As a professional content marketer, Jacob Schoeneberger understands what it takes for content marketing to be effective. Jacob Schoeneberger also knows that a lot of companies avoid content marketing after a while because they don’t see immediate results from their efforts. Time is money for any business and content marketing only works when content marketers make the most of their time. Today, Jacob Schoeneberger will break down content marketing for beginners in hopes that writers can learn how to best spend their marketing minutes.
Jacob Schoeneberger believes that most content marketing campaigns fail due to a lack of planning. If there’s no thought process into who the target audience is for the content, and what their unique motivations and pain points are, there’s a very strong likelihood of failure. Content marketing planning starts by doing research to determine the best audience for a particular site. Once an audience is identified, research should be conducted on the type of content that audience responds to and whether a writer can help fill a void. The best pieces of content from a digital marketing perspective are pieces of content that resonate with an audience and have a unique stance behind them. So much of the Internet is filled with content that is simply regurgitated from other sources, or written simply for the sake of writing it. When content provides a value add and is unique, it’s a truly winning formula.
Figuring out the logistics of a content marketing strategy is essential. If there’s more than one writer, who is in charge? How frequently can content that serves a purpose be created? There must be an editor like Jacob Schoeneberger that can pass on or modify content that doesn’t match the voice of the website. Spitting out content just to have something go live on a Tuesday is not a strategy. Setting up a consistent, manageable publishing schedule and understanding who the gatekeeper for the site is is necessary before a blog can be launched.
Once the blog is launched, Jacob Schoeneberger thinks writers should lean into what works. Writing for the web is all about writing in a style that is easy to digest. This is why checklists and how-to guides work so well. People are looking to gather information and move on to the next thing. There’s endless competition out there no matter what a blogger’s niche happens to be. Producing content in a way that the reader can easily digest, via a laptop or mobile device, makes the likelihood that it will rank in the Google search engine that much higher.
A lot of bloggers get really bogged down by trying to reach a specific word count. It is true that Google considers length as a factor in its search engine rankings, but it’s also true that sites are penalized for fluff content. The best way to write with the search engines in mind is to write with the audience in mind. If there’s fluff paragraph after fluff paragraph, it will be clear to the audience. Even if organic traffic starts to come in, it will go right back out when people realize the content is junk. The best word count should be determined by the most efficient way to tell the story, and always remember to write your content for the human being who will be reading it.
Some content marketers start from scratch while others inherit a website that already features existing content. It’s not uncommon for a website to have decent content that lacks optimization. What Jacob Schoeneberger means by this is that each website should have a page-by-page breakdown of the keywords the page is trying to rank for. Google can identify the main focus of a page based on its Meta title and H1 tag. When websites are produced by a vendor, they often churn out a site of 8-10 pages with identical Meta titles, Meta descriptions, and H1 tags. This is a great way to have a website that is penalized and competing against itself for attention. An audit of the current content of a website will make it easier to set up an agenda of what can be enhanced and what needs to be scrapped. Having a unique keyword focus is essential. Another common mistake to look out for is optimizing the homepage for secondary keywords. The homepage is always going to be the number one source of new traffic, so the homepage should be optimized for the keywords that are most important to the target audience.
Jacob Schoeneberger understands that content marketing can seem overwhelming, but it’s a great way to increase organic traffic and build brand awareness. When in doubt, a content marketer should always fall back on the notion that quality wins. Consistency and quality will yield results every single time.
