All the gurus and experts are making their predictions for 2015. What works now, what the trends are and where you should concentrate your marketing dollars. I have read many of them and thought how do these apply to entrepreneurs and small business?
Quality is more important than quantity. In the drive to produce content for your blog, social media or articles, there is an often overlooked element called Quality. It’s not enough to wipe your brow and say, “Whew, I posted 3 blogs this week and posted on 5 social media platforms every day. I’ve done my content marketing.” Stop and look at what you have posted. Does anyone really want to read it? Is your audience saying, “Great some more information from Joe.” Or do they skim over your post while thinking, ‘Oh I see Joe is keeping busy.” You need quality content so your followers want to find out what you have to say.
Content marketing is inextricably linked with social media marketing.
You really can’t tear the two apart. Social media is an amplifier for content that you need to embrace to aid in your content distribution. Use social media as an amplifier for content. It will not only improve engagement but increase targeted leads.
Your advertisements should become less blatant and favor ads integrated with content. Buy Me! Hire Me! Face it, that hasn’t really worked for a while. A better tactic is weave your advertisements within your content. Demonstrate your expertise and you won’t need to say “Hire me!” when your target market needs your services, they will know you are the one who can serve them and they will call you.
Search engines now favor content! For my loyal readers, I’m sure you have heard my litany of SEO, SEO, SEO. So this development is very exciting to me.
“In looking at the factors that determine search engine rankings, we see that high-quality, long-form content, and content with many social media likes and shares, consistently rank highest.“ ~ Jayson DeMers in Forbes
High-quality, long-form content should be in the form of your blogs. This is where you put your best info out there and really establish your expertise and credibility. Couple that with quality social media (don’t tell me what you had for lunch, please) and you will see great strides in your SEO.
Now take a look at what you are doing with your content marketing. Keep quality at the front of your mind and then devise a plan to make your content marketing and social media marketing work together.
What is your experience? Do you think there are other trends we need to watch for 2015? Let me know in the comments.
