Once upon a time, the adage was “content is king.” Now, content is everything. Without digital content, your business is going to struggle. Why? Because consumers have grown accustomed to the ability to learn more, dig deeper, and suss out better, more meaningful details about a company or a product.
Consumers want blogs, videos, social media posts; they want to be able to follow you and get instant updates about your products and services. They want more and they want it available 24/7. Although that sounds like a daunting task, it doesn’t have to be. With careful planning, qualified employees, and the right tools, you can raise your digital content game to the next level.
The big question then, is how do you make this a reality? Although it will take some time and effort, any business (no matter the size) can capitalize on digital content. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can make this happen for your business.
Create Solid Content
Without a doubt, this is the single most important thing you can do to improve your digital content presence. It all begins and ends with the content. No matter how hard you try to market bad content, it will fail to produce. So, even before you start working on your new digital content marketing strategy, it must begin with solid content.
Take the time to outline what kinds of content you want and then ensure you have the staff to make this a reality. Don’t pull just anyone from any department and assume they can do the job. Even though you have a highly-skilled marketing department, they might not have anyone capable of standing in front of a camera to create compelling content.
These are special skills you’ll need, so hiring the people to fit the bill is key.
Regularity is Absolute
Once you know the type of content you’re going to produce, you must understand that regularity is absolutely key to success. You can’t randomly post a new YouTube video and expect to build a following. Pick a day (or multiple days) of the week to post those videos and stick to that schedule. Even better, plan on either doing daily content (at best) or weekly content (at least) to keep things current and exciting.
Even if you have to hire new staff to keep up with the demand, scheduling regular digital content is the only way to go in this need-for-stream world we now live in.
Know Your Audience
This is just as important as creating solid, regular content. You have to know your target audience. For example, if your company makes a product that is primarily used by senior citizens, creating content for TikTok or Instagram is pointless. At the same time, if you offer a service or app that appeals mostly to millennials, sending email blasts or paying for Facebook ads is probably a waste of resources.
So, know who it is your digital content needs to focus on and work accordingly.
Use the Right Tools
Once you know your audience, you’ll better understand the tools necessary to create and market your content. And this won’t simply be a matter of employing Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. You’ll need scheduling, editing, collaboration, and marketing tools.
You might find, however, the exact tool you need doesn’t exist. If that’s the case, you might want to consider hiring a third-party, offshore development firm to build the perfect software solution to meet your digital content creation/marketing needs.
Don’t Behave Like a Brand
This one might be a bit challenging for some. Instead of behaving like a brand, you need to act like a human being who interacts with other humans. This is important because consumers need to feel as if they matter and there’s at least some level of personal experience happening in the interaction. If your digital content is nothing more than brand placement and brand promotion, you’ll miss out on making your customers feel as if they’re getting a personal experience.
For example, the point of social media is to build relationships, not a customer base. If you approach those platforms with that idea in mind, you’ll find those customers are much more loyal and willing to consume (and share) your digital content with others. Depersonalize this and you’ll experience the complete opposite.
Optimize Your Website
If your website isn’t already optimized for digital content, it’s time you change that. This might require you to hire new developers who can work with Java, JavaScript, and several front-end frameworks.
One thing to consider is that you’ll be delivering digital content to a number of different platforms. At the same time, you want to be able to embed that same content into your company website, so your customers aren’t always having to head to other services and platforms to view or read the content.
And while you’re at it, make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices. Given over 50% of internet traffic comes from smartphones, this has become an absolute necessity.
Conclusion
This isn’t going to happen overnight. Getting the most out of your digital content requires a lot of work and a lot of persistence. But if you put in the time and effort, this will pay off with bigger demand and higher profits. You’ll start slowly and eventually build your digital content strategy until it becomes a key component of your business. Once you’ve reached that level, you’ll find content is, in fact, everything.
