Whether you’ve been enjoying some British pomp and ceremony, or simply made the most of that extra Bank Holiday on the 8th May, it can’t have escaped your notice that the coronation of King Charles III dominated the news for plenty of this month.
All this talk of royalty got the Soap team thinking about not only crowns, carriages, and champagne, but also “digital marketing royalty”. Yes, we know you may be shaking your head at how obsessed we are, but hear us out!
What’s the king (or queen!) of your digital marketing strategy?!
Is Content Still King?
You’ll probably be familiar with the old cliche that “content is king”. It’s actually attributed to Bill Gates in the first instance, and was uttered when the World Wide Web was in its infancy. Since then, it’s turned into a phrase that’s been repeated by search engine providers and digital marketers across the globe, but is it still true…?
We’re here to tell you that, yes, we think it is!
Content continues to be the life and soul of digital marketing: ever changing, and always effective. Today’s content campaigns may look rather different to the content campaigns of yesteryear, with interactive approaches like video content and podcasts joining forces with trusty written words, but this greater diversity simply means that content (in its various forms) can dominate more channels than ever before. Even the approaches that we’ve been using for years don’t stay static, as the recent discussions surrounding the arrival of Chat GPT show us. Suddenly, blogs and articles are flooding out even from sources who might previously have felt a bit daunted by the prospect of writing all those words. You can take our word for it that the search volume for phrases like “AI content checker” are growing very quickly!
All told, it’s certainly an exciting time to be considering a content strategy, so we’d like you to take a moment while we ask you the following question…
How’s Your Content Strategy?
Is it bringing the leads rolling in, or slowly beginning to stagnate? Is it riding the coat-tails of AI generation that may or may not prove to be effective over the long haul, or is it a finely-honed machine that’s been meticulously planned to perfection?
A truly effective content strategy is how you go about creating, publishing, and managing content. It involves setting goals, identifying target audiences, creating a “content calendar”, and distributing/promoting your resulting content. Some of the most popular examples are:
- Social media content strategy: revolves around publishing content on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media hubs. Getting the most out of this type of strategy means that you have to really nail what types of content to post, how often to post them, and how to best engage with your audience.
- Blog content strategy: an oldie, but definitely still a goodie, and one of our personal favourites! Some heavyweight brands like Masterclass have showcased the benefits of blog content even in recent years, skyrocketing their organic traffic and their sales. A blog content strategy lives and dies depending on the topics you choose to cover, although you also have to consider how often to post them, and how to promote them.
- Video content strategy: a relative newcomer to the digital marketing landscape, at least in terms of widespread adoption. Like a blog content strategy, the main decisions to make within a video strategy include what types of videos to create, how often to create them, and where to publish them to achieve the best results.
- Email marketing content strategy: this involves creating a plan for sending email campaigns to your subscribers. We’re actually doing one ourselves as we speak (based around the upcoming retirement of Universal Analytics)! As well as the usual content strategy considerations, the segmentation of your email lists is also vital to get the most out of this tactic.
- Content curation strategy: not one of our preferred approaches (we love creating new content!), but it can certainly be effective. Curating content from other sources and sharing it with your audience means that you need to be a dab hand at finding and sharing relevant content. You’ll also need to credit the original sources.
What Are the Most Effective Types of Content for 2023?
We can’t stress this enough: the most effective types of content marketing will depend on your specific goals, target audience, and industry. It’s important to experiment with different types of content and strategies to see what works best for your brand!
That said, if you’re starting to realise that your content strategy’s crown has slipped a little bit too low, then we can certainly offer you some advice. Some of the most effective types of content within your arsenal for 2023 include:
- Video Content: Video continues to be one of the most effective types of content marketing, and 92% of video marketers report a positive ROI when using it. With the rise of platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube, creating short, engaging videos has become an essential part of content marketing.
- Interactive Content: Interactive content – such as quizzes, polls, and surveys – is a highly engaging way to attract and retain audiences. In 2020, 45% of B2B buyers ranked interactive content within their top 3 preferred content types, and that number is growing. Interactive content can be used to educate, entertain, or inform your audience and increase engagement.
- Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing requires a partnership with influential people on social media to promote your products/services. By leveraging the trust and credibility of influencers, you can reach a wider audience and build brand awareness. 50% of large audiences like Millennials trust product recommendations from influencers, so its value is clear.
- User-Generated Content: User-generated content (UGC) is popping up on Google Trends’ breakout feature at the time of writing this blog, and involves featuring content that’s created by your customers or fans. UGC includes reviews, social media posts, customer stories and more, and it can help your brand to appear more personable. It’s great for building trust and authenticity, as well as encouraging more engagement. In fact, 93% of marketers agree that UGC content performs better than branded equivalents!
- Podcasts: Podcasts have become increasingly popular in recent years (53% of men and 46% of women tuned in to a podcast in 2022), and provide great opportunities for brands to connect with their audience in a personal and engaging way. They’re best used to share stories, interviews, or other forms of educational content.
- SEO-optimised content: We’ve already mentioned case studies like Masterclass, who bring in over 60% of their website traffic via search engines, but many other brands have also found that creating keyword-focused content for users can still increase website traffic – and improve your search engine rankings – like nothing else. A good knowledge of keyword usage in meta tags and other on-page SEO elements is essential for success!
How to Carry Out an SEO Content Audit
If you’ve read the above list (which is by no means comprehensive) and can feel your heart sink when you’re thinking about your own content, then don’t despair. Maybe a content audit is just what your strategy needs to reclaim its throne!
A content audit means evaluating your existing content to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what gaps exist in your strategy. Here are the steps you can take to carry out a content audit:
1. Gather all your content: Collect all of the content you’ve created. That means blog posts, videos, social media posts, ebooks, whitepapers… all of it, and any other content you’ve published as well!
2. Categorise your content: Organise your content into categories (such as blog posts, videos, social media posts, etc). This will help you to evaluate each type of content more easily.
3. Evaluate your content: Speaking of evaluation, you’ll then need to review each piece of content based on its quality, relevance, and performance. Ask questions such as:
- Is this piece of content up-to-date and accurate?
- Does it align with my brand values and messaging?
- Does it provide value to my audience?
- Is it generating traffic or engagement?
4. Identify gaps and opportunities: Look for gaps in your content strategy. Are there topics you haven’t covered yet? Are there content formats you haven’t tried? Look for opportunities to provide more value to your audience.
5. Create a content plan: Based on your content audit findings, create a plan that maps out your future content creation. Identify what types of content to create, what topics to cover, and how to best promote your content.
6. Implement changes: Use the insights from your content audit to make changes to your existing content, update outdated content, and then move onto creating new content that fills in the gaps in your current strategy.
Auditing your content is the first step you should take if you’re looking to start (or restart) your content strategy’s reign over your digital marketing efforts, and we highly recommend that you dedicate as much time as you need to making sure that you get it right. But if you feel a bit daunted by the prospect, then the Soap Media team has your back every step of the way.
When we’re not thinking about what links we can make between the coronation of our new king and SEO, you can usually find us scrubbing up the online presence of a wide variety of customers. We love to create effective content marketing strategies that shine out from the crowd, so don’t hesitate to reach out for your free content consultation.
Why not make sure that there’s more than one coronation this May, and start treating your content strategy like the king (or queen!) it deserves to be?
