The art of growing your audience through adding value

Last month, we spoke about the two aces every business should have up its sleeve when it comes to online marketing. This week, we’re going to go into a little more detail about one of those aces: Content. 

Content: Valuable, relevant, and consistent stuff. Podcasts, blogs, infographics, videos, books. 
Content is not sales material. 

Why content should be your weapon of choice for growing your audience

We’ve talked elsewhere about the benefits of having a solid bank of value-adding content. By publishing content that’s relevant and useful, you increase your brand visibility, build a relationship with your readers and reach new audiences.  

When readers find your content useful, it increases your stock with them. Your name becomes synonymous with value and you’re treated as an authoritative voice. If and when your reader needs your service, the content you shared with them will stand you in good stead to land their business.  

Laying the foundations for SEO supremacy 

SEO: search engine optimisation. 
How easy you are to find online.  

One of the most talked-about content strategies is tied to SEO rankings. While most know the benefits of optimising their website for search engine results, many are missing a trick by not developing a bank of optimised blogs and articles to run alongside it.  

Let’s take a property law firm as an example. Their website should be optimised for people in need of a property lawyer. More specifically, they should be trying to rank highly for terms such as, ‘Property lawyers Manchester’ or ‘Property lawyers near me’. If they optimise effectively for these general keywords, they’ll get a steady stream of potential clients coming from the search engines. But they shouldn’t stop there. 

The power of blogging for SEO

A bank of blogs and articles can supplement this SEO strategy by optimising for more specific, long-tail keywords (longer phrases that people search for). They’re more likely to capture someone just looking for information than someone who wants to hire a property lawyer immediately, but that doesn’t matter. Remember, we’re playing the long game here. We’re looking to build a relationship with our audience so we’re the first name on their list when they need a property lawyer. 

Let’s use an example. Imagine you’ve written and published an article on how to increase the sale value of commercial properties. When people search, ‘How do I increase the sale value of my commercial property?’, the article will (hopefully) be one of the first to appear on the results page. 

If the author has done their job, the article will be informative, useful and value-adding. When the reader comes to that article and absorbs the information, they’ll be a captive audience. If and when said reader comes to sell their commercial property, you will be on their list of approved suppliers simply because trust has been built via the content they earlier engaged with.

It's important to mention that volume goes a long way when it comes to SEO articles. You want to cover as many different potential long-tail search terms as possible (relevant to your field of expertise of course). SEO tools such as SEMRush and Ubersuggest can be helpful here, but that’s a topic for another day. 

Building your audience through value

While SEO plays a big part in your content strategy, it isn’t the only thing to focus on. What’s more important is investing in your content such that it provides valuable information that your audience wants to hear about. Let’s look at a few examples of non-blog/article-based content and how it can help your business. 

Email campaigns 

Regular emails help you to build strong relationships with your client base. This shouldn’t just be a matter of releasing a newsletter every month to tell your audience what you’ve been up to. You should be using your emails to provide much the same kind of value-adding content as you would in a blog or an article. As marketers, we might send our email list some tips on how to develop a marketing strategy, or how to write an effective press release, or even how to write a great blog piece. Whatever your industry or service, there’s always a way to add value.   

E-books and whitepapers 

Working in an industry where complexity is the norm? Have a product or service that isn’t easy to capture in a few words? E-books and whitepapers are your friends. These are brilliant for taking complex ideas and making them understandable to your audience. By clearing up confusion, you’re adding value.  

Whitepapers and e-books are typically downloadable content, either from a landing page or an email campaign. They’re typically marketed as freebies to whet your customer’s appetite before a larger sell later on, but they can also be utilised as a stand-alone piece of content. 

Videos 

Videos have a big advantage in that they’re very visual. They provide great opportunities for branding and grab your audience’s attention in a way that a blog can’t. Videos are becoming more and more important for helping your SEO, simply because readers/viewers spend more time on a page when a video is present and this is powerful when it comes to climbing the google rankings.  

For examples of great video content, you need to only go to youtube or Vimeo and check out some of the content creators there. While the content might not be of particular interest to you, there is a message to be had.  

Their content doesn’t sell anything (mostly), it’s simply there to help them build relationships with an audience. And it’s those relationships that yield returns. 

If you’re looking for help with your content strategy, why not give Luma a call and we’ll set about getting better results for your business.  

First published on Place North West.