Content marketing is still one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get targeted visitors hitting your website regularly, and according to HubSpot, marketers would prioritize blogging, as they are 13x more likely to see a positive ROI.

Content marketing is still one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get targeted visitors hitting your website regularly, and according to HubSpot, marketers would prioritize blogging, as they are 13x more likely to see a positive ROI.

How to get started with Content Marketing.

• Step one: Define your goals. 

What is your niche? 

What type of content are you looking to create? 

What do you want to do with your content? 

If you don't understand the type of content you want to create, you will not do a good job. Everyone thinks it's just about your audience, but you're the one creating and writing it.

If you don't write content that you're passionate about, that you love, it won't come across as great content, and it won't do well.

So, you got first to figure out what you want to write about what you think people want to hear.

• And that gets us into the second step.

It would help if you researched your audience. 

It would help if you came up with audience personas. 

What questions is your audience asking? 

What problems do they have that you can help solve? 

How can you provide value to them?

And knowing this ensures that none of you are writing content that you love and that other people want to hear about, which will help you rank higher.

And you're probably also trying to figure out, "Hey, how do I figure out what problems people have?"

Well, type in any keyword within your vertical, your niche, into UberSuggest. Go onto the keyword ideas reports, click on "questions," and show you all the questions that people are typing. 

These are the issues, problems people are having, and by you looking at this keyword base, it'll help you figure out, "alright, these are the problems people are facing, maybe I will enjoy writing on some of these topics."

• Step number three. 

Do your keyword research.

You can use multiple tools like SemRush, Ahref, or UberSuggest.

Out of these three, UberSuggest contains a big list of keywords that you could be going after.

But you don't just want to go after popular keywords; you want to go after the keywords that are high in the ranking.

It is so kind of like the keywords in the conversion list or the keywords that have a high CPC. 

Keywords that tend to have a high CPC tend to convert better and generate more income for the website owner.

• The fourth step is content ideation.

It would help if you came up with topics that cater to your audience.

Check out what your competitors are writing. You can put their URL into UberSuggest, click on top pages, and that will show you everything that your competitors are writing. 

If you want to see it based on a keyword, go to UberSuggest, go to the content ideas report, type in a keyword. It'll show you what's hot in your space.

You can also do the same thing with BuzzSumo, and it's just a paid tool, UberSuggest you can do it for free.

Or you can do the same thing with AnswerThePublic, which is also a paid tool. 

Doing this will give you a rough idea of what's working and what's not. 

And it'll break it down based on social shares, search traffic, backlinks. 

And that's important because when you're looking at the content ideas report on UberSuggest, you'll be like, "oh, this is what's working for my competitors."

Well, if they're getting a ton of search traffic but no social shares, that means you're just too reliant on Google.

Ideally, you want pages and posts; that have a lot of search traffic and social shares because you can diversify your traffic sources.

• The fifth step

We recommend you to do is create content that is tailored to voice search. It's estimated that roughly fifty percent of the quests are voice searches, according to ComScore. 

So, use structure data markup, and when you do this on your website, it'll help you get into the rich snippets. 

When you get into the rich snippets, it also helps Google pull your listings, your result; for voice searches, that way your brand is getting out there, and you can keep getting more traffic.

This is important because devices like Google Home and Alexa are becoming more and more popular, and you'll see this trend continually increasing. You want to be prepared for it.

The last thing you want to do is see seventy, eighty percent of the searches being voice search, and then you start optimizing for it. You want to do it now before it gets to that point.

• The sixth step

You need to do is create videos and visual content. It's no secret that visual content video storytelling is taking over the web. From Instagram to Facebook to YouTube, it's all super popular. 

And if you don't want to do videos, you can also try a podcast or even try infographics; It's a way to use images to tell the story, which works well. 

And to give you an idea, four blog posts a month is enough, but recommended is to publish over twelve videos a month. We see a trend in which videos are becoming more and more popular, and it's a better way to relate to an audience, to your brand, right? 

It helps you build that deeper connection.

That's why you should start creating videos today if you already haven't started.

•  The seventh step - leverage social media.

If you're not leveraging social media, your brands are not getting out there. 

Whether your reach is dying or not, these sites are super popular. So, the way to combat this and so do well from the social app is going live all the time. Through social media, you can create engaging content, videos; that still does well. Sure, driving the people off to your website doesn't get as much engagement, but uploading videos always does well.

• The eighth step - follow the EAT formula.

EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trust.

Google ended up releasing a medic update awhile back, in which they don't want people writing on content that they're not credible for. 

For example: Write about things that are related to your business.

Stick to what you know and do.

You want to make sure you're adding your author bio on every page that you're writing content on. 

Link to your social profiles, guest posting on sites to build up your credibility.

Maybe even create a Wikipedia page. All of this will help.

Last but not least, build backlinks. If you don't know how to build backlinks, the easiest way is to go to UberSuggest, or Ahref.com, type in the URL of any one of your competitors, click on the backlinks report; you'll see all of their pages that have a ton of backlinks, who's linking to them. 

For the anchor text, you can use this data to figure out what pages you should replicate, who you should head up to get those links, as well. 

Content Marketing for your business.

Content marketing is more than just blogging or creating videos for YouTube.

According to CMI, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Now, let's break these down into some key points.

You need to create content and distribute it.

In terms of content attributes, it should be valuable, relevant, and consistent.

On top of that, you should know exactly who you're targeting so you can attract and retain them.

Most importantly, the content should drive profitable customer action.

 Every business is unique, and other external factors can impact your campaigns.

The CART formula

To heighten your chances of executing a successful content marketing strategy, you can use a 4-prong strategy called "The CART formula."

• C is for content

 - the content requires you to think of a topic and format you'll use; for example, will it be a blog post, video, commercial, infographic, or whatever.

• A is for the audience.

 Having a clearly defined audience will help you refine that format and your distribution strategy; for example, a personal finance guide would likely resonate with married couples aged 25 and older.

Probably not as much for teenagers that are still dependant on their parents.

• R is for relevance 

 - content marketing isn't about virality. It's about driving profitable customer action.

So keeping your content relevant to your products will ensure it's serving your business.

• Finally is Timing

 - being in the right place at the right time can increase your chances of success.

Generally speaking, the more criteria it fits, the better your campaign will do.

For example, a CART is better than just a CAR. 

Find replicable topics you can apply to your content marketing.

You can use a tool like Ahrefs' Content Explorer, which lets you search through over a billion pages of content and filter and sort by metrics that matter to you.

Let's pick a topic like "beauty."

You'll see over 10 million pages that have this word in the title or body.

Now, let's narrow down the results to only pages with at least 100 links from unique websites.

And we'll set one more filter to show pages that also have at least 1,000 social shares.

After about a minute of skimming the article titles, you will be able to find some great ideas to draw inspiration from.

This allows you to get consistent traffic to videos on evergreen topics.

Now, success on YouTube comes down to three things:

- publish great content consistently.

- use eye-catching thumbnails.

- use a unique video format that serves a need promptly.

To find keywords that get searched on YouTube, you can use a tool like Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.

Set the search engine to YouTube and enter a broad keyword related to your niche.

And remember, once you've created these videos, you'll need to get backlinks to your videos so that you can rank high.

Now, all of the content marketing examples that we've shared with you don't require multi-million dollar budgets.

If you're doing the work alone or with a partner, some won't require any money other than your time.

Keep in mind that content marketing is an extended play, and as long as you successfully execute for your audience, you should see traffic, brand awareness, and revenue grow in tandem.

It's a full-time job, so if you're a business owner who has to deal with business oversight, we recommend working with an experienced content marketing team that develops and manages targeted content strategies from blogs, graphics, and video to SEO, social and more.

Please check Dokalink's selection of Top Content Marketing companies, review their portfolio, clients, and reviews, and get in touch.