Content Marketing in 2023: Secret Tips and Strategies

Is it worth the money to invest in a high-quality content marketing strategy?

After all, it’s far easier to pay twenty dollars for an article from a content farm then to invest money into writing high-quality content or figure out a content marketing strategy yourself.

Are the results really there if you spend a little more time on your content?

The problem with most content isn’t that you get poor writing, but that everybody else is doing the same thing – pumping out content like it’s going out of style.

You are lost in the sea of the internet.

High-quality content can be expensive but it’s worth it because you will be seen as a leader in your field, someone who takes the time to write thoughtful, powerful content.

Content that is worthy to be shared around the internet.

Do you want your audience’s attention focused on your brand?

Then you should strengthen your brand’s image and make a positive impression on your followers by creating great content.

It will drive your prospects to your company and your brand.

In this article, we’ll make the case for high-quality content by examining how you can use content marketing in your business.

Businesses that learn to thrive in an ever-changing landscape are the ones that create and implement effective content marketing strategies. As a content marketer, staying on top of the latest trends and techniques is more than just keeping up with the Joneses — it’s a “must-do” for keeping afloat.

Brands that invest in content marketing are five times more likely to see an increase in website traffic and six times more likely to generate higher-quality leads. Those stats alone will tell you one thing: you need to be on your A-game regarding content marketing.

And while there’s no shortage of tips from so-called experts, there’s no single “right” way to do content marketing.

That’s why we’ve put together the ultimate cheat sheet for content marketers – the purpose is for you to have a solid reference point.

We’ve organized this cheat sheet into five main sections: planning, researching, creating, distribution, and measuring. Here’s what you’ll find in each section:

Planning: Develop a content strategy and identify the right content types for your audience.

Research: Conduct keyword research, analyzing competitors and finding industry influencers.

Creating: Craft compelling copy, optimize images and use video where appropriate.

Distribution: Leverage social media, email and influencers to distribute your content.

Measuring: Use analytics tools to measure the success of your campaigns and track conversion rates.

But first…

Why Content Marketing?

There is a gazillion of marketing strategies that carry unique advantages. So, why pull the trigger on content marketing?

There’s more to it than merely attracting new customers and generating leads — it’s a way to build your brand’s reputation, establish yourself as an industry leader, boost user engagement and create loyal customers.

Content educates your audience about what you offer, demonstrates thought leadership in your industry, and positions you as an authority.

Content marketing will help you differentiate yourself from competitors, humanize your brand and create lasting customer relationships.

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in!

Is Content Marketing A Good Strategy?

Let’s look at the numbers to make a case for content marketing.

Content marketing is a $300 billion dollar industry with 86% of B2C and 91% of B2B companies using content marketing as part of their marketing strategy.

It’s safe to say in an age where pattern interrupt ads are less and less effective (when was the last time you didn’t skip a YouTube ad?)

This is what Seth Godin termed permission marketing and is the best value for your money.

It’s better to be a useful resource to your potential clients when they need it.

Educate them on your industry and why you are an expert, why you should be trusted and what makes you the right choice.

Content Marketing Trends in 2023

The content marketing landscape will be different this year.

For starters, user-generated content (UGC) is projected to increase.

UGC is when customers create content related to a company’s products or services and share it on their social media platforms.

It falls within your current content strategy but requires a more creative approach.

Video will likely become the most valuable B2B marketing channel in 2023.

Proof of this is that since the start of 2020, Facebook and Instagram have significantly increased video use.

And then there’s TikTok, which seemingly has its fair share of B2B brands breaking the status quo.

As a content marketer, you’re to put a premium on personalization and improved customer experience.

Personalizing content helps foster customer relationships and makes customers feel like they’re cared for.

It also builds trust between the company and the customer.

One sure way of growing your audience engagement and developing brand awareness is to have effective content marketing.

And blogging is still one of the most effective ways in engaging with your audience and ranking on Google.

For most businesses, this is the most important part of having a successful method of growth.

We are going to show you why this is one of the best strategies for driving sales into your business.

In fact, yearly reports from bloggers say that 1 in 4 of these reports apparently gave strong results.

But since there are 31 million bloggers online who are aiming to reach more clients and increase their revenue, let’s look at their results and to see if they are happy with their own efforts.

(A word of warning, these results are subjective, and are self-reported.)

What Does Successful Content Look Like? 

As you build a content marketing strategy tailored for you, you have to remember that there is no shortcut for reaching success.

Instead, you need to take it one day at a time and invest substantially in creating and having an effective marketing program.

In regards to having successful content marketing, we have enlisted through survey strategies and tactics coming from different bloggers and content creators who, invariably, reported success with their projects.

One in ten bloggers/content creators does this:

• Write 2000+ word posts
• Add 7+ visuals per post
• Write 7+ draft headlines per post
• Work with multiple editors
• Collaborate with influencers for most articles

One in ten bloggers/content creators does this:

• Spend 6+ hours writing each article
• Add video to their content
• Publish multiple times per week

Consistent (And Quality) Content is the KEY

Did you know that having consistent, high-quality, engaging content can alter the perception of your prospects towards your brand?

Consistent content creation is the key!

Once your content appeals to your audience they will most likely agree to what they have read and soon patronize your brand.

Through this action, CTA or calls to action will directly be placed on your content which will usher in more leads for your sales team.

So how does this process work?

You provide useful content to visitors.

This free information you hand out to visitors through your content is a portal to guide users to a landing page.

And anywhere in your content, you can include CTAs whichever you want to place it, inline, bottom of the post, in the hero, or even on the side panel, this will be a helpful way to generate leads.

The more creative you are with your content and the more your audience is engrossed with the information you share, the more they are enticed to push that buy button.

Increase Brand Awareness With Content Marketing

Speaking of consistency, posting of blogs to your website should have this certain frequency in order to be on that level of achieving brand awareness.

If your blogs are interesting, thought-provoking, and provide our potential clients with a useful resource then it’s no wonder that they will hire you over someone who just churns out content for the sake of it.

Your content should have its unique voice.

This will help you build credibility, trust, and a strong reputation.

How Long Should You Spend Writing Content?

Most writers and bloggers spend around 3 to almost 4 hours creating content.

The stats show the longer and more involved your content is, the better results you get.

With that in mind, you should probably be spending 63% more time on each post as we progress in investing time and effort for each article, increasing in accuracy and veracity for each content each year.

Compared this to several years ago and the trend increases over time.

As you can see, in the previous years, content creators and bloggers who reported strong results are the same ones who spend more time creating their content, contrary to the whole of creators having to hit publish after only working on their blog for two hours.

In this next image, you can see the dramatic drop in the short form blogging compared to the raised percentage in 1000+ word post.

These previous graphs just show that longer content performs better, obviously, we got these results through the bloggers we surveyed it from.

Usually, the average blog post contains 1269 words, but through the passing of time, blog posts keep getting longer yearly, and since 2014 word count went up to 57%.

For whatever the reason, those who have gone to the extremes have seen positive or good results.

And those bloggers who have gone to 3000+ words per blog have reported, with an average of 25% benchmark, a reach of a successful great result.

Popular Content Format

According to some bloggers we have surveyed, among the contents that are mostly followed are articles with “how to” format.

It’s obvious that audiences want to learn through the contents they follow.

Having the opportunity to educate your audiences through your blog is the key to having successful content marketing.

It’s no surprise that news is popular for audiences. The latest trends and current events really get attention, but the question still remains in the mind of a content strategist: Should news be included?

The question is a much-debated topic with most bloggers are split in the middle.

And FYI: The most effective of these formats are actually the least popular one, well, for the most part. Kind of confusing, right?

Here’s a sample:

Imagery is a significant factor in attracting audiences to your content. It adds flavour and catches the readers attention so it’s not surprising bloggers have reported that using visuals have reached a success rate for their blog.

These graphs show how important it is to incorporate visuals into your blog.

Generally speaking, the more the visuals, the more interesting your content is and the more interesting it is the higher success rate your content reaches

And of course, contents should be coming from an original source and data as your primary source, or you can gather from other sources and cite the origin.

This process is to make your blog content more valid and more authentic, and you have to make sure that you have done hard research and that your references are legitimate sources.

To encapsulate the whole of everything, make an audit of your content and check which ones have worked, have reached success and those that worked well for your business.

This is an important step you can take for your marketing team, it might be a tedious process, but it is evidently the most effective step you can take for your campaign and will be your guide for having consistent content.

In addition, prior to this, I have mentioned that having consistent quality content will benefit your marketing strategy; why did I say so?

Key Takeaways of A Content Marketing Strategy

We’ll list all the top benefits of having consistently high-quality content, this way you will have a deeper understanding of the strategy and the philosophy behind this effective and successful way to engage with your prospects.

• Don’t just write quality content, write creatively and along the lines of the latest trend in content creation; be personal, be current, be engaged with your prospects. You will gain more pull from your audiences if you follow these steps despite the fact of having a huge following, but no traction from your audiences.
• Build trust between you and your audience. Interact with them and answer, wholeheartedly, their queries and if they have doubts, reassure them; let the source of their worries be a derivation of information. This process can be done through your consistent content marketing; let them discern facts from myths through your in-depth research about your brand or product. Your audience will likely take your advice and have full trust in it when you establish great moral ethics over what you can profit from them. Reputation is built when content conveys this kind of virtue. Positivity breeds success.
• Originality in writing your content is very important. Try not to use stock photos, instead use unique images; the more audiences connect with you if you have original content. And since the information you send out to your audience is authentic, the more these audiences make an educated purchase from you. This is the most effective way in influencing conversions and driving traffic to your blog content.
• SEO is the key in making your business visible on the internet. It would be effortless on your part if you use the right SEO methods; one good example for that is the pillar/cluster model. This will transform your content to a better experience for your audiences, and should help your business rank at the top of search engines.
• Assess the quality of your content by doing content scoring metrics in your marketing campaign. Doing this will not just improve your marketing performance, but it will also offer a great value content to your audience. Your customers will be leaning more towards trusting your brand as they perceive it as an expert in the industry as your content demonstrates more of your knowledge in the field as you provide valuable answers to your audience’s queries.

Planning

You likely will skip this step if you have an existing content marketing strategy. But that’s the point – you don’t have one.

Your content marketing strategy must have a roadmap for your campaigns, outlining what should be done. This “map” will feature your:

• Objectives
• Target Audience
• Available Resources
• Budget
• Timeline

It’ll be the foundation of your content efforts before you research topics, create content, and optimize it for search engines. Your objective refers to what you want a campaign to achieve, while the target audience is who you wish to reach.

Resources refer to what content types, i.e., blog posts, videos, or infographics – you can use.

The budget and timeline are pretty self-explanatory.

Don’t forget to identify the right channels for your campaigns; otherwise, you’ll be wasting your efforts.

Case in point: LinkedIn.

This platform for professional networking is great for B2B companies but not so much for B2C.

Therefore, if you want to market your products or services to consumers, you should switch to a more suitable platform like Twitter. However, LinkedIn is a potentially rewarding channel if you want to reach out to other businesses or experts.

Remember that finding the right channels for your objectives will take trial and error. Once you’ve discovered the right methods, stick to them and cultivate a loyal follower base.

The goal is to create awareness among people who want to engage with you. In other words, they must know your brand exists and that it’ll help them with their needs.

In the planning stage, you create the blueprint for your content marketing efforts.

Take your time to ensure everything is covered and be as detailed as possible. It’s essentially setting yourself up to succeed from the get-go. That’s how crucial planning is in your laid-out cheat sheet for content marketing.

Research your Content Marketing Strategy 

Content marketing is only as strong as its research. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your efforts and budget on campaigns that won’t get noticed or bring in conversions. This is why research is at the core of content marketing.

• Keyword Research – To best identify keywords that correspond with your goods or services, use powerful tools such as Ahrefs, Moz and SEMrush. It’s best to ascertain what content resonates most with your target audience; competitive research should also be conducted to stay abreast of how others in the same industry are faring.
• Competitor Research – Keeping ahead of the competition means researching about them, too. Analyze their content, keywords and strategies to understand better what seems to be working for them and what you can do differently to stand out.
• Content Research – You can’t afford to miss this step as it’s critical in understanding which topics will interest your target audience. See that you identify the types of content they prefer. For example, find out if videos are more effective than blog posts or if infographics perform better than slideshows.
• Audience Research – It’s understandable that you’ll have an idea of your target audience from the start. But to truly understand them, dig deeper and discover their interests and needs. You need this data to craft content tailored for them.

Research allows you to focus on creating content that brings in results.

It’s a continuous process as you must update your research now and then; this also helps keep track of what works, what doesn’t and how you can improve.

Content Marketing Creation 

You’ve done the research, so it’s time to create content. This step is about giving shape to all the ideas you’ve collected and researched.

The type of content that you create will be based on the data gathered earlier. Your research should have given you an idea of which content people prefer, but don’t stray away from your goals – see that they’re met.

The number one rule in content creation is always to produce quality content.

As much as quantity is important, quality matters more.

Never sacrifice one for the other.

You can’t get away with something that isn’t high-grade. Content should always be engaging and relevant, as it represents your brand.

How about AI content-generating tools?

You may use AI as an assistant to help you create content faster, but it doesn’t always guarantee quality output.

AI tools will, undoubtedly, save time and resources but aren’t a substitute for manual work.

Using them with your creative effort is best as you intend to preserve the highest content standard possible.

When writing content for online publication, you must adhere to these three steps: edit, proofread, and optimize.

• Edit – Part of your job as a content marketer is to refine the content to be impactful and engaging. Do away with unnecessary words and phrases; check for flow, consistency and how your message is conveyed.
• Proofread – Following the editing process, take an additional step to guarantee that you haven’t missed any errors. An extra set of eyes can go a long way in making sure every detail is covered. A second look-over will help ensure your grammar and punctuation are accurate while double-checking spelling mistakes.
• Optimize – This step is about making the content more likely to appear in search engine results and, therefore, helping it reach a wider audience. Follow SEO basics and add relevant keywords in title tags and body copy without overstuffing them.

Distribution of your Content

You finally created and published polished and share-worthy content.

You feel good at this point, yet the job isn’t done.

The truth is content creation is only as good as its distribution.

In this part of the comprehensive cheat sheet for content marketers, we focus on distributing and promoting content.

The goal in content distribution remains the same, regardless of the approach or strategy: you must do something for your audience to see your content.

Doing so requires a highly-detailed plan while employing efficient and smart tactics.

This is a cheat sheet because it’s a collection of quick tips, tricks and strategies worth trying – most of which is stuff you still don’t know.

Do some A/B testing to determine the most effective approach for your target audience before deciding on a strategy.

For instance, some content marketers have this tunnel vision and focus solely on publishing their content on social media.

But there are other channels out there that you must explore to maximize reach, such as influencer outreach and external websites.

One key aspect of content distribution is repurposing your content. But how does this work?

Repurposing content makes maximizing the reach and life of your valuable content easier.

Repurposing content is about changing a piece’s format, i.e., from a blog post to an infographic or vice versa and re-publishing it in different channels.

Take full advantage of multiple formats and platforms in distributing content for marketing purposes.

Include the following:

• Podcasts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Social Media Posts
• Email Newsletters
• Press Releases

See that you keep track of your distribution and promotion efforts. But how do you do this? Well, this has a three-headed approach: analytics, progress monitoring, and collecting feedback.

Analytics – Monitor your content’s performance in search engine results. Keep track of the visits, impressions and other KPIs so you can analyze the current situation and make decisions for the future.

Progress Monitoring – Track what tactics are helping you reach your goals and which aren’t; you need to stay organized and be on top of things to get the most out of your content.

Collecting Feedback – Get input from audiences and influencers. If you’re having trouble finding feedback, you can always ask directly or create surveys to gather responses on how well your content is doing. You may feel feedback doesn’t count, but it’s incredibly valuable. Let’s demonstrate:

Feedback can help you identify common issues with your content, i.e., a lack of clarity, accuracy or relevance.

It also helps you see what kind of content people like and which they don’t.

You’ll adjust accordingly while developing new ideas and improving old ones.

Other Key Points in Content Distribution

Leveraging Social Media

The best attribute of social media is it’s free.

As a promotional tool to reach as many people as possible, you should use the main channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The fast-paced world of social media requires content to be posted frequently; otherwise, it will get lost in the shuffle.

A good strategy is to focus on fewer platforms first and boost posting frequency once you have gained enough followers and a solid engagement rate.

Influencer Outreach

Influencers offer a different, albeit effective, way of getting your message out.

They have an audience of engaged followers, so they’ll help you reach potential customers you otherwise may never have had the chance to reach.

Find those who’ve shown interest in your brand. Remember, you can’t just approach every influencer you see. You must determine your ideal influencers to ensure the promotion works for both parties involved.

Focus on developing relationships with well-known industry influencers to increase exposure for your content.

Follow their social media accounts and comment or share their posts when appropriate.

Once you’ve identified some influencers, contact them and ask if they would like to collaborate on content from which both parties will benefit.

The key here is to be genuine. Influencers have nothing to lose if they turn their backs on you, so communicate with them respectfully and professionally.

They tend to be apprehensive of marketers since they get flooded with daily requests.

Measure Your Content Marketing Results

No content marketing campaign succeeds without measuring results. Track key metrics, i.e., engagement, page visits, time on page, and bounce rate, to measure the success of your content distribution efforts. As mentioned earlier, A/B testing is another way to determine which content resonates more with the audience.

• Engagement – Monitor how many people engage with your content through likes, comments, shares, or clicks on links or call-to-action buttons.
• Page Visits – Track the number of page visits to evaluate how well sources drive traffic to your website.
• Time on Page – This metric measures how long people stay on a page; if they’re spending more time reading and engaging with your content, it means you have a successful content marketing strategy.
• Bounce Rate – If visitors quickly leave a page, it implies that the content isn’t valuable and needs to be improved. People leave your page sooner than expected because of several possible reasons, i.e., bad design, slow loading speed or irrelevant content.

Without measuring the results, there’s no way to determine whether your actions make sense or are in the right direction. It’s painstakingly crucial to measure and monitor content performance, no matter how laborious or complicated the task may seem.

Last Thoughts on Content Marketing

Of course these brand followers will then end up being your fans after gaining their trust and your brand is established online.

And these fans will be your number one brand endorsers.

Why?

All because of the overwhelming response from the quality content you have shared with them throughout their time following you online.

Don’t underestimate their loyalty because they could influence their friends and family to purchase and patronize your brand.

They see the value your business provides for these people, they fully trust your brand; this is what quality content marketing can do to make your business successful.

Otherwise, it can break you if you make the wrong move in campaigning for your brand.

Content marketing is the most cost-effective strategy that is available for your business.

The prices range from a post of $150 to $3000 from a freelance writer who can render their services; either way, you can hire them, as content creators on a regular basis, as your full-time writer.