Content 
Marketing 
Growth 
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Responsify 
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12 min read
Share If you want to achieve long-term growth for your business, you need a solid content growth strategy. It’s not enough to simply throw content on the internet wall and hope something sticks. Instead, you’ll need to set clear business goals and then align them with a content growth strategy that lets you raise your business to new heights.
You know that you need to have a content growth strategy in place for your business, but why? Without a strategy, your business runs the risk of failure every day. No content creator wants to see years of hard work go down the drain. So, what will the right content growth strategy do for your business?
A successful content growth strategy will:
Although you may have been producing great content until now, even the best content can use some fine tuning. So we’ve put together the ultimate guide to help you take your content marketing strategy to the next level.
Ever heard of the writing advice “show, don’t tell?” Applying this to your blog posts can give them a much-needed facelift. If there’s something you want your audience to take away from a blog post, put it in an eye-catching infographic. When people learn something new via plain written text, they’re only likely to remember 10% of that information.
However, if the same information is paired with a relevant image, they now retain up to 65% of it. The lesson? Use infographics, and use them often. If you’re not a Photoshop whiz, brands like Canva or PicMonkey equip content creators with all the tools they need to make simple, effective infographics in minutes.
People connect with people who are just like them. Creating and including compelling case studies in your blog posts show customers that you understand their needs. It also breaks down the process of how you’ve helped someone with a problem similar to theirs. Tell the success story of your customer from start to finish. Outline what their problems were, why they came to you, and what they hoped to achieve. Strengthen the effectiveness of your case study by including statistics to back up your statements and discuss specific strategies you used to help your client. You can even have little blurbs about how they felt before, during, and after interacting with your brand.
If you haven’t already, including social media icons on your website is one way to draw more attention to your social media. Recent studies revealed that more than 500 million active Instagram users every day, 249 million daily Snapchat users, and Pinterest has over 459 million monthly active users. Failing to display social media icons means that you’re missing out on connecting with millions of people. 
Unfortunately, many brands underestimate the power of interacting with their followers. Although this can be pretty time-consuming, it’s worth setting aside time every day to interact with people that support and follow your brand. A study performed in 2018 revealed that 71% of consumers who had a positive experience with a brand on social media were more likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family. Additionally, interacting with your followers in your social media comment section is a great way to connect with your audience and give them more insight into who you are as a person.
Use your social networks to the fullest by creating a unique presence for each social media platform. What does this mean? Well, each social network is different. Twitter is mostly for text and photos. Instagram has become a haven for short videos, photo carousels, and infographics, and Tik Tok has burst out on the scene as Instagram’s younger, more relaxed, Gen Z cousin. You can use an app like Twitter to connect with professional brands and network in your niche while using Tik Tok to reach the younger generation. If you share unique content on each platform, you’ll find that your audience will tune in, enabling you to connect with a broader audience.
Being opinionated doesn’t mean that you shove your thoughts down the throats of your followers. It simply means that you pick a point of view, and you stick to it. You’ll attract the right kind of audience when they see that you know how to take a stand and mean it. Even though you want to get people thinking and start conversations, you don’t want to offend people unnecessarily. Remember, you’re trying to win hearts, not arguments.
This might be harder for content creators that are camera shy, but showing the person behind the content allows you to connect with your audience on a higher level. People want to know the person behind your brand’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, so showing them who you are will elevate your content.
Let’s face it; everyone loves to laugh. Inserting humor into your brand can help you stand out from the competition. Everyone has their unique sense of humor, so why not connect with others who share yours? Of course, this might not work for everyone. But, if humor plays a big part in who you are and your brand, using humor to connect with other people in your niche can take you very far.
No matter how convincing or charismatic you are, people want to know that what you’re saying will work for them. Here is where the power of testimonials and client stories comes into play. Having someone else talk about your brand for you can do so much more than you ever could. It gives people a chance to connect with like-minded people or to see themselves in the clients that you’ve worked with before. Once people see how effective and helpful you’ve been with others, they’re much more likely to sign up to work with you.
You can’t appeal to the right people when you don’t know who your target audience is. So before creating your content, consider the following questions:
If you can’t answer the above questions, all hope is not lost. Reach out to members of your audience. Your existing audience is one of your most valuable tools. Pick their brains and find out what they want to see, where they like to go, and how you can help them. Once you know what they need, this information will further equip you to create products and content that have actual worth and benefit your target audience. 
Developing backlinks to your website is only effective when you have a deliberate backlinking strategy. Distributing your content by dumping links back to your website on random websites won’t grow your business. To use backlinks strategically within your niche, try to implement some of these practices:
One of the easiest ways to get more backlinks within your niche is to create share-worthy content. Helpful and informative content will do all the talking for you. Feel free to include a call to action at the bottom of your content to encourage readers or viewers to share with their community.
Asking clients to write about your services not only helps your reputation, but it can help you build backlinks as well. While all of your clients won’t have websites of their own, some will. So try to motivate your clients by offering them an incentive to write you a review on their website or social media platform. You can offer this in the form of a discount for services or even a free product.
Collaboration on content products is a great way to build backlinks to your website and reach a broader audience. Some content creators choose to do this by guest-starring on podcasts, where links to their website appear with every episode description.
It’s no secret that networking is the key to success in business. Developing a positive working relationship with like-minded content creators within your niche offers you a host of benefits. For example, you’ll now have the opportunity to guest post, be featured on other creators’ websites, or even share valuable content within social groups. In addition, when you build up a rapport with them, you might be able to ask for backlinks directly in return for some of your own. Remember that freely giving backlinks within your niche does not mean that you need to start linking to direct competitors. There are dozens of content creators within your industry that will value collaboration over competition.
If you shy away from curating content, you’re missing out on a crucial part of a successful content growth strategy. Curating content allows you to present your take on high-quality information that answers burning questions posed by your target audience. You need to be wary of simply collecting existing content and sharing it with your readers. If they wanted that, they would just visit a search engine. Instead, you want them to come to you because you deliver a wealth of knowledge with a unique perspective that integrates your brand’s voice. When curating content, ensure that the content meets the following requirements:
Establishing yourself as an expert voice on a topic fosters a working relationship with your audience. Loyal followers will quickly understand that the knowledge you’re sharing with them is truthful and that you’re not beating around the bush with fluff information that doesn’t help them. Although your curated content leads them to other people’s websites, your subscribers will remember that you were the one who guided them towards beneficial information.
Sometimes, we feel like we hit a creative wall. You have no idea what topic to write about next, and it seems that nothing is interesting enough to share with your audience. When this happens, take a second look at your existing content. Many content creators are surprised to find that the answer to their creative block lies within their brand. You don’t need to be the next Michael Bay to create videos for your brand. However, short, easy-to-understand videos on YouTube or Instagram can help you breathe new life into an old blog post.
If you wrote a blog post that could use some expansion, why not try your hand at podcasting? This form of media lets you bring a written piece of content alive, further connecting you to your audience. Repurposing old content is especially effective with evergreen pieces of content. An evergreen blog post will see a resurgence in traffic every year. Creating a new infographic or adding a relevant meme to a standard post will make it more appealing to new followers.
Read – Content Marketing for Manufacturers: Everything You Need to Know
If you’ve been solely growing your business with social media, you’re to be commended for your efforts. However, without a content marketing system, your business can’t reach its true potential. A content marketing system is composed of two parts:
When these two parts work together, you get a content marketing system that makes it possible to create, edit, and manage the content you produce. Popular content marketing systems include platforms like:
Once you’ve decided on a content marketing system, your next step should be creating a content calendar for your business. Your content calendar, also known as an editorial calendar, is a way to outline and plan all your upcoming content across your various social media platforms. It includes anything from partnerships and ads to plans for repurposing your existing content. Besides creating deadlines for your content, content calendars can improve your overall content growth strategy in three ways:
Most content creators typically divide up their editorial calendar into weekly, monthly, and quarterly sections. Dividing your content up in this manner gives you a bird’s-eye view of what needs to get done and when. You’ll be able to see the gaps in your calendar and what kind of content is best suited for the time of year. Here’s how to create a content calendar:
Also Read – Content Creation Tools: What You Need and Don’t Need
Once you’ve got a solid content growth strategy in place, now all that’s left to deal with is, well, the content. As you work to grow your business, you’ll come to the crossroads of choosing to outsource your content or doing it yourself. Before you rush into a decision, take some time to weigh the benefits of each choice.
If you’re looking to improve your content-producing skills, doing your content isn’t the worst idea. While it’ll undoubtedly be rocky in the beginning, you’ll feel accomplished with each new skill you master in digital marketing. In addition, these small victories can instill you with the confidence needed to move forward in growing your business.
When you’re first getting your feet wet in the content creation world, your funds are likely low, and you don’t have as much to allocate to extra perks. Doing your content yourself helps you cut down on early startup costs while creating a unique voice for your brand.
One of the most significant benefits of outsourcing your content is that it gives you valuable time to work on the ten thousand other things a content creator must do. Producing quality content takes time, effort, and research, so it’s no secret that over 60% of businesses struggle to make content consistently. Instead of heading down the slippery slope of spotty, unreliable content production, choose to outsource. Not only does this take a load off your shoulders, but you reap the benefits of using trained professionals.
Outsourcing your content to an outside company gives you a fresh take on the types of content you produce. In the past, you may have shied away from making illustrations, infographics, or even short videos because it was simply out of your expertise. Bringing in a content creation helper can allow you to utilize the untapped content and appeal to a broader audience.
Even the best multitasker will admit that they have dozens of tasks that were left unfinished. Content creators wear dozens of hats every day. As a result, it’s nearly impossible to complete one task in a reasonable amount of time. Outsourcing your content will help you get quicker turnaround times and put out more content regularly.
Also Read – Combining The Best Content Marketing Tools for Success
Creating your content growth strategy can be draining, but it doesn’t have to be. Working with a content creation service takes the stress out of content creation. After all, you want to enjoy what you do — not dread it.
Responsify understands that even the best content marketing efforts can fall flat without a strong content growth strategy. We don’t want that to happen to you! So we work with you to implement various digital marketing strategies to help your business soar to new heights. Whether you’re looking to attract new customers, grow your online presence, or convert new organic leads, we’re here to help.
Also Read – How to Achieve the Highest Content Marketing ROI
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