Is blogging helpful for an ecommerce website? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.
Take the case of Marcus Sheridan owner of River Pools and Spas. His blog post on fiberglass pool costing led to sales worth more than $1.7 million for his swimming pool company.
While it is rare for a single blog post to lead to such huge amount in sales, there are numerous small businesses that have seen substantial increase in their conversion over the long term. According to a study by Hubspot, businesses that blog get 55% more visitors and 97% more inbound links.
Here is how blogging can help your ecommerce site in the long run:
Blogging improves SEO
Blogging regularly leads to better ranking on search engines such as Google and Bing. More blog posts mean more indexed pages for Google to crawl. An average company that blogs has 434% more indexed pages compared to one that does not blog. This translates to better ranking on Google.
Search engines also prefer sites that are updated regularly with fresh content. This is why adding new blog posts regularly will boost your rankings.
Blogging will also give you an opportunity to rank for keywords that do not fit into your product pages. For example an ecommerce website selling bicycles cannot target popular keyword ‘best bicycles for mountain trails’ unless they write a blog about it. Blogging will also increase keyword density of important keywords in your site and drive up your rankings.
Lastly blogging allows other bloggers or businesses to link to your informative post and earn you precious back links. Blogs are also sharable and this helps to optimize your site for search engines.
Helps in Branding
All successful businesses are great storytellers. Nobody wants to visit a site with just a list of products. Blogging is an effective way to tell your brand story.
Blog lends a personality and voice to your website. Visitors can know more about your business and product philosophy through blogs. Blogs can be used to connect with your visitors and build a relation with them.
An informative blog that addresses reader’s pain points will keep them coming back for more. Educating your readers with what they are passionate about will build a certain brand authority in their mind. They will turn to you for any query in your industry. This helps to establish a loyal online community that values your brand.
Increases Conversions
Yes, blogging has a direct impact on your sales conversions too. In fact, businesses that prioritize blogging experience 13 times increase in ROI according to Hubspot. This is because of the continuous stream of traffic that blogs drive to your website. The marketing ‘rule of 7’ says that most of your prospects won’t buy from you unless they have seen your brand at least seven times.
A quality blog will keep your audience coming back and make sure that you are on top of their mind when they think of purchase in your industry.
Supports Content Marketing and Inbound Sales
Blogging provides a continuous stream of content to drive your content marketing. Sharing others content can build audience, but how do you make sure your following becomes your traffic to ecommerce site?
Blogs are an integral part of inbound methodology to convert visitors into leads. This can be done by inserting a call to action in your blog itself. This could be a discount coupon, free guidebooks or free shipping in lieu of their email id.
Sharing your own quality content will build your brand authority, drive traffic and also convert it to customers in your ecommerce business.
Customer Touch point
Blogs are also a great way to be in touch with your prospects and customers. Encourage your readers to comment on your post to have a dialogue with them. This drives up user engagement and gives your readers a sense on involvement in the business. Blog comments can also be used to choose the next topic for your blog. Many of the successful blogs just answer the most pressing questions that customers in their industry have. Encouraging a two way communication on your blogs will drive user engagement, conversion and feedback.
The importance of a blog for an ecommerce site must be clear after reading this. So have you started on your blogging journey yet?
Video is a powerful medium for promotional activities of businesses. As a marketer, you might have created several videos for the promotional activities of your business. Though such videos are of good quality you may not get enough viewers for it. What will be the reason for this? There may be many reasons for less viewership of your videos. The problem may be with your video content strategy.
We have a created a list of reasons that keep the viewers skip your video. There are also suggestions listed here in the form an infographic to get you more viewers for your marketing videos. We hope this illustration will help you to formulate a better video content strategy next time.
High quality content is still the king in online marketing. Most businesses are now focusing on creating more content than ever before. The major thing to note is that the content is used everywhere and influences every other type of marketing strategy; let that be emails, blogs, articles, press releases or even social media comments. A smart content marketing strategy helps to drive more organic traffic to your website.
Pushing out fresh content that keeps your audience engaged is the requirement that helps you score better in SEO. Professional SEO companies use advanced strategies to promote your brand and business.
Let us discuss some points that help you create a content marketing strategy that best describes your business goals.
Know your goals – Before you begin planning, define your goals. Think about how your content marketing should help you meet your objectives such as
Determine your target audience and get to know them. Before you start suggesting topics and creating titles, you need to know exactly what your target audience is looking for.
Knowing your target audience needs will help you to produce more relevant and valuable content. Understand your audience clearly either using Google Analytics traffic report or with surveys. Learning to provide the right content for the right reader makes your job much easier.
There are few more tools that provide insight on your audience’s interests and requirements. Tools include
Answer the Public
The auto-suggest results provided by search engines provide insight for content marketers. When users start typing a word, Answer the Public allows them to link the keyword that relates to their product or service, the people’s queries about the concerned service, and it comes up with a number of search phrases drawn from Google, Bing and other search engines.
Twitter Audience Insights
This latest analytics tool from Twitter will provide marketers with relevant information about what kinds of people are interacting with their brand. The tool offers access to information such as key demographics, interests, lifestyle, purchasing behavior, and mobile footprint, which helps marketers know exactly what kind of people follow their brand and what sort of content attracts them to their website.
Competitor analysis, a great way to reach the right path
Grab a list of competitors, analyze them and understand what makes them different. Realizing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats helps to find what exactly your customers are searching for in your industry. This analysis also can discover the most useful keywords your clients may be using to search you.
Quality, a priority
High quality, engaging posts with useful details are likely to get more shares on social media platforms. With top quality blogs and articles, even you can get attention from your competitors or even from other industry who take your company as an expert. Also make sure to choose trending topics that are relevant for your business and include a back link to the source, which helps them to know about your article.
Get familiar with content types
Once you establish goals and your target audience, try to provide content that includes informative data that is of use for your audience.
Set a goal to publish one piece of content daily, weekly or in alternate days. Don’t just leave the content after publishing. Promote them and track the progress of your content. For instance, if you have posted a blog in Facebook, check how many people liked it, respond to the comments, provide answers if any questions were asked and write a follow-up blog with more updated information. This helps to keep your audience in track.
Editorial Calendar helps
Once you have an idea as to how great content can be created, then it’s the right time to go for an editorial calendar. This calendar, which includes social media posts, audit rates and more, helps to keep track of your content. They are extremely helpful to organize our workflow without any error.
Editorial calendar –
Provides chance to carefully plan content creation beforehand
Helps writers to overcome writer’s block
Allows to keep track of every single post in social media
Maintain the right track for publishing a well-balanced and diverse content on website
Social media is your friend
Engaging with your audiences in real conversations will bring better results and add more value to your social streams. Know your audience’s priorities as you plan. Focus on what they want to know and not what you want to tell them. Also stay up to date with latest social media changes.
Learn ways to distribute your content
Ways you choose to promote your content is also important. A detailed plan will help. Few suggested ways include
Using paid ads on social media platforms like Facebook
Preparing a list of sites and bloggers whom you need to contact, which helps in getting a steady traffic and fresh leads
Sending Emails and following up them using tools such as Yesware and Mixmax.
Creating a content marketing strategy may be time-consuming, but provide fruitful results for SEO. If you are not that familiar with SEO or content, consider choosing an experienced SEO firm that can work as an extension to your company.
Needless to mention, any business thrives only when it has a solid customer base. With so many startups and businesses targeting the same consumer segment, it is your prerogative as an entrepreneur to do everything that is within your reach to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
In what way is my product or service meeting the needs of my customer?
In how many ways is my product different from others?
These are the two questions of introspection that should drive you to take certain measures in line with your marketing strategy. All for the sake of generating leads which will ultimately become your brand loyalists, thereby increasing your sales, your marketing strategy should be your prime instrument for change.
It is a thing of the past when customers were influenced to buy certain products that flashed on their TVs or in their morning newspapers. Billboards and hoardings too became promising advertising tools promising a greater reach. But this is not the scene anymore. With technology penetrating into every sphere of human life, the World Wide Web is the pivotal marketplace to checkout and order stuff.
Just signup with your chosen e-commerce website, select a product of your choice, order it online and receive the delivery at your doorstep without any fuss. Doing away the strain of physically knocking on the doors of a showroom, shoppers can shop for their needs from the comfort of their living rooms.
Offering a great deal of freedom and convenience to the shopping fraternity, online shopping has revolutionized the way in which people pick up and use stuff. And what makes this type of business proposition click?
Content – The Magic Wand of Words and Pictures
Primarily focused on customer engagement, it is only through good website content that you can attract the attention of potential customers. It can be a social media update or a compelling blog post. Both these are the techniques that will engage your customers while paving way for a stronger brand positioning.
Genuine content tagged with images and videos is what drives your customers to pause for a second to understand what you are conveying. And if they like it, they will go a step further by sharing it within their contacts.
Commenting about your offering is another way in which online shoppers influence each other. Basically adding value to your service or product, it is only through effective content that you can increase traffic to your website; eventually leading to good sale figures.
The Need to Hire a Content Marketing Agency
Notwithstanding the fact that a professional setup can handhold your business on to the right path, the same belief holds good when it concerns hiring the services of a content marketing agency. Signing up the dotted line with such agencies will deliver you the following advantages.
1. The team of content marketing executives will help you organize, implement and test your content marketing strategy. Along with this, the added advantage comes in the form of tracking the progress of your strategy.
2. The agency can step in to give your current content marketing activities a facelift.
3. When you compare the cost v/s the numerous benefits that an agency has in store for you, allocation of a certain budget will lower your expenditure when you do not have to hire a full-time content strategist or a graphic designer. The team will step in to take care of all your content requirements at a much lower cost.
The Job Description of a Content Marketing Company
Having identified the functional and financial advantages of hiring a content marketing agency, now is the time to discuss about the different ways in which such companies help boost your sale figures.
1. A single-window service that will take care of all your content marketing needs including web content writing, SEO initiatives and all the aspects of your content marketing that will impact your supply chain.
2. The agency helps you gain a comprehensive idea of your business goals looking through the lens of your online presence. Recommending changes to the content alongside fixing content deficiencies will hence be the responsibility of the team.
3. As an outside agency, the team of content marketers will be able to offer you objective suggestions to build your brand. Tagged as a reliable source of marketing information, it is through their years of marketing experience that you will be able to create your market niche.
4. A consolidated report from the professional agency will help you assess whether the current situation is in sync with what was agreed upon earlier as part of the agency contract requirements.
6. Helping you realize your short terms goals, a content marketing agency can be of utmost help when you are hard pressed to deliver an urgent project. While your workforce is getting tuned to the upcoming project, you can be at peace to work around a complete marketing plan offered by the agency. The prompt implementation of your marketing plan does wonders to your bottom line, allowing you to make the most of an unexpected opportunity.
Conclusion
Mindful of the advantages of hiring a content marketing agency for your small entrepreneurial venture, it comes as a wise move to hand over the reins of your content requirements to professionals. Bringing to the fore the cost-benefit analysis, it is evident that the benefits outweigh the costing factor of availing professional content marketing services.
Allowing your business to thrive with unique and high quality content, you will able to differentiate yourself from your competitors by signing up with professionals who can bring in informative and engaging text, videos, webinars, podcasts and infographics. All these enhancements to your website will make you stand apart in your business circles, not only through a better online presence but also in terms of long-standing profitability.
Imagine a situation like this. You need to access some information urgently but your data balance is too low.
The dilemma of the situation is that you do not have any means to recharge your data balance and all you can do now is to use the data that’s left wisely.
After a quick Google search, you clicked on a link which led you to an unknown page. Bad luck strikes again when the page displays a pop-up draining all your data.
That Sucks big time doesn’t it?
But no need to worry as new innovations are gaining their foothold in the world of omnipresent internet.
AMP helps publishers develop a skimmed down version of their actual page so that the user will not have to wait for much longer for the access.
Advantage of an AMP powered page is that it there is a strong probability that the website might be showcased in Google Carousel thus increasing the traffic and a swift rise in the ranking.
Have a look at this official video of AMP to get a detailed idea,
How does AMP work?
AMP uses a subset of HTML pages for optimized page rendering. Another indispensable and astounding feature of AMP is that it has an exclusive Javascript.
There are three types of AMP,
AMP HTML: A subset of HTML which has got custom tags and properties. However AMP HTML has got lot of restrictions to keep it minimalistic in terms of size. Those who are exposed to normal HTML language can easily adapt to AMP HTML.
AMP JS: Third party Javascript is not allowed in AMP JS. AMP has their own Java frame work which manages resources as well as asynchronous handling.
AMP CDN: This will help AMP pages get cached automatically in CDN through optimization.
How does AMP make a website accessible in lightning speed?
Focus on the website content: Mostly website takes time to load because of third party applications attached to the website. What AMP does is that it gives primary importance to the content of the website rather than anything else.
Next would be the JAVA part of the website. Instead of loading website’s JAVA elements, AMP loads its own version of it. By doing so obstruction by third party JS can be avoided and the page continues to load with or without the JS script.
However, such limitations can be tackled by iframes which allow third party JS.
Static Layout: AMP instantly loads the lay out first so that all the external images, apps or even iframes gets confined inside the layout of a website. By doing this AMP can pre-determine the exact size and shape of the website even before it’s loaded. In Short AMP does not require any other outside resources to load a website instead of that it requires only one HTML request to lay out the entire document.
Inline, Size-bound CSS: Even though everything works fine and is in the correct order, CSS tend to block the entire rendering page load and has high chance of getting bloated. AMP pages only allow single style sheet and that too inline. As a result a lot of HTTP requests will be removed from the rendering path.
One of the most astounding features of inline CSS is the size itself. The entire script will be of 50KB. Thus, making it easy to load. However, the process also depends on the written CSS quality of the author of the website.
Font Optimization: Font of websites tends to be super large hence optimization of fonts is necessary to decrease the load time. And mostly, AMP requires zero HTTP requests until the font starts downloading. This is only possible due to the synchronous nature of the java script and only inline style sheets are allowed.
Style and Lay out recalculation minimization: The browser has to recalculate and lay out the page upon script change or even an update. Since Amp mediates all render operations it minimizes effort. In short, one or two layout is required before a page is fully loaded.
GPU Accelerated Animations: AMP transfers a lot of image loading work to the GPU of a device rather than CPU. This makes the website run faster on your device.
How to Install AMP in a WordPress Website?
1. Install WordPress AMP plugin: At present there are 2 plugins are commonly used by developers. The most famous one is developed by Automattic and the latter developed by CDN. After installation, you can see the optimized version of your website if you add AMP to the end of the permalink.
For eg: www.ABCDEFG/blopost/amp/
Process
Open the DashBoard
Go to ‘Plugins’
Click ‘Add New’
Type ‘AMP-WP’ in the search box
Chose the desired AMP plugin and click install
After Installation click the ‘Activate Plugin‘ tab
After installation go to ‘Settings’ and choose ‘Permalinks’
Click the ‘Save Changes’ button
2. To Validate the AMP version
Paste the AMP version of URL to the Omnibox, Add ‘#develeopment=1’ to the end of the url and press enter
Press CNTRL+SHIFT+I
Select ‘Console’
If everything works fine a message will appear which says that ‘AMP validation successful’
When a user does a search on a mobile device, Google at first searches for an end tag to find out which websites have the mobile version. So the priority always goes to that website which has AMP tag in their link.
3. Customize and configure Your AMP Page: After installing AMP to your WordPress website it will create a layout for your page. However, if you need any addition you can avail the help of plugins to edit the CSS as well as your AMP template of the website. For example, you can install analytics, SEO, Adsense etc. to AMP in accordance with your preference.
AMP since it’s open source also has the feature to edit so that any improvement from developers can be added to it.
4. Fixing the Errors: It is obvious and normal that error will pop up after the installation of AMP. If it happens do not panic as AMP is not at all a stand alone plugin which is meant to resolve any mobile optimization related issue of your website. What AMP does is it simplifies layout of your website in each and every scenario. So if there is any kind of error you need to fix it manually which can be easily traced in through WordPress.
AMP is made by Google and they give prominence to websites which have AMP support if there is a search. Fixing errors is a crucial process as it will ensure that your AMP page gets indexed on Google search and cached on AMP CDN (Content Delivery Network). CDN helps AMP websites when there is a search from third party website for eg. Twitter.
Errors of an AMP page can be found by navigating through,
Login to Google search console > Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages
Last but not least always check for errors after each and every update.
How does AMP influence on Digital Marketing?
Higher traffic: The purpose behind the birth of AMP was to make websites accessible for all users without any delay. Since AMP pages loads within seconds the bounce rate will be less and happy users are more likely to back again.
Higher Ranking: Google has denied that AMP is not at all a criterion for ranking. However, in Google Carousel results, only AMP pages are showcased. and those who are using AMP version of a website will beg to differ as they have seen ranking improvement considerably.
Increase in Paid Search Results: Users tend to hit back to their search after reading the content. Since, pages load within seconds users will have the tendency to access more pages thus increasing clicks on paid search results.
The flexibility of Open Source: The beauty of open source is that it can be improved in accordance with the need of a user. Analytics, as well as SEO extension can be added to the AMP pages so that insight about a website will be detailed and simple.
Content is at the centre of all digital marketing efforts. But how do you ensure that your content reaches your readers once it is ready ?
There are many channels to make sure your content is read by the right audience. Email, SEO, Social media, PR, Paid advertisements and videos are some of them.
Social media is one of the most important platforms to promote your content. According to CMI 93% of B2B marketers list social media as one of the top five content marketing tactics.
Here is the breakdown of social media platforms used by marketers.
Content marketing and social media go hand in hand. Good content has no value without being promoted on social media. And social media marketing will fail without good content strategy.
Social media should always be a part of the overall content marketing strategy. It is important to ask following questions before developing content:
Who are we writing content for? Who is our audience
What social media do they use?
How much time do they spend on each platform?
What are the most popular formats for each platform?
Social media is a way to reach your target audience. It is the vehicle which is fueled by good content. This is how social media can support your content marketing:
1. Reach out to the world
Great content is no good if it does not reach people. Social media is one platform where you can promote your content to reach maximum number of users.
Social media has more than 2 billion users currently. Facebook users alone generate around 3.2 billion likes and comments everyday! It is undoubtedly the best platform to reach to large audiences and engage with them. Sharing your content on social media will help you to get more traffic and higher conversions for your website.
2. Let users do the marketing
The beauty of social media is that the users themselves will market content for you. Content that is relevant and timely will be shared multiple times by users. A positive word about your brand on Facebook is seen by other members and builds trust in your brand.
You can also encourage influencers to share your media. Influencers are users with large following and good engagement on social media platforms.
Influencer marketing is one of the top content marketing strategies for 2017 and has been successfully used by big companies like Adidas as well as small start ups.
3.Get Real -time feedback
Social media is also a good way to listen to your audience. Many companies use Facebook platform for customer support, feedback and online community of customers.
It opens up two way communication between your business and its users. You can use this platform to generate new content ideas that your readers want.
You can also create polls in Facebook to know what your readers want to read about.This will keep your content relevant and responsive.
4. Build a loyal community
Social media also allows you to build a loyal online community that is invested in your business. These community members identify with your brand and share a common purpose with your business (which is why they follow you).
You can build a sense of community amongst these users with the right kind of engagement. These are your loyal base of customers who will spread your message in the digital world.
5. Drive traffic
Facebook shares, re-tweets and instagram impressions can get you huge traffic. Social media drives more than 35% of traffic and is the top driver of website referral traffic.
Your shares and posts act as baits to lead to your website and leadpages. Make sure that your blogs and content are socially sharable. You can follow following best practices to maximize the use of social media to drive traffic and conversions.
How to make Social Media work for you
Follow the best practices below to make sure that your social media presence supports your content marketing strategy. Once you get this right a lot of your content marketing and content delivery will be done by your loyal followers automatically.
Choose the right platform
As mentioned above you must ask yourselves what is the purpose of your content and who are you writing for. Once this is clear you must choose which platforms you must be present on. A B2B business must have a presence on LinkedIn and Slideshare while Vine may not be so important.
There is no hard and fast rule however. Figure out your brand personality and your buyer’s behaviors. Different platforms can also be used to portray different sides of your brand personality.
4-1-1 Strategy
This is a strategy recommended by Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping. It recommends that out of every 6 pieces of content shared,
-4 should be popular or interesting content by other influencers
-1 piece should be your own and educational
-1 piece should be sales-related
Again, this is not a hard and fast rule and should be tweaked according to your industry. However, the important point here is to share a lot of good content by other influences. This keeps you social and also gets influencers to notice and remember you.
Visual Content
Keep your content visual to get maximum shares on social media. According to Kissmetrics photos get 53% more likes and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts.
Use infographics, videos and compelling pictures to get to your point quickly. Nobody likes to click on lengthy text on social media. Optimize your photos so that they do now appear cropped or odd on social media.
Add social media sharing buttons
Use social media sharing buttons on your blogs and sites. You can also insert tweet text in your blog. Use plug-ins to add these to your site. Ease of sharing will make a big difference to your share number as 51% of users access web on their phones.
Current topics
Use tools like Google Trends and Buzzsumo to find out topics of conversation on social media. Keep your topics relevant and fresh.
You can use industry events, sports tournaments or political elections to spike interests in your posts. Keep your posts focused rather than generalized for most part.
Listen to your audience
Keep a close eye on your social media accounts. Closely monitor the likes, comments and feedback. What are the posts that are doing well?
Which platform drives maximum engagements and why? Learn from your experience and continuously improve your content marketing strategy accordingly.
Social media is where you promote your content. It is an important part of a content marketing process and cannot be separated from it. In fact, introducing your content before your target audience would be difficult without depending social media platforms.
Content Marketing is a rapidly growing field and, content strategist, a fast filling vacancy in many organizations in 2017. According to a survey by recruiting firm The Creative Group, Content Marketing is the top area where companies plan to add staff in 2017. You might have heard of the role of Content Strategist, of late. Maybe you have even decided to hire one. Before sharing the guide on how to hire one let us first look at what exactly is the job of a content strategist.
Who is a content strategist?
Content Strategist is involved in all stages of content marketing life-cycle. This includes market research, content planning, content creation, content distribution and monitoring. It is relatively a new job title and hence, is still evolving. However, a content strategist is definitely someone who
-has the bird’s eye view of the content required to meet your company’s specific goals
– can chalk out a plan to reach your business targets through compelling content
Here is a Guide to hire a Content Strategist.
Define the Job clearly in your organization
The first step is to define the position clearly in your organization. The role does not have a fixed scope and you need to know what you expect the content strategist to deliver. Do you currently have a content developer, a digital marketer and content designer? If yes, how will the roles evolve, change or overlap.
Skills to Look for
As must be clear from the description of content strategist above, he/she needs to have a wide range of writing and marketing skills with plenty of creativity and vision. Following are qualities/skills that a content strategist must have:
Storytelling
Creativity and vision
Project Management Skills
Knowledge of digital marketing
Content writing and development, copywriting
SEO skills
User Experience and Design knowledge
That’s a lot to ask for, right? Remember that a content strategist doesn’t have to be an expert in all of the above. What is more important is his/her ability to analyze data, gain insights and weave all the components of content marketing into an actionable plan. He/she must have excellent creativity, storytelling and project management skills and communication. However, a basic level knowledge of other domains will also do.
It must be clear by now that content strategist is someone who has a varied experience under his or her belt.
Previous records & References
It is advisable to go through the candidate’s previous work. You can ask for samples or check the work they have done before online. The best past about content marketing is that all their previous work will be online and you can even check the success of it (check for number of followers, likes, traffic to page etc.)
What to ask
Interviewing the candidate should make it clear whether they have the required skills. Discuss goals and challenges that your company is facing and ask them for possible solutions. This should give you a fair idea whether they can solve the challenges and take you closer to your goals or not.
Where can I find the Perfect Content Strategist
We get it. The perfect content strategist might be hard to find. Not only does he/she need to have all the above mentioned skill and experience but may also need to have your industry knowledge. Consider looking at following places:
Within your Organization: Yes. Your content strategist might be already working with you as a content writer/ digital marketer. Look for project management skills and analytical abilities in your current employees. It is better to spend on training current employee who is a good fit rather than hiring someone completely new.
Recruitment channels: Again look for required skill sets in various recruitment channels like recruiting firms or online recruiting platforms. Do not be stuck with the job title of content strategist as it is a relatively new term. Your next content strategist might be working under the job title of content manager in some other company.
Hire a Digital Marketing Agency: This is an effective way to have a digital presence. Digital Marketing agencies provide content marketing services while cutting out your investment in hiring, training and maintaining a team. They already have expert content strategist who have experience in handling hundreds of projects. Many companies are going with this option of outsourcing content strategy work to the digital marketing experts.
Content marketing leaves a lasting impact like no other marketing strategy. Businesses, having recognized the true potential of content marketing in gaining and retaining customers, have already started using content marketing to their advantage.
Startups have more advantages over established businesses when it comes to content marketing. Startups may not have the budget to create and promote large amount of content like their bigger counterparts. However, being passionate about making it to the top will force startups to work hard and churn out relevant but creative content.
Here are some examples of Indian startups that are doing an amazing job with content marketing:
Zomato is one site that is a perfect example to the growth of a startup through content marketing. It is an online directory to find the nearest restaurants and now serves 15 countries, raising more than $65 million on the go.
Zomato’s content marketing doesn’t end with regular blog updates. They do not hesitate to try out different types of content including infographics, videos and campaigns. Not all of those different forms of content may click with the audience; however, trying out new things is the only way to understand what works and what doesn’t.
SutraLite is an HR recruitment agency for startups and SMEs. Its content marketing strategy is a bit different. Though some of the articles created by SutraLite are related to their services, the ones that mainly grab attention are those articles not belonging to their domain. These articles help them to improve web traffic and grow.
Brightpod is a web-based project management and time tracking software meant to help marketing teams to sort out and have a clear workflow. It is a part of Synage Software started by Sahil Parikh in 2005. Synage Software is an expert in marketing their products overseas and Brightpod is the latest addition to the list. The constant updates on their blog for customers and marketers alike is what keeps them growing.
Eventifier is a tool that helps to showcase all tweets, images, slides etc. of an event in one page. It is the brainchild of a group of youngsters from Mangalore and was first developed at The Startup Centre. Gradually, they have managed to find a place in the market through their content marketing strategy. Apart from blogs and newsletters, the best form of content delivered by Eventifier includes creating relevant insights for event organizers.
With digital marketing companies on a rise, Simply360 is a company whose services every business needs. The social media analytics company that was started in 2009 has more than 25 solid customers to their credit.
Companies like Adobe, WPP and Twitter had also come forward with acquisition offers which the company rejected. Instead of that, they decided to go ahead on their own. Simply360 has made it big by gathering data, dividing them and presenting them in the most suitable way possible. Many of the infographics and analysis created by the company has been adopted by various publications.
Thrillophilia is a trip planning portal that has come a long way from being a startup to being listed among the top travel domains. The portal provides large amounts of travel-based shareable content that has played a major role in its growth. Thrillophilia also offers specific activity based and unconventional travel packages.
Buzzvalve is a data driven content marketing business that helps companies to manage every aspect of web-based content lifecycle, from creation, distribution, marketing and conversion of content. The startup has big names like UNICEF, ISB, Honda, Fortis, etc. to its clientele and their amazing content and performance has tempted many more companies to hire Buzzvalve for creating content for them.
Buzzvalve has a simple and minimal website but is very clear about what it provides and what the customers can expect from the company. People can get a glimpse of Buzzvalve’s previous works through their social media pages.
Druva is the ultimate destination for companies for data protection and governance technology. The company that was started in 2008 has about 3000 customers to its credit and has already found a place in US market with revenue of $65 million. It was just a regular startup until one of the co-founders came forward to take care of the sales thus propelling the company to heights it is in today.
The Druva team has used their expertise to their advantage in terms of content they provide. Users can find information regarding anything related to data security in Druva’s blogs. Also, they use LinkedIn for promotions.
JU is a friend management system for Twitter and Instagram with 10 million users across the globe. Now it has been rebranded as Crowdfire, a social media marketing product.
It is a startup with minimal financial resource but has managed to find their place in the market through their content strategy.
Though the content they provide seems similar at times, there has been no compromise in terms of quality and continuity till now. The blogs are mainly about managing your social media accounts and relevant happenings across the world.
Infographics are a great way to present your content visually.Research shows that our brains process images 60,000 times faster than text! In fact, 93% of all human communication is visual.
Infographics present your data and information in charts and flows with the help of interesting shapes and graphics. They convert your lengthy data into visually appealing and easily digestible bits. Capturing more of user’s attention naturally leads to a better visibility and recall value for your brand. These are the ways stunning infographics can improve your brand awareness:
Infographics are sharable
Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared in social media compared to other types of content. A good infographic has logical content flow and is to the point. Once you have put together a visual content that conveys your compelling message in a focused and simple manner, it is bound to get shares in social media. More shares in social media naturally mean more visibility for your brand. Do not forget to take advantage of visual social media like Pinterest, Instagram, Vine etc.
Infographic is SEO friendly
Did you know that 55% of website visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a webpage? Infographics can not only increase the time visitors spent on your page but also the number visitors to your site. Articles with visuals get 94% more views. In short, infographics will increase number of visitors to your page, get you more shares and backlinks. Guess what this means? Higher ranking for your page in search engine results!
Visuals stay in mind
Information recall of a visual is 65% after three days compared to 10% for auditory information. This is the most important reason why infographics are great if you want to increase your brand awareness. The user will form an image of the brand based on her interaction with the content. A compelling infographic that gives relevant information will stay in the user’s mind for sure.
Easy to understand
Infographics are the best way to present complex concepts. You can explain multiple relations and correlations; lay down process flow or present variety at one glance. Presenting information in such simple manner displays your expertise in the subject and increases the likelihood of transactions.
Easily changeable and embedded
Infographics can be easily changed into different formats and dimensions to suit various platforms. They are also easily embedded and can be used to direct to your site in one click.
Infographics and video are hot trends for content presentation this year. To get the maximum brand awareness from them, do keep in mind these crucial points:
Drafting a compelling message is the first step to successful infographic. Your infographic must revolve around this central message in the focused manner.
A shabby graphic will do your brand more harm than good. Either invest in a good designer or stick to written content.
Source your data from reliable sources and credit the sources
Use your logo subtly. Using logo subtly but consistently will go a long way in building your brand.
Conclusion
They are one of the popular types of digital content used by digital marketing agencies around the world. Whether your business be B2C, B2B, or any other type, you can definitely include infographics in your content marketing campaigns.
Content Marketing is becoming a part of core marketing strategy for businesses across sectors and regions. 88% of B2B marketers admit to using content marketing. The field of content marketing is still evolving and there is a lot of change happening. So, here are the Top 5 game changers that will shape content marketing for small businesses in India as well as the big brands:
Video Content will be preferred
The Cisco Visual Networking Index has forecasted that video will account for almost 70% of consumer internet traffic by 2017. According to Nielsen, 64% of marketers expect video to dominate their strategies in coming years.
There is a growing popularity of video content among st users and the same will be reflected in the content businesses and brands put out. Videos are more engaging, convey a lot in less span of time and have a greater tendency to be shared on social media. This trend of more content in video format is going to continue this year.
Taking Matters into own hand
As more business realize the importance of a growing audience that comes back for great content, they will start building this audience themselves rather than relying on social media and other platforms.
Recent and frequent changes in Facebook and YouTube algorithms have highlighted the importance of having a loyal following even outside of these platforms. Facebook has recently made changes in its algorithms that give preference to posts shared by friends of users over those shared by brands. This means that getting to your potential customers is that much harder as the direct line of communication is now broken.
These and many more changes have made brands look for other options like mails, apps and even print magazines to directly connect with users.
Quality Content
As the users are bombarded with plethora of content, only the ones with good quality and niche content will get their due. Nobody wants to consume bad quality content in this age of shortening attention span. Even if the content quality is good, users do not waste their time watching something to which they do not connect or agree with.
The content consumption market is now at a stage where we will see specialization of content. This means content marketers will look for and try to chase niche markets. Differentiation of content market can be on various factors like region (urban/ rural), ideologies, demographics, habits and interests etc.
This one is a no brainer. We have seen in the end of 2016 that Mobile internet usage has surpassed desktop Internet usage for the first time in history. In this light, all content that is developed has to suit audiences browsing on mobile. The length, tone, call to action in the content will change accordingly. A lot of content will also be distributed through mobile apps.
User generated content
2017 will see a rise in user generated content. Product users and early adapters posting their reviews is a great example of user generated review. People are more prone to trust third party users just like themselves and hence, we see the rise of subscriptions for review channels. The role of bloggers, reviewers and YouTube stars is going to be more prominent in coming year. It is not about putting articles online anymore; but, about managing users and user influencers.
![11 Reasons Why No One is Watching Your Video Content [Infographic]](https://wp.jointviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/11-reason-info-featurd-img.jpg)
