7 Pieces of the Content Marketing Puzzle

With that in mind, it’s essential that you’re equipped with all the components you need to make your content marketing efforts a success and deliver ROI. Here are 7 fundamental pieces of the content marketing puzzle:

1. Blogs

Blogs are the typical content marketer’s bread and butter. A regularly updated, well-written, interesting blog is vital if you want to attract more search traffic to your website and maintain engagement with existing customers.

According to HubSpot, research highlights that making a blog a part of your website boosts your chances of achieving a high ranking on search engines by 434%. Furthermore, companies that use blogs for content marketing reportedly attract 67% more leads than those that don’t.

If you want to provide a powerful demonstration of how well you understand your customers’ needs and how you can solve them, a blog is the ideal way to do it.

2. Email

Email has been around for a long time, but it has lost none of its potential to drive engagement with your target audience and strengthen relationships.

A CMI study found that more than nine out of ten B2B marketers (93%) use email to distribute content for marketing purposes, making it a more popular option than social media (92%) and blogs (79%). What’s more, 73% of millennials prefer to receive business communications via email.

3. Diverse content

Content marketing isn’t all about written content. It’s essential for your content to have a strong visual element that captures people’s interest and gets your message across in the most immediate, impactful and memorable way.

One of the best ways to achieve this is through video, a medium that has exploded in recent years and shows no signs of losing momentum. A substantial majority (83%) of marketing professionals surveyed for Demand Metric and Vidyard’s State of Video Marketing in 2018 report said this channel is becoming more important.

4. A content calendar

However well-written or visually stunning your content is, you run the risk of wasting its potential if you don’t have a structured approach to content creation and distribution.

A thorough content calendar should provide a detailed, forward-looking overview of the types of content you will create, the topics you will cover, deadlines, publishing dates, related social media posting and anything else you consider relevant. This will help to organize your content production and ensure everyone in your team is on the same page.

5. SEO

Strong SEO performance is vital if you want to attract maximum search traffic to your website. With search engine algorithms changing so often, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest developments in SEO, so it’s important to do regular research on the criteria that will promote or penalize your content in search rankings.

There are many processes that can improve your SEO, such as carrying out targeted keyword research and ensuring that every piece of content you publish is unique and relevant to your audience.

6. Social media strategy

There’s no denying that social media is now a fundamental part of the overall content marketing mix. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube provide potential access to billions of users around the world, so the right social media strategy can help to take your brand to a new level.

Standing out from the competition isn’t easy in such a crowded space, so it’s vital to have effective strategies to address key challenges.

7. Audience understanding

Arguably the ultimate priority in content marketing is to deliver material that provides something genuinely relevant, interesting or informative for your audience. People will gravitate to your content if it meets their needs, so there’s a huge amount to gain from building up a detailed picture of your customers and what’s important to them.

Equipped with this information - and a clear strategy of how to incorporate it into compelling, well-optimized content - you’ll be in the strongest position to earn brand loyalty and build long-term, mutually rewarding relationships with your customers.

Further reading:

• The Case for a Marketing Content Hub
• How to Succeed with a Content Hub
• How to Solve your Content Crunch