Warren Knight
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about 11 unique online content marketing ideas where I discussed how content is king for driving online traffic. Earlier this week I was sent a personal email from Insights in Marketing with a great infographic, that has ways in which you can engage with your online customers.
For all of your content marketing, you should be sharing content that your community wants to see, and enjoy. Did you know that nine out of ten customers want brands to share content online? Customers are trusting brands as much as they trust established media outlets.
Content marketing is about sharing content that is trustworthy and quality. Here are 7 secrets to engaging with your online customers.
1. Reflect your brand
It is a balancing act making sure that the content you are sharing is both relevant and sharable. You need to talk about your industry and share content that reflects your brand in a positive light.
2. Be inspirational and educational
Two of the biggest reasons why your customers will follow your content online is because it inspires them, or it educates them. Make sure you are sharing enough inspiration and education to keep your audience coming back for more.
3. Be unique
There are 347 blog posts being published every minute online and to make sure you content stands out, you need to be as unique as possible (within reason). By the time someone comes across your article online, they have probably already read about the same thing at least 10 times before. If you are going to share someone else’s content (as I am in the images) you need to add something extra – your own experiences and knowledge.
4. Always link back to your sources
If you are going to share content from another source, make sure you always link back to it. Although this written content is unique, you need to always link back otherwise you will lose credibility. At the end of this blog, I will be linking back to the original source of the infographic.
5. Earn your attention
As I have built my name in the social media industry, my community is extremely interested in all of my content, and share because of that. As a business, you need to be reaching out to influencers to share your content, just like Insights in Marketing have done with me by emailing me their infographic.
6. Share across multiple platforms
As soon as you have new and unique content, you should be sharing it with your community on every social network. You should also be emailing all of your industry contacts, and your email marketing database.
7. Avoid hard selling
Not every piece of content has to sell your product/service. The biggest reason why consumers unfollow a brand on social media is because they overpopulate a news feed with “me, me me”. Think about what your customers want to hear from you, and position your content intelligently and avoid hard selling.
To see the full infographic, click here.
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