Published on April 11th, 2017 | by Guest

Content Marketing in the Age of Spam

In today’s digital world, consumers’ inboxes are being inundated with digital clutter, from limited-time offers to unsolicited newsletters. As the amount of spam steadily increases, it is becoming more and more difficult to make your business stand out from the crowd.

So how can you set your business apart and successfully get your brand in front of the consumers you’re targeting? One way is through content marketing. Creating relevant and useful content that will resonate with consumers is the first step, then comes getting it in front of the correct audience. Focus on these four content marketing tips so that you can reach your target market without getting lost in a sea of spam.

1. Create Something They Want – Use Your Own Proprietary Data

One of the most effective ways to stand out from the crowd is through creating content using your own data. Consumers are tired of rereading content that has been reused and overshared. By using your own original data, you are providing your target market with exclusive content that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Your content is much more likely to get viewed and make an impact if you are offering information that only you can provide.

When thinking about what proprietary data you could use to create content, it is important to remember your audience. What content will be valuable to them? What questions do they have that you can answer? This will differ greatly between industries and based on the set of consumers you are looking to reach.

For example, TransUnion SmartMove provides a tenant screening service and has access to information regarding landlords. In a blog post, they compiled the data they had collected to demonstrate trends amongst today’s landlords. While this information may not catch the eye of most consumers, it is relevant and valuable for their target market – landlords.

On the other hand, Sleep Number has a broader target market that they want to attract. They made use of their proprietary data by creating an infographic depicting the cities getting the best and worst sleep across the U.S. In both examples the companies use their own data to create content that will be valuable to their audience.

2. Have Them Come to You – Optimize Your Content

Sometimes the best way to get your content noticed is through search engine optimization (SEO) rather than email distribution. Instead of focusing your outreach efforts on writing and sending emails, spend your time optimizing your content so that it ranks higher in search results. How will this help? It all comes down to “the rich get richer” effect. Essentially, if your content ranks position #1, it will get significantly more views and shares than a lower ranking piece of content.

So how do you optimize your content to achieve higher rankings? There are numerous aspects of SEO that you could employ, but three main tactics you should focus on are keywords, URL structure, and title tags. Optimizing these aspects of your page will affect your content’s ranking and put it one step closer to topping the search results.

3. Put Money Behind It – Use Paid Ads

Another way to get your valuable content in front of your target audience is though paid advertising. An effective channel to use to accomplish this is Facebook ads. There is a lot of strategy that goes into writing these ads, but here are some key things to remember:

Your image matters – Use a high quality graphic. The images you use on your ads are what intrigues your audience into reading the content for more information.
Use a specific target – When you create your ad you need to know who you are targeting. The more specific you can be the higher the chance you will reach the demographic that you are looking for.
Track your results – There are multiple ways that you can track your results. The fact that you do track is much more important than which strategy you use. By tracking your results you will be able to create additional ads in the future while knowing how to customize them in the best way to reach your target customer.

For a good example of a successful Facebook ad campaign, take a look at Chatbooks, an app that lets users quickly and easily make photo books. Their campaign was so successful, in fact, that Facebook created a case study about it. The key to their success was a focused and relevant target market.

4. Don’t Forget Social – Use the Right Hashtags

The vast majority of consumers are on social media, so that is where your business needs to be, and not just in a paid sense, but organically as well. It’s important to not only focus on what you’re posting but also on your hashtags. People use hashtags to search online to find the topics they are interested in reading about. If you want to be successful with hashtags, you need to choose ones that are specific to your content and not overused.

Focus on three types of hashtags. The first is your branded hashtag. Use it to grow your following, promote your brand, and have some consistency between your content. You should also use hashtags that are specific to your audience. What are they searching for? How does your content apply to them? The final hashtag type is content-specific. Select a hashtag that is specific to the piece of content you are marketing. The key is finding the balance between hashtags that are so specific they don’t garner any search traffic and ones that are so broad that your content will once again get lost in a sea of spam.

Final Thoughts

While there is a seemingly endless stream of content being pushed at consumers these days, there are still ways to make sure that your content stands out. By utilizing your own proprietary data, taking the time to optimize your content, investing in paid ads, and choosing strategic hashtags, you can ensure that your content will reach your target audience. Even in the age of spam, good content marketing will always prevail.

Author Bio:

Nicole Stelmar is a digital marketing specialist at Inseev Interactive, a performance digital marketing agency based in San Diego. Nicole specializes in helping businesses use digital marketing and SEO to grow their digital presence.

Tags: business, content, marketing, spam