A strong digital marketing strategy is made up of many different components. From social media to search engines, it can be difficult to know where you really need to focus your attention. While each piece of your digital marketing strategy is important for effectively promoting your business online, some elements will be more crucial than others.
For example, the content you create is arguably the most important part of your digital marketing efforts. Content not only helps you build trust and connect with your target audience, but also acts as fuel for your other marketing techniques. It’s the base upon which you promote your business online, so it’s essential to give it the attention it deserves.
Let’s take a look at three reasons why content is so important to your digital marketing strategy!
Key Takeaways:
- Content can help educate your audience, ensuring that they’re making smart purchasing decisions.
- Strong pieces of content can help you become more visible online, both on search engines and in social media.
- Quality content can be linked to all over the web, increasing traffic to your website and building authority with search engines.
1. Content Educates Your Audience
Education is the first step a potential customer takes when deciding whether a product or service is right for them. Before they can make a choice, they need to fully understand the options available to them. This means you need to have content that properly educates audience members on what you can provide.
Educational content typically takes the form of blog posts, product pages, your home page, and your company’s ‘about’ pages. However, it may also include tutorials, reviews, and other content that provides your customers with the resources they need to make educated purchasing decisions. Educational content should focus on teaching your target audience more about your business and offerings.
To educate your audience through the content you create, you want to focus on the questions or concerns they may have. When addressing your target audience, consider what problems they might be trying to solve and how your products or services relieve those issues. Your educational content should focus on the solutions you provide, and how you can make their lives easier.
2. Content Fuels SEO
Search engines are a go-to resource just about any time someone has a question or concern. This means that optimizing your content to appear in relevant searches can help you attract new leads to your website. However, in order to fuel your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy, you need to have strong content.
[Tweet “Strong content enables you to create web pages that fuel SEO success.”]
SEO revolves around keyword placement, backlinks, and website visitors, and your content enables you to create web pages that fuel each of these components. Without content, you’d have nowhere to place your keywords, no page for your visitors to read, and no information for other websites to link to. However, if you’re creating awesome pieces of content that your target audience is excited to engage with, you’ll find it’s not hard to reach the top of the search engine results lists.
For an example, see this search engine query about content marketing:
Content creation and SEO should always go hand-in-hand. When you consider your readers first and foremost, you will be able to create content that provides clear value to your audience. If your target audience is engaging heavily with the content you create, your SEO strategy will be that much more successful.
3. Content Drives Social Media Strategies
Your social media platforms are one of the best ways to connect with your target audience. As a powerful tool for establishing genuine relationships with your customer base, social media gives you a direct pathway to have conversations, get feedback, and push new leads to your website. However, this is all fueled by strong content creation.
Your content enables you to take your social media conversations deeper. While there is only so much you can say in a Tweet or Facebook post, great content encourages your audience to follow through to learn more. This helps you establish a better connection with your target audience. Plus, you can also gain more visitors to your website, where you can collect their information and bring them into your sales funnel.
Your social media strategy should leverage content that provides a high amount of value to your target audience, such as this example from Buffer’s Twitter profile. While content is crucial for developing strong connections, you also need to remember that your audience wants information they can participate in. If you’re simply posting links to your content, you can’t expect to see high amounts of engagement.
Bonus: Content Builds Backlinks
Backlinks, or links from an external website back to your content, are an important part of bringing new traffic to your site. A backlink back to your site can encourage a visitor of another article or website to click through and learn more about you.
Of course, you’ll only see backlinks when your content contains ideas, opinions, or information that is worth sharing. If you’re creating mediocre content or simply relaying information that your audience can find elsewhere on the web, you’re going to struggle to get other websites to link to you. This means that you’ll have a more difficult time attracting new attention and establishing authority online.
Backlinks, like the example below, can also contribute to your SEO strategy. They show Google and other search engines that you create content worth recommending. The more backlinks you have, the more authority a search engine will assume your page holds:
To encourage backlinks, you want to ensure that your topics are unique. While there may be similar content already available online, you want to put your own spin on each piece. Adding your unique perspective can ensure that your information stands out, helping you attract more attention. You can also increase your number of backlinks by focusing only on creating high-quality content. This includes developing harder-to-create pieces like infographics or videos. Since they take more effort to create, other sites will be less likely to produce them as well, instead choosing to link to your content.
Conclusion
Your content is the foundation of your digital marketing strategy. Without it, you’re going to struggle to attract the attention you need to collect leads and convert them into paying customers. When you create great pieces of content, however, you’ll be more successful in your other digital marketing efforts.
Let’s recap the four main reasons why content is so important to your overall marketing strategy:
- It educates your audience to make smarter purchasing decisions.
- You can fuel content with SEO, helping you attract more leads through search engines.
- Content can be shared to enhance your social media strategy.
- With great content, you can encourage other sites to link to your website.
How do you think great content will improve your digital marketing efforts? Let me know in the comments section below!
