V8.23: Successful Content Marketing Habits

Content marketing: if you’re like us, these two words strung together are some seriously sweet music! Most businesses out there are developing or have developed content for their websites. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s great content, of course.

But not to worry! HubSpot has some great tips for us to share.

1. Read news about your industry every day. You do not have to reinvent the wheel, but you do need to know what’s going on. Great content writers scour the internet for new trends in their industry. This helps them understand the context and historical data points, which in turn helps them figure out patterns in their target market. Keep track of the blogs you like! Subscribe to the newsletters, ask friends and colleagues for recommendations, you get the picture.
2. Write on the regular. Write as much and as often as you can. If you don’t stay on top of your writing, you might lose the muscle. You know what they say, you have to work muscles to keep them in shape. You might not always be inspired to write, so you have to learn to find inspiration wherever you can. Now, you don’t even need to write a full article or content piece every day of course, but you can write little snippets in a journal. This will help keep you thinking about your industry. Pose questions and try to work out where your curiosities lie.
3. Study your industry’s audience. You all know that the audience comes first. You don’t just start writing and hoping for the best. You are writing to someone- to your persona. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but you are at the mercy of your audience. What is inspiring your audience right now? What do they care about? And most importantly, what do they want to read about? As you study these questions, you will be able to craft better content for your audience.
4. Establish your own voice. Now that you’ve studied other writers in your industry, you can develop your own voice. There are going to be a lot of voices out there, so what makes yours special? How can you stand out from the crowd? Think about what problems you want to address and how you want to share it out. Sure, readers click based on relevance and topic choice, but they become loyal readers from personality. What does your say about you?
5. Curate other people’s content (when it makes sense to). It’s okay to share out other people’s content. Social media makes it so easy to do these days! You can retweet, share, or comment on what other industry leaders are saying. That being said, you can and should curate content only when you have something valuable to add. Otherwise, you’re just blindly saying what they are. How can you put your own spin to it? What is the message you have to share?
6. Understand your KPIs. First comes audience, then comes KPIs. You have to know what you hope to gain from your content. Here are a few KPIs you might think about: 1. Traffic to your site; 2. Engagement with your messaging; 3. Leads. The more you know about what your KPIs are, the more you can cater your content to that goal.
7. Network at every opportunity. Networking is always a good idea! As you know, content has to come from somewhere. When you go out and meet inspiring people, you inspire your own content. You can highlight amazing people in your industry or take insight from the way they challenge the status quo.
8. Offer solutions, not just commentary. Like we said before, you have to add value with your content. Don’t just comment on something, give a real solution. If you know what your audience needs, you can provide them with a multitude of benefits to keep them interested. When you can fill a need, you can inspire people every day. Then, when it comes time for them to purchase, they will remember how you helped them.
9. Question everything. The best writer questions everything. Be curious and work to find solutions. If have questions, your audience probably has them too! Start with a question and you’ll have your next blog!

Content marketing might seem daunting, but you have to work at it every day to be great! So go out there and start writing your little hearts out!