What successful brands do differently than others in their content strategy

Content is the key part of marketing and advertising. Quality content can help you grab the audience’s attention, and drive traffic and conversions.

Right now, the world is drowning in brands. A World Bank study recently revealed that there are between 365-445 million micro, small, and medium-sized businesses in today’s emerging markets. Medium-to-large businesses increase that number even further.

To make things worse, all these brands are competing against one another for visibility and to catch the audience’s attention through marketing and advertising. Now of course, if you want the audience to notice your brand among this mass competition, you need to stand out.

But how? The answer is content.

Content is the key part of marketing and advertising. Quality content can help you grab the audience’s attention, and drive traffic and conversions.

Being a content creator and marketer, I spend most of my time with content. I read blogs, watch videos, and listen to podcasts of successful brands and influencers all day long, trying to understand what they do differently that help them stand out.

What caught my attention during my observations is that successful brands follow a more personal approach to their content strategy.

For them, it’s not just about having a blog and social media handles to push out contents regularly.

Instead, it’s about knowing the audience well, and then using the content as a tool to engage, educate, and then moving the potential customers towards the sale.

Take HubSpot for example. HubSpot’s blog receives about one million page views every month, and each blog post is well-optimised for conversions.

Compared to its competitors, HubSpot is already a step ahead in their content strategy.

When HubSpot’s potential clients search for a solution to their problem online, they usually find an attention-grabbing headline of HubSpot’s blog in the top of search results page. Once these potential clients read the entire blog post and educate themselves with possible solutions, HubSpot then guides them towards the next step.

For instance, at the end of each blog post, HubSpot offers its readers a content upgrade in the form of case studies and white papers through sign up.

By offering a content upgrade, HubSpot moves its potential clients towards a sale.

Just like HubSpot, brands that have seen greatest success due to content, never let it sit on their blog quietly. They also have their employees use the content on a regular basis to reach new audience, earn their trust, and move them towards a sale.

Simply put, successful brands use content as their core tool, which is crucial for any brand or business to stand out.

I will share how you can make your content a successful trust earner just like all successful brands are doing.

 Step: 1 – Identify where the need for content is

 I honestly don’t understand why, but I have observed many companies limit the impact of content they create.

Content is not just for marketing. If you are using it only for marketing, then you are limiting the impact of it. And to create the right impact from the content you create, you need to first identify in which part of your business content is needed?

Are you in need of professionals?

Are your sales poor?

Is your customer engagement ratio low?

Once you’ve identified the need, you can then get to the core of the audience you’d like to reach. Then, brainstorm ideas for the content that would appeal to them.

For example, if you’re finding clients, consider the queries, concerns, and challenges that previous leads shared with your sales representatives. Once you know the ‘who’ and the ‘what’, you can start creating the content based on that.

Step: 2 – Become a Thought Leader on social media and build a following

 Thought leadership is (without any doubt) the best way to build trust. Audience trust individuals more than traditional advertising campaigns.

And because of that, thought leadership posts, as well as articles, are consumed more by the audience than promotional ads or videos.

Therefore, find people in your team who knows the audience your business caters to and ask them to write content keeping that audience in mind. If they are not content creators, make sure that they play an active role in the content creation process.

Doing so won’t just help you create content tailored to the specific audience, but it’ll also add the personal touch that the successful brands give number one priority too.

Step: 3 – Infuse personality in every post

 Every day, I skim through dozens of articles, but after reading three-five sentences (mostly), I close the tab and move on to the next. Reason? - it’s not because the content quality is poor or it does not back statements with any data, they actually do (in fact with lots of statistics and research).

But, almost all of these posts doesn’t have a touch of personality. And without a personality in your content, you sound same as a million others.

Solution? - Separate yourself from your competitors by infusing personality in each post.

For example, check how personalised and relaxed the below content is:

Point is, adding personality in a post helps to increase the level of trust between your brand and potential clients. As a result, it ultimately boosts conversions.

Step: 4 – Share your content aggressively

In the above steps, we learned how content can be a tool to generate trust, and how to create content tailored to a specific audience.

So, once you’re done with identifying the problem and creating content tailored to a specific audience, it’s time to get maximum eyeballs on it to create the needed impact.

So, how do you make sure that your content reaches to your specific target audience?

Getting your content viral once or twice is not the answer here. Trust is never built with that approach. You need to be persistent in creating and distributing good content to nurture your online brand presence as a successful brand.

Simply put, you have to continue creating small impacts to move your brand into your audience’s long-term memory that they can trust. That means you must keep creating and sharing your content with the right audience and not wait until they discover it on their own.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a law firm or tech startup, following these three steps will definitely help you in creating a successful brand image and join the ranks of the best in class.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)