Content can take you and your brand from an unknown nobody to a credible expert, that people trust and buy from to better themselves or their business. So it’s important that you correctly use your content to shine the best light on you and your business. Your content can truly make you or break you and your business.
Content is how you share your experience and knowledge with the world.
So, how exactly do you use content to build your brand?
There are various methods, techniques, and strategies for using content to build your brand. These can be simplified into three steps: creating, distributing, and tracking your content.
Using these three steps properly will help your content to build your brand for you.
There’s an enormous variety of content that you can create. The goal with this step is to determine which type you want to create, the purpose for creating it, and who is going to receive it. It’s essential here to understand who your ideal customer is.
What content are they looking for?
In what format do they want that content?
Types of content you can create include:
The Purpose
Your purpose will help you determine which type of content you want to create. It will also help you determine how you want to deliver the content. Ask yourself, “What action do I want my audience to take afterward?”
Who is your Audience?
Depending on your audience, you may decide a specific type of content is better suited. If they are beginners, a step-by-step process may be best. If they have purchased from you before, letting them know why the next product may help them go even further and how it may benefit them.
Once you know what type of content you are creating, how are you going to distribute that content? The answer to this question will determine which type of media you use and again, who your audience is.
Types of Distribution Media include:
The type of distribution media you use requires that you know your audience well and that you are clear about what you want to share with them.
You may even decide that you can share the same thing three or more ways to connect with even more potential clients.
As a generalisation, if your content is directed towards millennials, you may want to use more videos and audios. However, if you are targeting the baby boomers, a whitepaper delivered in the mail often works well. Although this is something you may want to test as it can vary greatly from one market to the next.
In this example, the goal of using content is to build your brand – this means that you need to know how your business is growing.
Whether you like to crunch numbers or not, you will need some form of tracking to see how effective each type of content and distribution method is for you.
It will take time to generate useful data, but don’t let that dissuade you from trying something new.
There are many free analytic tools available to you. (Google Analytics is a good place to start). You can also hire someone to do the tracking for you. Whichever route you take, you need to know your end goal. You will need to determine what it is that you want your audience to know or do once they consume your information.
At first, the idea of creating, distributing and tracking content may seem overwhelming, so much so that it doesn’t get done. But once you get started – in even the most simplest way possible – you’ll soon start to get a better understand of what your audience is looking for and how to give this to them, without your content marketing taking up all your time and money.
Start using these tools in your business today and simplify your content marketing.
You’ll discover the free tool that will ensure you never run out of ideas for topics to create content on.
Get another free tool that will make it super-easy to create simple graphics to help your content pop (especially when you need to stand out on social media platforms).