In 2022, content marketing is the easiest way to generate an effective long-term advertising boost for your small business. By writing articles and publishing media you can set yourself apart from the competition, no matter the business model or market.
But like everything else in marketing, you have to stay up to date on proper practices and trends to maximize your return on investment. Now more than ever, content marketing is more important with social media having so much control over our sales and communities.
What exactly does content marketing do for your business? Check out this video from semrush.com for a good overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-shSAxeKO0
Quick Takeaways:
- Content marketing is the premier way to reduce spending and increase traffic to your site
- Writing and publishing content your target audience actually wants to read is crucial
- Maintaining a consistent schedule is important to building brand credibility and authenticity
So what should your strategy look like headed into 2022? Let’s talk about it.
Check up on your fundamentals
Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords drive your content because the higher you rank with keywords, the higher you are on Google’s search results. Be honest, when was the last time you clicked the seventh link down?
Source: FinancesOnline
When maintaining your blog it’s important to follow these rules to give you the best shot at SEO rankings. Playing this one by the book is important as browsers are picky about what gets put at the top of search results and what goes on page 4.
- Keep your word count between 1000 – 1800 words
Google likes articles within this range. Too little or too many might keep your hard work from ranking where it should!
- Know your keywords
For content marketing in 2022, SEO/SEM is most successful when you know what words are the most important to what you talk about. Back to our tech example, words like tech, wearable, watch, would likely contribute best to a higher ranking among similar articles.
- Have a compelling meta description
The hook is everything, right? Having a good description under your article title will be the blurb prospects read. If it’s boring or irrelevant to them, why would they click on your article?
- Internal Links
Internal links are hyperlinks in your blog content that link to other pages within your domain. You should include 1-2 internal links in every blog post.
- Call to Action (CTA)
CTAs tell readers what their next step is for interacting with your brand, and they can increase conversion rates by 121%. CTAs are the get up and do this part of your article, and are crucial to getting shares and engagement from your readers.
Include calls to action like starting a free trial, subscribing to an email list, or scheduling a free consultation. Don’t leave your readers hanging and give them something to do next.
Check out new distribution lines
Ask what’s on your audience’s mind by communicating with them! This is an important step in identifying their interests and concerns related to what you’re trying to sell.
So how do you check up on where your clients are? Begin with a general audit of your social media habits. What groups is your company interested in online – and more importantly, where is your online voice the loudest? If you don’t have one, you aren’t controlling the market narrative.
By improving your online presence, you are also maintaining a pipeline directly to your customer’s screens.
Organic engagement is crucial to the engagement of your pieces and the overall value of your brand. This isn’t exclusive to social media, though. Email marketing isn’t dead, and there are plenty of automated tools designed to show you where your message is being received and where it isn’t.
Email blast services sites can provide insight and organized lists for information and content shipping. These can often be maintained with a smart content calendar.
(Don’t forget to check up on your sales email subject lines, too!)
Create relevant content you would want to see
Quality is one of the most important things when considering your content marketing in 2022. You can follow all of the rules and still fall flat on your face if you aren’t building something your readers will come back to.
Ultimately, content marketing is a business opportunity. So, ask yourself how to get the most out of this opportunity with published posts. You have to be relevant, credible, and aware of what your prospects are thinking.
Consider the audience you’re aiming for and what they ask themselves day to day. If your business was in computer monitors, your potential clients might be researching PC parts or tech blogs.
Content similar to 10 PC Upgrades to Improve Your Gameplay or How To Maximize Your Work From Home PC is a great way to send individuals directly to your site for an ideal prospect that you couldn’t get from a traditional ad.
These possibilities are more likely to convert than someone who is not in the market for new tools seeing your advertisement on a banner ad. Creating interest in your product organically backs your credibility, and thus your brand authenticity.
If your operation is expanding or you’re running out of time to properly handle your content marketing efforts, it might be time to hire some help!
There are two options for this that yield similar results. You can either hire experienced content writers that have experience in SEO writing, or – hire a content marketing agency to do the research, writing, and publishing.
There are benefits to both, but with a consultancy, you often gain access to resources and experience you can’t always get with individual writers. Doing your research on both is important to find what’s best for your business.
Look to the future
Web 3.0 is the next step in the structure of the internet, and in turn, is the next big thing marketing professionals have to navigate to effectively boost their business’ revenue.
Currently, you can go to Google Trends or Facebook Suite and look up exactly who is reading your content and where they tend to congregate online. It’s an important part of sharing your content through paid advertising that we’ve grown accustomed to in the world of Web 2.0.
This data is often bought in bulk or included in your subscriptions to these services. It’s not just important to your current marketing efforts, it’s actually the backbone of them.
With Web 3.0 becoming the standard, tracing purchasing habits and online presence will become much more difficult and less reliable than it is today. Not having access to mass data will change the way we think about finding our target demographics and prospects.
Wrap up
Keeping up to date on what’s going on in the digital marketing world and content marketing in 2022 will help you stay on top of your goals for 2023. The future is now, go see what improvements you can make to your online marketing strategy!
Want more ideas to grow your bottom dollar and amplify your small business? Check out our other content on https://www.smallbiztechnology.com to improve your marketing strategies now.
