What is Content Marketing? Ultimate Guide 2022

When it is about content marketing, what is the most common thing that comes to mind? Do you think about blogs, website copy, SEO, or creating viral social media content? 

The reality is that content marketing is a bigger and broader platform, and it has only kept expanding with days. From the time people have started telling stories, content marketing has only become broader and bigger.

According to an institute, the very first content marketing occurrence was made more than 300 years ago. It was 1732 when content marketing started.

Content marketing has only grown and evolved in the decades with every passing time. It has become better and one of the essential aspects of any website marketing.

What do you mean by content marketing?

Content marketing is the process where the prime focus is on creating relevant and valuable content and distributing them to the potential audience. When content is good, it can attract, acquire and improve engagement with the targeted audience. The only objective of content marketing is to drive profitable customer traffic.

To be simple, content marketing means the creation and sharing of content that not only has the ability to appeal to the targeted audience but also can meet your business’s marketing goals.

For example, if the prime goal is to improve your brand reach, you will be able to create valuable social media content. So any type of content that has the potential to get viral or has information and educational posts can reach more audiences.

If your prime goal is to convert the cold audience into ready to buy leads, the best choice is to create testimonial videos and product reviews. When you share them with your audience, it can create an excellent chance to improve your lead count. In a similar way, if you are willing to create brand awareness and establish authority, creating blog posts can be a good choice.

Content marketing has a huge power when done right. Its benefits are beyond your imagination.

Why do businesses need to start investing in content marketing?

If you have already been a part of the digital world, you definitely have heard about the most common phrase, which is content is the king. But have you ever thought of the reason why it is said so? Why is content considered the most important aspect of the digital marketing strategy?

The only reason is that content has the ability to bridge the gap between your customers and your brand. It has a huge benefit for both small and large scale industries. Here are some of the most common benefits that you can leverage from a proper content marketing strategy.

1. Improves visibility

When it is about improving your brand reach, you have to use content that can help you reach your audience. Content marketing plays a huge role in improving brand awareness and visibility among new audiences.

86% of the B2B digital marketers make use of content marketing strategy to improve their brand awareness.

2. Improve relationships 

Digital marketing plays a huge role in improving relationships with the targeted audience. Especially, if you are someone who is just starting out and has top names to target in the sales funnel. In such a scenario, creating the right type of content is highly effective in building better relationships.

You can take the example of social media content. When you ask the right question, it will encourage audiences to engage. Similarly, blog content and creating social media content that can solve problems is another most important way to improve customer engagement.

3. Control the narrative 

Do you want to get known as the expert in your vertical? Irrespective of the narrative that you aim for, you must know that it can be created only through content. So keeping your aim in mind, you must start creating content accordingly that can treat your brand image as well.

Improve the search engine optimization results: No doubt that in 2022 search engine optimization will be something that you have already heard about. Google is one of the most popular search engines that everyone is targeting. Since Google accounts for more than 70% of the global traffic, it is often the first choice of marketers.

So if you want to impress Google, you need to focus on creating a robust content marketing strategy. It will help you gain a better ranking, improving your average click-through rate.

4. Makes you a digital asset 

There are many contents that remain EVERGREEN. It does not grow all over time but keeps ripping rewards over time. Being a valuable digital acid, companies should start paying attention to it on a regular basis. You can simply make some tricks and a little update to your content every year so that it keeps paying off. The ROI also improves over time, along with improving the brand authority.

What are the different types of content that you can include in your content marketing plan?

There is a range of content strategies that you can use for your website and improve its performance. You don’t have to create all of them simultaneously but go slowly and gradually. It will help you to improve your goals and reach a wider audience.

1. Blog posts

So this is the most basic and quintessential content time. There are even several types of content in the blog post itself that you can create.

Some of the most common kinds of blog posts include guest blogs, articles, roundups, long-form guides, information of blog posts, best practices, product reviews, short blog posts, newsletters, e-books, white papers and a lot more.

2. Website

Website contest is another most common kind of content that is required by every business. It is one of the most important things you require to focus on in the initial stage. A website with optimized content can either make or break your digital presence. 

Some of the most common website pages which are categorized under copywriting and content marketing include landing pages, feature pages, news releases, and comparison pages.

3. Podcasts

If you’re not yet aware of using podcasts, then you should start from now. Here are some of the most amazing statistics that can offer you the best results.

• 1/3 Millennial listen to podcasts on a regular basis.
• 55% of Americans have the habit of listening to podcasts. 
• 54% of consumers say that they will consider brands that have been advertised on podcasts.

In the current times, audio content is rising at a huge level, and marketers need to understand this.

4. Email

This is the oldest form of content marketing that is still relevant and can yield great results.

5. Interactive content 

You can start creating interactive content like online quizzes, as it is one of the best ways to improve traffic and generate engagement. It compares users to participate in the content and improves your visibility.

93% of marketers would agree that using interactive content can be highly effective in educating buyers compared to static content. Some of the most commonly known interactive content are branded games, calculators, quizzes, questionnaires, interactive infographics, surveys and polls.

6. Video 

Video is one of the most common types of content that has been available in the market in recent times. Whether you are a B2B or B2C brand, creating an interactive video is always a better choice to yield greater results. However, you have to make sure that you are creating the videos by using interactive tones and content. Besides, since videos have higher chances of improving customer traffic, creating video content can be highly beneficial.

7. Case studies: 

Do you know that 87% of customers read business reviews online, and 90% of buying decisions are influenced by reviews?

Creating case studies, testimonials and reviews is a great way of improving your content marketing. Even when testimonials and product reviews are almost similar, case studies are slightly different from them. They have longer and more comprehensive in-depth reviews. It focuses on numbers and results. Case studies are a great way to generate leads along with educating the audience about the way you created and succeeded in the project.

8. Social media content: 

We all know about social media content, right? Some of the most common social media content are reels, stories, tweets, LI articles and much more.

No doubt that social media content creation plays a huge role in the content marketing strategy. However, it is just not restricted to using Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. You will also be able to use social media content marketing strategies on Reddit and quora.

You definitely have heard about Quora, which is the biggest platform where people ask questions. Using them for your purpose can have the best results. Creating content on such communities by answering their questions can make you a leader and gain leadership skills.

How to develop a content marketing strategy?

You definitely have got an understanding of what content marketing is. Content marketing requires a robust content marketing strategy. It is a roadmap that talks about the different assets you will use in the marketing goals.

Unless you have created a solid SEO content marketing strategy, you must be aiming in the dark. Since the need is continuously changing, you need to ensure that your target enjoys consistently good results properly. So today, we will talk about the best way to develop the perfect content marketing strategy.

1. Identify your audience and goals accordingly

You need to make sure that you identify your audience and then start creating content. So before that, you need to ask yourself a few questions and get the relevant answers before creating a content strategy.

• Why would you want to use content?
• What do you want to get through?
• What are your short-term and long-term goals?
• Who do you want to target through content marketing?
• What problems will content marketing solve?

These are some of the most common questions, but it requires a complete answer. Without getting a proper answer to all of these questions, you will not be able to start creating your content marketing strategy.

By making use of SMART goals, you will be able to create, distribute and test the content strategy. So you have to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound.

2. Establish KPIs

The next most essential step is KPI outlining. It is closely associated with the marketing goals and which is why you require establishing them before outlining the assets.

some of the most common KPIs that you can measure include:

• Time on page: You can get knowledge about the number of times your audiences are there on your page.
• The number of downloads: This is a metric that is the number of people who are downloading your content.
• The unique number of page visits: Website traffic is the first thing that every marketer would check. Unique Page visit means you will be able to find the number of visits coming to your website every day, every month and every week.
• Comments and engagement: You will be able to get knowledge if the users are interacting through your content or not.
• Cost per click: If you are using paid advertisement, you will get to know about the cost per click.
• Inbound link: this will tell you the number of people who are linking with your content.
• Conversion rates: You will be able to understand if your contents are able to convert into leads. If not, you will also be able to understand why.

When you keep an eye on the metrics, it will help you to optimize your content and improve the end result. Being a marketer, keeping an eye on the metric is the very first thing to get knowledge about your performance and where to improve.

3. Understand what your audience needs

Once the goal is established and you have outlined the KPI, it is now time to find out your target audience. When you get a comprehensive audience persona, it will help you to improve your content marketing strategy to a definite extent.

How can you contact audience research?

• You can make use of monitoring tools and social listening tools to pay attention to the targeted audience. It will help you to understand what they’re talking about. You will get to know what they’re saying about the brand, but it will also help you to know their topic of discussion.
• A customer survey is another most interactive method of audience research. You can ask a question and create a survey which will not only help you to get knowledge about the audience but also will improve traffic to your website. The more you get the answers, the better it will help you to improve the strategy.
• Making use of social media and Google analytics is again a great choice to acquire demographic statistics of the audience. 

4. Create a content audit

There are many tools that you can use but SEMrush is one of the most amazing tools that you can choose. Using content audit will give you comprehensive knowledge about your audience and help you in this strategy.

What marketing strategies are you employing for your business? What results are they going to eat for your business? What is your current content marketing strategy?

When you run a content audit, it will help you determine the highest and lowest performing content assets. It will also help you understand whether you can meet Content marketing goals or not, along with the changes that you need to make in the content marketing strategy.

How can you conduct a proper content audit?

• You need to start by outlining the goals. Learn about your current marketing goals and KPIs that you are looking forward to tracking in the future.
• Then you have to choose an inventory of your latest content. What are the content assets you are choosing to invest in until now?
• Make data analysis. It is not complicated as you will be able to use some online tools like SEMrush, Moz, HubSpot and much more.

Ensure that you conduct a routine content audit to optimize your content strategy. 

5. Decide on the type of content that you want to create.

It is the most important part. Now that you have already realized the different types of content available in the market to cater for a wide range of audiences, you have to decide what type of content you need. It is a process that requires two steps.

Step one is to figure out the platforms where you want to distribute your content:

If you want to improve your brand presence on social media, then Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and your website are great choices. But if you wish to send a newsletter to email subscribers, you have to choose a professional email.

Make sure that you start by creating a marketing role and then write content accordingly.

Step two is to decide on the type of content you would like to create.

There is a range of content types that you can choose for your business. From blog posts to video content, you can choose to experiment with any type you wish.

6. Make proper allocation of resources.

Once you have already decided the content type that you wish to create along with the digital platforms where you would like to distribute them, it is time when you start allocating resources accordingly.

So the next thing that you need to do is understand the resources that will create the content acid. You can hire a content agency or work with freelancers to create content.

There is a need to understand that different experts have expertise in writing different content. You require professional video producers and editors if you’re willing to make video content. At the same time, blog posts and website content will require you to get hold of writers and content strategists. Similarly, graphic designers will be your first need if you wish to include infographics, graphics, and pictures.

7. Create a complete content calendar

Before you start writing or allocating, it is a need for you to create a content calendar. If you are thinking about a content calendar, then it is a schedule or routine that contains every single detail on a day to day basis. You need to write down the activities in advance and the contents and keep posting as per the calendar information. 

Making use of content calendars, make sure that every piece of content is uploaded at the right time. You have to find out the best time to upload by making a proper analysis and using different tools. Being time-sensitive will help you reach a wider audience within less time.

8. Test your strategy

This is the final step where you have to measure the success of your content marketing strategy. For this, you will require a proper A/B testing process. Make sure that every content has a proper headline in place, images and keywords. 

When you choose to create content, you need to make sure that it has the right ratio of keywords used. It will actually improve the engagement and ranking of your website. Using keywords based on the search query and search intent increases the likelihood of getting the best ranking.

Final verdict

So, now that you have got to know what is content marketing and how to get started, hopefully, you will be able to start creating a perfect SEO content marketing strategy. However, not every time does it become easy for everyone, and hence choosing a good agency for content marketing UAE can be beneficial.

Digital Habibi is the name of a content marketing agency SEO that can handle your social and content marketing. With over seven years of knowledge in marketing, I have acquired immense knowledge about this process and can create a robust content marketing strategy.

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