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Why your business needs content marketing

Businesses of all shapes and sizes can benefit from producing and publishing content online. Jenny MacLean from content marketing agency Content Amp explains how it can boost your business.

For many small businesses and SMEs, content marketing may be something you’re not entirely familiar with. In a nutshell, content marketing means creating great content, sharing it with your relevant customers and generating engagement with them.

The value of incorporating content marketing into your company is clear. Overall, a staggering 94% of UK marketers have dipped their toes in the sea of content marketing, and with 64% intent on increasing the amount they allocate for this specific purpose over the next 12 months.

But rather than charging straight in it is important that you have a content strategy in place before you start. Content strategy forms the building blocks of any content marketing campaign. While it may be tempting to dive in without adequate preparation, it is important that you spend time setting out a solid content marketing strategy in order to drive your marketing forwards, rather than ten steps back.

Content Strategy – This is basically the detail of what you want to achieve, and how you plan to do it. Outline your core target group, why you are targeting them and what sort of content you want to create in order to engage with them. This can be 1-2 pages of A4 or a 100 metre long scroll, but as long as you have a clear objective, it really doesn’t matter. It may also be useful to knock up a content calendar with deadlines, accessibility, ideas for content, key seasons and trends relevant to your brand.

Content Creation – This stage needs to see your brand creating sparkling, unique content on a regular basis. The key is to ensure it is relevant to your target audience and engaging enough to make them want to come back for more, and share what they have read. High quality, unique content not only keeps your readers happy but also piques Google’s curiosity, which could see you leaping through page rankings and considerably broadening your readership. That all sounds marvellous, you might be thinking – but where am I supposed to find the time to do all this? You’re not alone: in fact, 21% of UK marketers say producing enough content is the biggest obstacle they face, along with a raft of other challenges as outlined below. This is where a content agency can help.

Content Amplification – Content is great, but that’s not all there is to it. Amplifying the message within your content is equally as important; after all, there is no point creating great content if it doesn’t reach your prospective customers. From social media platforms to blogger outreach, content distribution gives brands a real chance to speak to their customers and be part of the conversation, rather than an annoying interruption to it.

Download a free guide to content marketing from Content Amp now.

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