying on it might cause your rankings to suffer.
6) Look for ways to reuse old content.
While content marketing requires you to develop fresh new content on a regular basis, there’s also something to be said for rehabilitating older content. Blog posts from a few years back may be re-optimized with new keywords and up-to-date information, or simply spun into new, fresh takes. Additionally, older content can often be converted into video content, helping you diversify your content portfolio. Don’t feel like you have to keep reinventing the wheel if you’ve got plenty of perfectly good content that just needs a fresh coat of paint.
7) Connect with your sales team.
Too often, content creation is relegated to the marketing department, kept siloed off from the rest of the team. Often, though, you’ll find the most useful content ideas when you bring in other players, particularly members of the sales team. They can advise you on the kinds of questions or concerns they hear from customers, which can in turn provide inspiration for new “spokes” in your content strategy. This is one of the best ways to ensure that you’re developing authoritative content that speaks to real customer needs.
Rejuvenate Your Content Marketing
Content marketing still has an important place in your digital strategy, especially when you engage it with a fresh, rejuvenated vision. If you have any questions about the role of content marketing within your broader strategy, feel free to contact the enCOMPASS team. We’d love to chat.
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