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Building and maintaining an online presence in this internet-dependent culture is one of the most important ways to accomplish your marketing goals and grow your brand. In fact, digital-savvy marketers know that if your target consumers can’t find you with a single Google search, your chances at gaining customers online are close to none.
Being on social media is a good start—but if you want your target market to have access to relevant information about your brand at all stages of the purchase funnel, you need to have more than just a Facebook or Instagram account.
In our Philippine Digital And Content Marketing Report 2017, social media ranked the highest in digital marketing effectiveness, but content marketing came in second—surpassing email marketing and display ads.
Brands are now increasingly redirecting marketing budgets towards creating content that puts the needs of their consumers first. And, with the advent of new technology and sophisticated platforms, marketers are now able to run a wide variety of content marketing campaigns to help them achieve their business objectives.
Where and How To Start
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all these promising options, but if you’re looking for a way to get started (or to extend your reach beyond social media), a content portal might be your best bet.
A content portal is a landing page filled with content that inspire, entertain and educate your audience. By producing quality content to populate the page, you can turn a simple content portal into an effective information hub that helps you capture data for retargeting or leads, and ultimately boost your search performance for your products or services.
Getting It Right
It is one thing to create a content portal with great content, but it’s another thing to make sure your consumers actually find it.
When starting a content portal, brands must keep in mind that it is a long-term effort that needs to be sustained by a steady stream of SEO-optimized content, and supported by distribution through social media and paid ads. If you do this well, you may start seeing SEO results after some 6 months.
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In the meantime, here are the 2 most important things you should do when starting a content portal:
1. Start with keyword searches.
Search engines scan your website for keywords that consumers are actually using to find you—which means that it is your job to make sure that you use the right keywords in the content you produce. Otherwise, you won’t come up in people’s search results.
Search for the most common terms used in your niche, and find derivative keywords around these terms. Know which keywords your competitors are ranking high for, and incorporate these in your own content. Stay ahead of industry trends and build an agile content strategy around relevant buzzwords!
There are a lot of methods and tools you can use to find the right keyword search strategies for your website. Take your time researching and analyzing what works best for your brand. With continuous research and fine-tuning, you can improve your ranking on search engines and increase website traffic within a few months.
2. Work with dedicated and experienced content creators.
Online written articles, which are key to driving SEO, can be one of your most effective content marketing activities--but only if your consumers find them relevant, interesting, and expertly-written.
In the same Digital And Content Marketing Report mentioned earlier, our research have found that the lack of expertise is a challenge faced by most brands doing content marketing in-house--especially those with no dedicated content marketing teams.
Psychological biases might also come into play, since in-house marketers are prone to selective perception and confirmation bias due to being exposed to a seemingly static set of customers.
Given this, it may benefit your brand to work with expert writers and content creators from our network. To give you an idea of how we do this at GetCraft, check out Pursuit of Passion, a lifestyle portal run by Avida using our network of writers to help consumers navigate the relatively long consideration phase when purchasing real estate.
Starting a content portal is a cost-efficient way to jumpstart your brand’s content marketing. No matter what industry you’re in or what you’re trying to sell, you can’t go wrong with having a platform that helps you appear on your target consumers’ search results. Yes, it MAY take you a few months to see results, but isn’t that why you should already be starting?
