One of the most effective strategies you can do for your business is content marketing. However, it is an ever-evolving field, and new strategies arise ever so often. Whether you're a marketer looking to upskill or an entrepreneur wanting to DIY, here are the content marketing skills you need to know now:
Voice Search Optimization
The advent of voice-activated devices and virtual assistants has changed the content marketing landscape. Virtual assistants such as Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri have made using voice commands to search for information more popular than ever. As a content marketer, you need to tailor your content to maintain relevance and accessibility to a voice-driven audience.
You need to master writing conversational queries, using long-tail keywords, and providing actionable responses.
Featured Snippets
An effective content marketing skill is targeting and optimizing content that appears in featured snippets and other SERP (Search Engine Results Page) features. You should know how to structure your content in a way that search engines can understand and feature. This involves giving clear and direct answers to common user queries and using special formatting techniques.
Interactive Content Creation
Content marketing should engage your viewers. This means a great skill to acquire is the ability to create content that actively involves them. It is more than just plain text and images, and it uses tools such as interactive infographics, polls, quizzes, and calculators. This keeps them interested and encourages more time spent on your website.
Video SEO
A specialized strategy you can use is video SEO. It improves the visibility of your videos in search engine results, making them accessible to your target market. This requires keyword integration in your titles and descriptions, creating engaging thumbnails, and many more. You can also add transcriptions and subtitles to make them more engaging.
User-Generated Content Management
You may have already encountered user-generated content as an effective marketing strategy, but have you already used it? This is where you ask users to contribute content such as reviews, testimonials, videos, images, and others. Ensure that they are authentic experiences, stories, and visuals that align with your brand's mission and vision.
AI and Chatbots
Learning to use AI and chatbots for your content marketing strategies can provide you with many benefits. They save you time, improve engagement, and provide valuable data for refining your content marketing strategies.
Content Customization
More commonly known as content personalization, it is about creating content that has your target audience in mind. This is easy when you know all about them, their behavior, preferences, location, genders, and other demographics. This information will direct you to create content that's custom-made for them. This keeps them engaged and interested.
Data Privacy and Compliance
This involves protecting your users' personal information. It is complying with data privacy laws and rules related to it. As content marketers, you need to get consent when collecting data, ensure their information is secure, and adhere to regulations such as GDPR and CCPA to avoid risks relating to legalities and reputation.
Live Video Streaming
This refers to the skills you need to broadcast your video content over the internet in real time. This is an effective strategy as it lets your viewers watch presentations, events, or interactions as they are happening. This dynamic way to engage your audience is ideal for webinars, Q&A sessions, product launches, and many others. You need to hone your storytelling and presentation skills to be able to do well with this strategy.
Podcast Production
This is the process of creating audio content and sharing it via a podcast. For this, you need skills in content planning, audio recording, scriptwriting, voice performance, and hosting interviews. This also involves creating graphic design for cover art, RSS feed management, promotion, monetization strategies, and many others.
Content Localization
This is the practice of creating content that's relevant and culturally appropriate for a specific target in varying regions or countries. Knowing how to translate a text is crucial, but you also need to consider factors such as language nuances and local and cultural preferences. This goes hand in hand when you want your brand to widen its reach and engage with people from diverse backgrounds.
Shoppable Content
This marketing strategy has the power to transform various digital media, such as images, videos, or social media graphics, into interactive shopping experiences. Shoppable content lets customers buy your products directly just by clicking on them. This is a seamless way to let your viewers shop while consuming your content.
To create shoppable content, you need to select the right platform, integrate your product catalog, showcase them through engaging content, and add call-to-action buttons, among others.
User Experience (UX) Understanding
This is the practice of knowing how your viewers experience your brand. This means you have to empathize with them by understanding how they interact with your website, application, or products. This requires you to study their behavior, know their preferences, and ensure that the design offers functionality. You should aim to create an excellent digital experience by having a user-friendly, intuitive, and easy-to-navigate website.
Content Trend Awareness
A great content marketing skill you need to have is staying updated and informed with the latest trends in your industry and marketing. This involves knowing and understanding the evolving dynamics of digital media, emerging content formats, and changes in search engine algorithms. It also helps to learn about social media trends and changes in how your consumers behave.
Sustainable Content Practices
This involves awareness of environmental and ethical considerations when creating content marketing strategies and campaigns. This requires you to know approaches to reducing the carbon footprint associated with content creation and distribution. This can include reducing paper waste, promoting eco-friendly products, and supporting social and environmental causes.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing is constantly changing, and the usual strategies we've known before may be outdated or overly used. We need to find new ways to market our brand, and this list of content marketing skills is an excellent way to jumpstart.
