5 Content Marketing Tips to Grow Your Audience

Good content strategies have become one of the cornerstones of digital marketing for small businesses. Not only is it responsible for bringing forth useful information to the consumer, it also helps to familiarize the audience with key business functions. Talk about a double whammy!

Content is so very crucial in today’s advertising world. Perhaps 20 years ago you could’ve gotten away without heavy tailoring, but overlooking it today would be disastrous to any marketing efforts.

Many different platforms now exist with the sole purpose of providing you with the opportunity to display your business brand – it would be wise to take advantage and boost your exposure. It’s all about finding the right outlets and distributing content that’ll entice the right consumer to choose your business.

It never hurts to find out ways of increasing the performance of your content marketing. So let’s dive in and find out how you can go about creating more engaging content while growing your audience.

Know Your Audience

One of the most vital things that arise during the strategic business planning process is figuring out who you’re trying to reach. You simply cannot come up with an effective content strategy if you’re unable to pinpoint the individuals your content needs to appeal to.

Try to create a buyer persona before proceeding with your content strategy. To do this you’ll have to narrow down the exact person you’ll be trying to connect with. A buyer persona is essentially a sketch of your customer.

So when creating the ideal buyer persona, you must have a clear understanding of your customers’ goals and aspirations. Focus on their long term and short term goals.

Empathize with your consumer because we all know some goals are tough to reach, but you are there to help. You are providing valuable knowledge that will get your consumer on the path to making the right decisions.

Your main objective with content creation is to aid the consumer in reaching his or her goals while following a passion.

Create a Content Calendar

Organizing your day is a great way to know what to look forward to and help manage your precious time. This creates structure which allows you to always be prepared for what’s about to come next. Having organization and structure implemented in your daily life will create for a more efficient you.

Now if we use the same methodology for content production, as you would use to map out your daily routine – you would get an editorial calendar or some people know it as a content calendar.

Planning out your content creation on a convenient calendar will make everyone aware of what you need to do now, and in the future.

Always look ahead and see what needs to be done. Plan it all out a week, a month or two in advance. You can even plan your content marketing efforts a year in advance. This will keep you and everyone involved focused and on the right track.

Stay Consistent

When it comes to content marketing, you need to be consistent with your provision of addictive content. You need to introduce yourself to your audience and with consistency, you keep them coming back for more.

Many businesses are implementing content marketing as a way to attract and persuade the reader to do business with them and to keep them committed to their brand. In the internet age, you won’t go far without being bombarded with content on the web. That’s why staying consistent with your content marketing is detrimental to your marketing success.

If you wait too long between engaging with your audience, other businesses may swoop in and steal their attention. There are plenty of other businesses with tactics that can deter your followers and bring them to the darkside.

Consistent posts and content publishing that’s relevant and resonates with your audience keeps attention on you and your business.

Allow People to Share

Incorporating the “share” buttons into your content is essential. There needs to be an easy way for people to spread the knowledge you have bestowed upon them with your content.

Implementing a means of sharing your posts, your audience has the ability to spread the word in their circle of friends and relatives. It will create valuable exposure and can help stimulate the growth of your readers and customers.

Analyze Performance

Content marketing is great because it allows you to analyze the performance of your content and user engagement on the web. With the use of analytic tools that can be easily implemented on any content outlet, you can gather insightful data using metrics that can aid you in developing and adjusting your content strategy moving forward.

Use analytics to your advantage, track key metrics, gather reader data and use it to create better content for your audience.

Without a means to analyze the performance of your content, you’re wandering blindly in the digital world. You will be unable to gauge what types of content was perceived well with your consumer and what didn’t work as well as you had hoped.

Have an Open Mindset

Lastly, successful content marketing goes hand in hand with a willingness to learn new things, problem solve and continually improve. Growing a thriving audience will require lots of patience and measured planning in conjunction with creativity and experimentation.

So while you doggedly follow your vision and work to achieve all the business goals related to your strategic plans, it’s good practice to also maintain a certain level of flexibility. Don’t yet have a formalized business plan? Visit here for access to some awesome templates!

So remember, always be prepared to make whatever internal changes are necessary to respond effectively to the changing contexts of the industry you’re working in. But also be sure to decide on content changes with analytic data in mind. It makes no sense to keep altering things without having any idea of performance.

And this, my friend, is how you can start to really grow your audience through more effective content.

Happy Marketing!

This article was written in collaboration with Uwe Dreissigacker.