Guiding a business from startup to establish industry player is a journey that takes dedication, perseverance, and a little bit of luck. At the initial stage of your business, you can utilize content marketing to help build your brand. Once you have an established brand, it opens the doors to a myriad of other possibilities. Here are some tips to use effective content marketing when building your brand.
Using a Blog
First and foremost, you need to have a strong blogging presence in order to help establish your brand. A blog that is widely-read by users and other industry players will do a few things for you.
First, a blog will help increase both your credibility and your visibility. If you present information that is accurate, actionable, and timely, you will soon find others linking to your blog and even citing it.
This helps potential clients find you. What’s more, because others are citing your blog, you will soon become recognized as an industry player—meaning that people will believe you know your stuff, and they will look to you when they are in the market to purchase the good or service that you are selling.
Second, a blog will help increase your search engine ranking. As noted, people will eventually begin to link to your blog. This will help search engine results for your business: the search engine companies want to link to sites that are relevant. As such, the more relevant your content, the more links you will get, and the higher up in the list of results you will go.
“Creating a content marketing strategy and utilizing a content marketing calendar has really worked for our clients. You can read about the results from our case study on how we ranked our Las Vegas SEO client in Google,” explains Stuart McHenry of McKremie.
The “Cluster Content” Strategy
Once you have a blog up and established, you will want to focus on creating content in “clusters.” The idea is that you will have a main page on a topic of interest. This main page will act like a “pillar” around which many other similar topics are clustered. When someone searches for either the main pillar or a related topic, they will find the main page. Once there, chances are very good that they will read several of the “clustered” blog posts.
The end result of the “cluster content” strategy is that it boosts the visibility of your blog. People won’t just come and read a single entry before leaving; rather, they will stay, read more content, and (hopefully) share and link to the content.
A second reason to utilize the clustering method is that it provides a series of internal links on your site. While the exact algorithm that web search engines use changes frequently, one thing is clear: multiple links to quality content will boost your organic search engine ranking. So, all those posts that are “clustered” around your main “pillar” will provide more internal links, increasing your website search visibility.
Find Your Voice
Although it is important to create quality content, it is equally important that your blog not just be another face in the crowd. Keep in mind that your target audience is being bombarded with information from your competitors, and you have to do something to stand out.
Find your unique take on the subject of your blogs. For example, rather than simply discussing the latest industry developments, find a way to tie those developments into your business’s identity. Whether that identity is associated with providing affordable goods or services (like Wal-Mart) or providing a unique product (such as the Apple line of products), you need to find your business’s voice and continually reinforce that image.
Building a brand is very much related to your image, and a strong image is one which is continually reinforced. The most successful businesses do not just advertise once and then drop the matter; on the contrary, they continually send out a message. Your content marketing must be the same: over and over, you need to stress what it is that sets you apart from the competitors.
Content marketing is hard work. However, if done correctly, it can yield dividends that pay year after year. As a startup, you have the chance to begin telling your story, and building your own brand, today. Good luck!
