Content Marketing: Effective Tools & Approaches [2022]

Today, the whole Internet runs on the common denominator, which is “Content”. Users want information. So, they restlessly look for different topics and search for straightforward answers/solutions to their inquiries on a daily basis. That is why marketing experts keep on stating: “Content is King”:

• Google gets 86.64% of searches every single day.
• Over 65000 inquiries p/sec are completed via Google search
• 95% of ALL searches are done on Google on the global scale.

At the same time, content can only claim its crown as long as readers find it worthwhile. In fact, the value of any kind of content is directly proportional to positive feedback from audiences which it captures, engages, and, most importantly, retains. 

In our era of endless websites, businesses produce fresh online content consistently to keep users lurking. The more they post, the better it enables them to gain more recognition. Thus, marketing content online nourishes a burning need to catch consumers’ attention regularly.

Today, we’ll jump into the topic regarding content marketing. Let’s talk about why this marketing strategy is so important and what tools can help to make it even better.

Why is content marketing important for businesses?

In a nutshell, content marketing is a bridge that connects business with its customers, either current or prospective clients. It helps to build a stronger bond and maintain good relationships. In short, implementing good content marketing approaches is important because:

• improves visibility of a corporate website
• increases traffic
• boots conversions

Relevant content gets distributed via articles, podcasts, blog posts, video announcements, etc. But get to know your target audience first. If you know who you’re targeting, it will help you figure out the best marketing strategies that would work most effectively for driving more people in. You don’t have to make it so your promo emails or text messages will be stuck in people’s subconscious. But if you establish a connection with your audience via high-quality content, this would be a very effective strategy for your brand to be reminisced by clients.

Precisely, content marketing becomes crucial for business growth, if implemented correctly. It is a win-win situation for both: companies and clients. Customers earn their treasured personalized experiences. While brands earn their steady stream of leads and, as a result, more money is pouring in. However, keep in mind just making a buzz with your content is not enough.

Make an impact by providing useful info that would provide answers to questions. But keep in mind that there are lots of really smart people out there who know how to sort out authenticity from the bogus. And your goal is to make readers choose you in the overflowing pool of never-ending information.

So, make sure your content fulfills following criteria:

• Easy to comprehend
• Suits the age-specific groups
• Provides genuine info on the topic
• Provides answers to readers’ prospective questions
• Contains the language suited for the target group
• Makes sense
• Relevant
• Useful
• Shareable

How can businesses benefit from online content marketing?

Now, let’s cover some of the important benefits you can reap by having the right plan in place. For example, by offering valuable content to readers, businesses can boost a following. As a result, sales go up. Additionally, content can improve website visibility and make it a lot easier for buyers to find what they’ve been browsing for.

A brief outline why content marketing is so beneficial:

Cost efficient: it is cheaper, especially if compared to conventional marketing approaches.

Retains audience: engages target audience via useful & entertaining content pieces.

Improves rankings: since an indexed content is showcased on the search engine result pages or SERPs, content marketing contributes to improving your rankings on the SERPs.

Helps with lead generation: since rankings mean more visibility and audience retention, content marketing brings repeat customers back. Carefully planned content marketing campaigns help generate potential leads for businesses.

Enables asserted authority: improves authority in the industry by providing solutions to users’ problems.

Improves loyalty: engages customers even after purchasing products or services and builds a relationship to improve loyalty.

Sells services better: people start buying more goods and services if CTAs are integrated into the content.

Boosts recognition in social media: high-quality content promotes businesses via different media channels, gets more followers, and, as a result, more leads.

Decreases length of sales cycles: achieved through generating qualified leads by attracting people via relevant content pieces.

Has a very positive impact on SEO: increases website’s ranking on Google (and other search engines) via engaging content like blogs, eBooks, articles, case studies, etc. Improves SMM: attracts more people and drives website traffic via trending videos, podcasts, user-generated content, etc. 

Some examples of content marketing approaches that are popular in 2022

Website Blogging. This approach is almost ideal because that way you can cover any topic and convey any other type of content into it like audios, videos, infographics, etc. In fact, many companies state that website blogging creates immense value for their corporate websites.

Guest Blogging. This is when a content manager from one company publishes an article in some other company’s blog. This strategy can increase a website’s domain authority by having a published content linking back to your website. And that’s a good way to boost visitor engagement.

Live video streams. Videos have always been widely and willingly used in the marketing world. Today, live video streaming by far is the most popular way of delivering content on social media. So, this approach became trendy with marketers as well. Especially after YouTube and TikTok became so insanely popular, marketing experts recognized livestreams as an effective strategy that hooks up businesses to customers directly. 

Since the spontaneous live streams assume no scripted scenarios, this makes conversations flow very naturally. Live streams work well for promotions, announcements, events, behind-the-scenes glimpses, etc.

Instagram carousel posts. This is a slideshow of pics that are transferring a certain message on a particular topic. For example, businesses use carousel posts to show multiple photos of the same product, demonstrate “before/after” pics, new photo filter effects, show off positive reviews, and other exciting stuff.

Visual data. Another popular strategy to deliver an interesting content experience. Basically, it implies transforming data in any editing program like Photoshop into impressive graphics. A practical experience shows that cool graphics help to convey information for easier digestion and makes it more understandable for clients.

Google snippets. Today, this is something that every business aspires to have, especially considering the fact that snippets can drive a huge amount of traffic to a website. Snippets are handy because they provide useful and accurate info about topics that people are looking up on the web. Hence, snippets become one of the fastest ways to obtain required info and get clicks.

What about the effective content marketing tools?

Even though content marketing works very well in terms of promotions, it is not as easy as it seems. Content marketers have to brainstorm ideas all the time. And you can’t come up with any new ideas without analyzing current market trends, implementing the best SEO practices, and knowing how to engage more folks with content. 

So, what you can do is to find the right tools that will help you shape your ideas into engaging content and assist you with content marketing. Here is a list of some handy tools to use in 2022:

Ideas. Great tools to generate more ideas with:

• Question DB
• Buzz Sumo
• Answer the public

Graphics & Visuals. You can make your content much more attractive with it. According to some findings, 90% of info retrieved by the human brain is visuals. So, create the optimal pictures for your posts with these tools without any prior knowledge of graphic designing:

• Pixels
• PicMonkey
• Unsplash
• Canva

Videos. Did you know that people spend 88% more time watching videos rather than reading texts? That’s how it works! So, use these great toolkits to make and edit engaging videos:

• Mix it
• Filmigo

Headlines. Since a very first thing which drives people attention is a headline, analyze your headlines with these tools:

• Coschedule Headline Analyzer
• MonsterInsights Headline Analyzer

Keyword research. An all-in-one toolkit that would offer insight into topic ideas, keywords research, and traffic analysis. You can also use for backlink analysis:

• SEMrush

Email marketing. Manage emails across all your mobile devices with this great tool (offers unique features like lists and metrics):

• Mailchimp

Staying up to date: be informed about the latest blog posts and any most current info flooding the Internet regarding your niche:

• Feedly

Useful online platforms:

ContentTools: create, analyze, and publish content for your marketing campaigns and utilize an in-app content editor with a handy feature like SEO indicator. Yay!

HubSpot: delegate/prioritize tasks, exchange ideas with your team peers, create actionable content pieces that drive leads and boost sales (has CRM).

SendinBlue: use this toolbox to optimize email campaigns. Its great feature – “send time optimization” will help you increase an open rate of emails, and it will determine the best time to send out user-friendly emails/SMSs through algorithm analysis.

Bottom-line

Once you figure out which resources work best for your content marketing approaches, you’ll optimize an organic channel of communication between your business and customers. You can do it by letting your site visitors go to your blog looking for useful reads. Just make sure they won’t be blasted by spammy content revolving around clickbait. 

Try to personalize your email approach as much as you can. When you put enough personalization on your message subject alone, you have a higher chance that your email recipient will engage, read, and hopefully follow the link you’ve attached about your latest promotions. In short, try to stand out in a chaotic sea of what we all call “online content”.

Get on some of the best content marketing strategies with online courses on Grinfer!