11 Content Secrets Every Marketer Needs to Know

Digital marketing is a powerful tool. It can boost brand awareness, increase sales, and build a strong community. However, all of this doesn’t come easy. It requires a lot of dedication, planning, and perfect execution. Even an experienced marketer might be unaware of some marketing secrets that can make or break the deal. 

A successful campaign comes not only from following the trends. It demands deep knowledge of SEO optimization, understanding of the target audience and consumer persona, and creation of original and relevant content. A great marketer needs to consider all factors to avoid failure. This list of 11 marketing secrets will help any marketer to get a better grip on what to implement. 

Content Marketing Secrets that Will Boost Your Business 

1 – Create Strategy for Posting, Promoting, and Updating

Organic content marketing should not be random. Always start with planning. You need to have a clear posting, promoting, and SEO strategy. Continuity is the key to success here. Content should be regular and on-brand. Pages with a history of posting get higher SEO ranking.

The best solution is to create an editorial calendar. It should include the dates, titles, goals, and core message. It helps to reach a bigger goal whether it is increasing conversions, boosting organic traffic, or getting more shares. 

Next step is promotion. Create a promotion strategy for every post. It can include shares on social media, apps, personal accounts, etc. Consider collaborating with other creators to bring it for a wider audience. 

One of the efficient freelance marketing secrets is to update old content. According to a Hubspot survey, 51% of companies said that updating old content was the most effective tactic in their strategy. Use analytic tools to see how old pages perform. Figure out those that need to be updated based on high bounce rates. Put the task to update them into calendar.

2 – Know Your Audience

The main mistake of many marketers is the disregard of the target audience. It is not a big surprise that content should appeal to people. Still, some professionals create content-centric strategies instead of audience-centric ones. You are writing for people, not for the brand. Create a buyer persona to understand the audience’s needs and issues. Base your strategy on what is helpful and interesting for them. 

3 – Provide Value for Audience

Great content should give a person value. It can be emotional, social, practical, or informational. 

• Provide an emotional response in the readers/viewers. Emotion is what makes people like and share posts and what drives them into buying particular products. Good marketing always evokes a positive emotional response;
• Solve the problem, give practical value. For a user, the post is a solution to the problem they are facing. Build a strategy round providing helpful information; 
• Give the audience social value.  Make them feel better about themselves or look good. 

4 – Give Headline Extra Thought

What marketing secrets could be full without attention to the headline? A headline is crucial as it is the first thing a person sees. Based on it someone decides to open the article or not. Always make sure that it is clear, straightforward, and features the main keyword. Follow the classic formula of success: 

Number+ Adjective+ Keyword + Rationale + Promise 

Take the title of this article as an example.

5 – Create and Follow Content Checklist

To maintain constant high-quality, it is better to have a checklist for every piece of content. It helps to control everything before posting. The piece should tic all the boxes you need, such as: 

• Relevancy to the audience;
• Clear core message;
• Ground research and links to respectable sources;
• Plagiarism check (95-100% originality); 
• Use of relevant keywords;
• Lengths of the post (articles that are more than 3,000 words attract 3 times more traffic and the shorter attention span is proven to be a myth); 
• SEO optimization – headline, meta title, and meta description; 
• Internal links to previous articles; 
• Images or video included; 
• Call for action. 

Depending on the brand’s needs one can adjust this checklist. 

6 – Broaden and Diversify

Just in 2 years, videos will make about 82% of consumer traffic online. Users retain 95% of information from a video compared to 10% from a text. Text is good, but it should not be the only type of content. Diversify it with imagery, pictures, graphs, or videos. 

Also, broaden the reach by introducing other mediums for content, like podcasts or YouTube channel. After all, YouTube is the second popular website after Google. 

7 – Build Community

It is complicated but worth it. People are engaged not only with content but also with the creator or brand. Local customers are more likely to make new purchases. That’s why it is important to engage with the audience and communicate with them. And it is also the reason behind the trend of the personification of brands. 

Encourage people to share their opinion in comments, incorporate challenges, answer the requests, and re-post people’s posts on the official page. Make people feel like they are heard and valued. 

8 – Write Simple

Readability is what makes people bounce off the page. If they cannot read and comprehend the convoluted message, they will probably stop trying. Always make sure that the text is simple and all terms are comprehensive. 

Break it down to shorter paragraphs. Add bullet lists and H2/H3 so it is easy to follow. Be minimalistic and simple with words, stories, and the structure. 

9 – Exchange Audience via Collaboration

One of the great ways to track new users to organic content is to exchange audiences. It helps to increase brand awareness as well as interest more people in your content. Collaboration with other creators is a good idea. It can be almost anything: 

• Video shot together; 
• Quotes or interviews; 
• Mutual promotion; 
• Featuring and praising others work, etc. 

You can be a guest on other platforms or invite creators to your, either way, your audiences will increase mutually. 

10 – Care About Reputation

Reputation is easy to lose and hard to gain back. Overall, it is about trustful relations with customers and partners. Statistically, 70% of people will avoid buying from a brand they don’t like. And 90% of people read information online before visiting a business. 

That’s why it is crucial to maintain a good reputation. It comes in terms of business ethics, employer persona, shared values, and quality of services. It also directly influences the marketing strategy and the way the content is presented. 

11 – Don’t Underestimate Scarcity

It is not one of the deeply hidden marketing secrets, but it is astonishingly effective. Limiting the time of the deal always brings good results. Offer limited in time access to some features of a website or premium content for subscription, for example. You get the leads and people get a valuable exchange.

In Summary 

These marketing secrets are all about purposeful and audience-centered content. To attract a loyal following, you need to provide them with a solution to their problems and give them value. It is also essential to plan out strategically the posts and promote them. As well as always make them SEO optimized. Because no matter how good content is, if it is on the second page of Google, 90% of people will never find it. 

Author’s bio: Vasy Kafidoff is co-founder and CEO of WritingMetier. He is interested in technology and innovation and the ways they influence business and digital marketing.