When you spend a lot of time in the content marketing space, you start to see a lot of trends – as companies implement various techniques and initiatives. Sometimes that stuff just doesn’t work. And sometimes it’s because companies overlook some painfully obvious content marketing strategies.
This article took me a few hours to write. From a larger perspective, it took me a few years to write. The information I’ve collected and shared in this article is the result of spending a lot of time reviewing the content marketing efforts of many companies.
Most businesses today are “doing content marketing” – 86% B2B and 77% B2C. These statistics reflect companies that, according to CMI’s definition, use “a strategic marketing approach focused on the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Often, however, their strategy erodes under the daily pressures of deadlines, turnover, crises, interruptions and life. It’s understandable (and a bit unfortunate) that many companies overlook some of the obvious features that lie at the heart of a content marketing strategy.
Recommended for you: Developing a Content Marketing Strategy .
In the first place Let me share five such overlooked attributes:
- Enjoy the vitality of great graphics
Let me show you the content marketing approach of a typical business. I scrambled the content to protect the identity of the culprit.
Even if you can’t rate the quality of the content, you can iran number whatsapp see the picture. Good, right? I mean, shouldn’t you “use visual content to increase blog engagement?” Isn’t that a “best practice”?
Why am I calling this one? Just adding an image to a post doesn’t mean the content will have higher engagement. An image in an article does not mean “visual content”. The image with a dollar sign and the text “save customers money” is, unfortunately, bland and generic. It does not add value to the article and warrants little more than a glance due to its clichéd nature.
Let me share a few visual content points that do drive engagement:
Infographics
Infographics aren’t as powerful as they used to be, but they can still take a blog from bland to awesome. Plus, you can easily double your traffic with infographics.
Relevant graphs, charts and images
Tossing a stock image at the top of a blog doesn’t cut it. You should add relevant images throughout the article. Try to keep user engagement high across all content, not just the introduction.
ConversionXL and the Buffer blog do a great job in this area. Here is an excerpt from an article on ConversionXL:
If budget is an issue, you can use one of these free image/graphics resources.
SlideShare
Visual content isn’t just what you put into Cambodia Phone Number List your blog. It also includes content from sites like YouTube, Instagram, and SlideShare.
I specifically highlight SlideShare because it’s one of the leading visual sharing platforms. And, you guessed it, it’s sadly underutilized by businesses.
If you’re comfortable creating slides in PowerPoint, you’re ready to use SlideShare. Prepare to be visual.