Content Marketing Newbie Guide: 10 Ultimate Success Tips

Successful Content Marketing: The Ultimate Guide. Dear Content Marketing Newbie, So you wanna be a content marketer? A writer of epic stuff? An inbound marketer who wears a cape and saves the day with your lead-capturing content?

A content marketing job is almost like sitting at the cool table in the high school lunchroom. Almost.

Nothing “cool” comes for free, even content marketing has the dark-sides and the fact that social referral traffic is WAY down are just two signs that the road to wearing the Crown is with hardships.

But what is content marketing, what is it all about?

According to Wikipedia, Content Marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used by businesses in order to:

Attract attention and generate leads
Expand their customer base
Generate or increase online sales
Increase brand awareness or credibility
Engage an online community of users

Content marketing attracts prospects and transforms prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content.

Content marketing helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.

What Others Are Reading

This relatively new form of marketing does not involve direct sales. Instead, it builds trust and rapport with the audience.

With this you might think that it’s difficult, but don’t fret. We’ve got you covered, are 10 pieces of content marketing advice that will set the course more easier and productive.

Content Marketing Ultimate Guide

Successful Tips #1: Content marketing doesn’t start with content

Shocker! I know. You’re all like,“What?!” And I’m nodding my head “yep” with a smirk on my face. A lot of people get this one wrong. They start sending out all types of content and then wonder why their lead capture ratio sucks, or why no one is sharing their“epic” content.

There’s no secret sauce here. The key to creating seriously awesome content is knowing how your customers and would-be customers define your acclaim seriously awesome content.

Think about the blogs and sites you follow (like Abtechblog.com!).

You continue visiting those sites because they’re constantly sharing information that you NEED; information that will help you be a better content marketer. Isn’t it? Yea!

Recipe sites are a good example because they’re giving you the step-by-step process of how to do something.

Your content should do the same. And how do you KNOW what step-by-step processes your audience needs?

You define them. You define their needs, internal and external pressures, their pain points, and then…? You solve them with an excellent and engaging “recipe or tips.”

Giving your step-by-step processes for free is okay.

A lot of people balk at this one. “But, it took me time and money to develop that“recipe!” There’s NO WAY I’m giving that away for free!”

But you have to know that epic content marketing is creating content so valuable that people would pay for it.

And look at you, over here giving it away for free! You’re awesome! You must sit at the cool table!

Successful Tips #2: Quality content matters, but content distribution matters more

Okay, you’ve got your audience figured out, you know what kind of content to create, you create that content and publish it on the blog and then…?

And then it sits there and no one reads it or shares it (except for maybe your mom) and you’re totally bummed.

You haven’t done anything wrong, but you haven’t really done much either.

As Mark Schaefer says in his book The Content Code, creating content isn’t the finish line, it’s the starting line (a must-read for any content marketing newbie!).

Content distribution or promotion is how you get your content SEEN; how you get it to move (get shared) across online channels, the means or ways you publicize your contents after creation.

Below are the 7 me ways of content distribution:

Email
Social Media
Syndication platforms
Advertising
Influencer outreach
Partnerships
Press releases

So not only do you need to write that spot-on piece that’s crazy valuable to your target audience, you also need to ensure it gets its little b**t out there to show off.

Successful tips #3: Your content marketing efforts must tie to business goals and be measurable

Here I mean your efforts must be equal to your aim and vice-versa.

We’ve shared our “tips and guides” around the internet and we’ve made sure that our evergreen contents (the ones that never truly “expire”) are constantly getting shared online.

We’ve also used other (perhaps paid) methods to ensure our content is being seen by new (but targeted) leads.

Through Facebook ads, Sponsored posting and so on .

We’ve done a lot.

Give yourself a pat on the back and then take a breath, because we’re still not done.

Successful tip #4: Master Your Audience

After knowing the kind or category of people you’re targeting, have a draft or chart of what they like the most.

Not every contents suits every audience, therefore, try to come up with relevant piece of content that will add value and benefit your audience.

Successful tip #5: Make Your Points Short and Captivating

Avoid jam-packing all the points in one sentence. Rather, make your key points short descriptive and your title attention drawing.

Successful tip #6: Good Text Formating

It’s true that most site users scan through the contents looking for the information they need.

Therefore, using h1, h2, h3 tags etc. will help your site or blog users discover what they need easily and also gain value.

If they don’t discover what they need they wouldn’t be impress and this may result in bounce back rate and loose of authority and trust.

Successful tip #7: Build Trust and Authority With Your Audience

Trust, they say it’s hard to build but easy to destroy.

Yes, it might take time to build your brand trust and authority and vice versa, whatever the case may be, the work solely depends on you.

Successful tip #8: Always Stay Real

Yes! Don’t prank your audience! Very important. How can someone prank his or her audience? If you use titles that are very attractive but your contents doesn’t offer value, you’re pranking your readers.

For instance, topics like “Free Content Marketing Strategies” but in the content you’re selling an eBook without offering any value is what kill trust in content marketing.

Most content marketers do this mistake, apart from killing trust and authority, it increases bounce rate and may also affect SEO.

Successful tips #9: Study the Market

Know how your competitors are operating, know what works for them, study their marketing strategies, know how they make sales.

Use their metrics to improve your own content marketing strategies, but be careful, what works for them might not work exactly for you.

Don’t let them affect your pricing, your price should be solely on the value you want to offer.

Successful tip #10: Sale Effectively

The main aim of any content marketing practitioner is to make sales and if the sales is not made, it’s not making any sense.

If you use the above strategies in your content marketing, surely, you’ll have a positive output.

The Bottom Line

To have a successful content marketing career, look for the right audience, master the audience, provide relevant contents, offer value first, build trust and authority and make sales!

If you have any lessons to add or questions to ask, give me a shout out in the comments section below!