Frame your content marketing for 2018

Content marketing has been in the world for the years. Way going back when John Deere started publishing a magazine for the farmers in the year 1895. Since then content marketing has seen many changes. Like all the years, this year again you should prepare yourself and reframe your strategy.

Marketing is an ever-changing phenomenon and keeping up with it is the only way to stay on the front foot, once you have taken your foot off the gas, you will probably find yourself in the slump. 

The method of marketing through content has stayed from years and will stay for years, while many methods would come and go but content marketing is the savior and here’s how you should take it in the year 2018:

Purpose of content marketing

It is a rookie mistake to commit to confuse the purpose of the content. It is supposed to be quell, as without it half of the users are elusive of the things that you are trying to convey to them. 

Content marketing is a strategy which should focus on creating and distributing the valuable, relevant, and consistent content to retain the audience and to bring the new users which would result in the sales drive. 

In the simple language it means that you have to create and distribute the valuable content without interpretably promoting the brand. It is understood that it should be focused on the generating leads and driving sales but at first, it should be valuable, informative, interesting and entertaining. Content marketing is however, one of the most enticing ways to sell and it is even more subtle than the conventional marketing. You are selling without even selling! 

Variety in content formats

There are different prospects and almost every prospect coincides with format of the content. Some type of content works better than the other. And when it comes to prospects there are different types of prospects, like, awareness, evaluation, or purchasing stage, or else your content is focused on nurturing of the existing customers. 

Moreover, different kind of content formats coincide with the different types of customers. On an average eight types of content formats are used. Ranging from social media content, blogs, email newsletter, in-person events, ebooks/white papers, videos, infographics and webinars apart from them the other ways are through podcasts and landing pages. 

Needed skill sets

If you are preparing to make the changes in the content then make sure that either your team if you are going to develop the content with the team that is under you or if you are getting the content outsourced, for all the changes the much-needed skill sets should be possessed by them. 

And if the things are followed then the required skill sets for the year 2018 are:- 

• Neat hand in production and editing of audio and video

• Graphic designs

• Optimization, distribution, and promotion of the content

• Campaign management

• Communications and branding

• Metrics, reporting, and analytics

With these above-mentioned skills your content marketing strategy is likely to conquer all the challenges that 2018 will throw. 

Originality

The never-ending urge of search engines, originality. As ever, one of the most promising aspects to make progress. Keeping your content original will bring all the good things that one can aspire for. 

Try and create your own content either with your own resources or by collaborating with the same-minded organizations.

Engaging content

Creating the content which will provide full-depth information will be key. To gain good ranking and popularity among the search engine you would have to get rid of the thin content and have to create content which will be compelling and would finish the whole topic if started. Even if it takes the sub-topic. 

Content which is thin is under scrutiny and there is no way it is going to escape the consequences. Strong content would drive the traffic as well as sales with it. And what more? You will definitely gain the rankings. 

Distribution

If your content is great you would not find it difficult in distributing the content and if your content is not great, then you have to make the distribution greater than average. And this is where your social media strategy comes into action. The advantage of content distribution is that you can distribute the content which is common for all through all kind of channels whether it is then social media or email or any other.

Whatever you are creating whether it is a video, podcast, blog, article anything at all will find the viewers for itself and your content will bring what it was supposed to bring to you. Moreover, your content distribution strategy will keep you ahead of time and ahead of your competitors. 

2018 could be an uphill climb if you would not change the strategy. Having seen the unexpected drops and unexpected ups last year it can be predicted how search engines are heading in the future. And the hindsight suggests that all the search engines are trying to be favorite in the eyes of users as they are only focused on better user experience and nothing more.