Great content doesn't just clearly explain a topic, it tells a story. With these ten content marketing best practices, you can make sure that your inbound marketing content isn't dictated by length or quantity, but rather, by quality.
Have you ever found yourself struggling to create content for your blog? Like no matter how much you type you find yourself doing a lot of backspacing? Here are some content marketing best practices that will make sure your target audience can't help but pay attention to.
1. Look For Inspiration Everywhere
Writer's block hits the best of us, sometimes it feels like there’s no way around it. When facing writer's block, one of the content marketing best practices you can't forget about is simply taking a step away from that blank word document. Take a walk outside and look for inspiration somewhere. Maybe the fresh air will spark your creativity, or maybe it'll just give you the energy you need to search for the right source online. The most important thing to remember in situations like this is to not get discouraged, something will come to you.
2. Answer Questions
It all starts with a question, what do people want to read about? Find a frequent question that pertains to your buyer persona and answer it. Create content that explains it in a way that your followers will find interesting. Answer a question you think a lot of people might want answered. That way, if it’s shared, it’ll get shared even more.
3. Create A Narrative
People like stories. You don’t need to tell a story beat-for-beat, but your readers would rather follow some kind of narrative than otherwise. When you create content, consider the narrative you might contribute to. Knowing what your content's narrative is will help you in the writing process and make the content of the article more compelling for readers. It also creates a natural flow that strengthens the ideas you’re discussing.
4. Don’t Worry About Length
We get it. When you finish writing an article and see that it’s a little on the short side, you get self conscious. But you’re not in school anymore. Don’t be overly concerned with hitting a big word count. Instead, content marketing best practices say that you should create content that is comprehensive and interesting. When you focus on the right aspects of your content, you'll produce material that will deliver your message effectively.
5. Use Data
We have unlimited information at our fingertips. A lot of ideas and facts have already been written, you just need to find them and create content that presents them in your own voice. Don't be afraid to do some research. Use data to back up any claims you make in your writing. For example, if you tell your readers that more businesses are using Twitter than ever before, you better have numbers to back it up.
6. Learn How To Write Headlines
It all starts with the headline. The first words a reader sees can make or break the article’s click rate. To curb this, make a headline that stands out and promotes itself. Use numbers, adjectives, and call-to-action words to make your headlines more memorable. Use more than a few words to make your headlines more distinct. Longer headlines tend to perform better and can include variances of your target keywords to help with SEO.
7. Make It Shareable
Think of a topic that people will want to talk about. What’s something you know that other people don’t? What are the hot topics of the day? Write about what matters to your readers, not about what matters to you.
Shareable topics start conversations. This can not only get followers to think critically about your content but it also encourages social sharing, which in turn will increase your content’s reach.
8. Repurpose Older Content
If you’re truly at a loss with creating content, just re-purpose one of your best articles from before. Maybe there were ideas you wrote in the past that are applicable to a new topic? Or maybe you want to play devil's advocate on an opinion piece of some sort? This gives you an easy base to work off of.
9. Quality beats Quantity
Don’t concern yourself with the amount of blog posts you write. Just focus on the quality of the one you’re working on. Anyone can crank out blog after blog, but useful and well-written content has a much more significant impact on your business.
According to HubSpot, 1 in 10 blog posts are compounding. Compounding posts are the particularly good ones that readers have shared and linked to over and over. They account for 38% of your blog traffic.
10. Create Content That Will Last
Regardless of the content marketing best practices, your ultimate goal should always be to create content that helps people for months and years down the road.Yes, take to heart these content marketing best practices, but also remember that you want to help people for years to come. Consider utilizing content marketing services to develop content that remains impactful for years to come.
This doesn't mean you should avoid trending topics and news entirely, it just means that you want enough evergreen content that you’ll continue to see traffic on your website and your blog.
