In today’s competitive world, brands are in a frenzy to find significant online presence and customer connection. Therefore, advertising skills need to be super polished and very social media-centric. Therefore, it’s imperative that brands and businesses target the right person at the right time with the right message. This is remotely possible without customer engagement. Customers are a loyal fan base of any brand. Without them brands mean nothing. You’ve noticed how social media posts, viral articles, videos, and blogs with popular headlines (often advertisement logos) from reputed brands catch the audience’s pulse. Also, it’s a fact that if you’re not on the first page (Google SERP), your brand doesn’t exist.
What must you do to rank your posts? How can viral articles capture customer sentiments?
Richard Sedley, at the i-scoop seminar, said, “Customer engagement is to strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment a customer has in a brand”. Apple’s “Think Different” or De Beers’s “A Diamond is Forever” are examples of marvelously crafted slogans, which immediately connect with the customers. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to sustain the success crazy world of aggressive competition. To be ahead of other brands requires tweaking the content marketing strategy. The focus should be on organic search, where viral articles (blogs, web content etc.) rank high. Automatically, the brand’s online presence is ramped up. Visibility across multiple digital platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+) is maximized and audience reach widens. Let’s take a closer look at SEO and social media strategies that ensure your posts or content rank well.
Step1) Create valuable anchor content (text) for on-page optimization
As writers, make sure the content in viral articles should be such, that all requisites to customer engagement are fulfilled. It means it should aim to educate the customer, raise awareness and interest, and generate revenue through purchase. The content needs to be unique, relevant, engaging, error-free and approximately over 2000 words. Section the content into popular headlines as sub-headers and headers. Also, the content should be a shareable type, with factual elements correctly essayed. Content with appropriate and attractive images, logos, videos is a major hit with customers. It’s a good idea to use the Google Adwords Keyword Planner.
Note: It is important to engage your visitors and make yourself more visible if you want to be seen online. Write blogs and publish them on your site which is informative and can draw your visitor’s attention. Create a subscription database so that each blog that you publish goes to these recipients, thus increasing your site traffic. Content optimization helped our clients increase their traffic by almost 300 percent. Check our healthcare digital marketing and legal digital marketing services for success.
From the content marketing aspect, content research is the key to a good rank. Various online tools help to derive at great content ideas. Content research tools must be deftly used to decide on keywords which form the topic, title, and body of a good content. Avoid keyword stuffing as it negates SEO. Canonical URL with the keyword embedded and use of descriptive Alt tags with popular headlines (Title tag, Meta tag, and Meta description) are smart digital marketing practices.
Step 2) Select an authority site – your content’s safe launch pad
When you’re ready with the anchor content, select an authority site that will work best for your business or brand. You can select from Medium, Quora, LinkedIn’s Publishing Platform, SlideShare, Scribd, YouTube or any other authority sites based on their domain authority (DA). Such sites are credible and big on trust and authority. Choose from the available SEO tools like Google Analytics, StartupFlux, SEMrush, Page Speed, SEO Quake Tool etc. to determine the best-suited authority site.
Step 3) Link anchor content to the authority site
As you already know, keyword stuffing is a big no in organic search. LSI (latent semantic indexing) keyword is what will get you started. LSI keyword is similar to exact-match keyword but it’s not identical, e.g., LSI variant of “men’s clothes” is “gent’s garments”. The content from your authority site should have one relevant LSI keyword link to your anchor content.
Step 4) Share authority site content across social media
You will get considerable customer engagement if you share your authority site content through social media. Anchor content doesn’t fetch such phenomenal results. At a later stage, you can share the anchor content through social media platforms. Users nowadays are far more likely to ‘Like’ something, than to link it. Bing uses Facebook ‘Likes’ as a ranking signal. Tweets help Google index content faster.
Step 5) Keep a weekly tab on the authority site content
Content marketing job doesn’t end here. By repeatedly sharing the original authority site content, will create a powerful chain of links that does wonders in organic search. If your brand or business is craving for Like Comment Share actions, make regular marketing moves (Step2 to Step4). Regularly check for the amount and quality of social shares of the page, authority of the social users/accounts sharing the content/URL. Keep a watch on site-level social signals, following, online activity, and interactions in the site’s social brand pages. A little spying to check your competitor brand’s online marketing activity is crucial to plan your own marketing strategy.
Apart from analyzing Like Comment Share activities, read maps for demographics, behavior data, lifestyle and psychographics related to the customer segment. Engage in market research. Join the community you’re researching and understand the audience’s mindset. Invest exhaustively in content research. Pay attention to mobile version/responsive design.
Conclusion
Content marketing is a regular process where existing content needs to be brushed up with modifications from time to time. With changing customer fancies, the brand needs a content makeover too. Revamped content and weekly content marketing checks will ensure the brand’s online posts catch the audience’s attention. Remember, content is the king, it directly affects page rank.
