In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, establishing brand authority and positioning oneself as a thought leader is imperative for businesses striving for longevity and success. The most effective strategy to achieve this is through content marketing. This comprehensive guide will detail the steps necessary to build brand authority and thought leadership, leveraging the power of content marketing.

Understanding Brand Authority and Thought Leadership

Brand authority refers to the level of trust and respect a brand commands within its industry. It signifies that a brand is knowledgeable and reliable, making it the go-to resource for information and solutions. Thought leadership, on the other hand, is the practice of positioning oneself or one’s organization as the foremost expert in a specific field. Thought leaders offer insights and advice that shape industry trends and influence others.

The Importance of Content Marketing

Content marketing is the cornerstone of building brand authority and thought leadership. By consistently producing and sharing high-quality, relevant content, brands can educate their audience, showcase their expertise, and build trust. This strategic approach involves creating and distributing valuable content to attract, engage, and retain a clearly defined audience.

Developing a Content Strategy

1. Define Your Goals and Objectives

The first step in developing a content strategy is to clearly define your goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or establish authority in your industry? Understanding your objectives will guide your content creation efforts and ensure that each piece of content aligns with your overarching business goals.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Knowing your audience is crucial for effective content marketing. Develop detailed buyer personas to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points. This information will help you create content that resonates with your audience and addresses their specific challenges.

3. Conduct Keyword Research

Keyword research is essential for identifying the terms and phrases your audience uses to search for information related to your industry. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to discover high-volume, relevant keywords. Incorporate these keywords naturally into your content to improve its visibility on search engines.

4. Create a Content Calendar

A content calendar helps you plan and organize your content creation efforts. It ensures that you consistently produce and publish content, covering various topics relevant to your audience. A well-structured content calendar includes publication dates, content formats, and assigned responsibilities.

Creating High-Quality Content

1. Focus on Originality and Value

To build brand authority and thought leadership, your content must be original and provide value to your audience. Share unique insights, data, and perspectives that your audience cannot find elsewhere. This will help you stand out as a credible source of information.

2. Use a Variety of Content Formats

Diversify your content by using different formats such as blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, videos, podcasts, and infographics. This approach ensures that you cater to different audience preferences and keep your content engaging.

3. Prioritize Long-Form Content

Long-form content, such as comprehensive guides, in-depth articles, and detailed reports, tends to perform better in search engines. These pieces demonstrate your expertise and provide more value to your audience, helping to establish your authority in the field.

4. Optimize for SEO

Ensure that your content is optimized for search engines. Use relevant keywords in your titles, headings, and throughout the content. Include meta descriptions, alt texts for images, and internal and external links to improve your content’s search engine ranking.

Distributing Your Content

1. Leverage Social Media

Social media platforms are powerful tools for distributing your content and reaching a broader audience. Share your content on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Engage with your audience by responding to comments and participating in discussions.

2. Collaborate with Influencers

Partnering with influencers in your industry can amplify your reach and enhance your credibility. Influencers can help promote your content to their followers, increasing your visibility and attracting a larger audience.

3. Utilize Email Marketing

Email marketing is an effective way to distribute your content directly to your audience. Create a mailing list and regularly send newsletters featuring your latest content. Personalize your emails to increase engagement and drive traffic to your website.

Engaging with Your Audience

1. Encourage Interaction

Encourage your audience to interact with your content by asking questions, prompting discussions, and inviting feedback. This engagement helps build a community around your brand and fosters trust and loyalty

2. Respond to Comments

Be responsive to comments and feedback on your content. Address questions and concerns promptly to show that you value your audience’s input. This interaction helps to humanize your brand and strengthen your relationship with your audience.

3. Monitor and Analyze Performance

Use analytics tools to monitor the performance of your content. Track metrics such as page views, engagement rates, and conversion rates to understand what works and what doesn’t. Use this data to refine your content strategy and improve future content.

Establishing Thought Leadership

1. Guest Blogging

Contribute guest posts to reputable websites in your industry. This practice helps you reach a wider audience and establish yourself as a thought leader. Ensure that your guest posts offer valuable insights and link back to your website.

2. Speaking Engagements

Participate in industry conferences, webinars, and podcasts as a speaker. Sharing your expertise through these platforms enhances your credibility and positions you as a thought leader.

3. Publishing Research and Case Studies

Conduct original research and publish your findings in the form of reports and case studies. This content not only demonstrates your expertise but also provides valuable information that can influence industry trends and decisions.

4. Networking and Community Involvement

Engage with other industry professionals and thought leaders. Join industry groups, attend events, and participate in online forums. Building relationships within your industry can open up opportunities for collaboration and further establish your authority.

Conclusion

Building brand authority and thought leadership through content marketing requires a strategic and consistent approach. By developing a solid content strategy, creating high-quality content, and engaging with your audience, you can position your brand as a trusted and influential resource in your industry. Remember, the key to success is delivering value to your audience and continuously refining your efforts based on feedback and performance data.

The post Comprehensive Guide to Building Brand Authority and Thought Leadership with Content Marketing appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Evergreen content

Evergreen content can be described as content that is useful over time. For example, tips on how to replace a flat tire is an example of evergreen content. The process is the same for the majority of vehicles. At the same time, the tips provided will be valid for many years to come. As such, search engines and social media sites will grow your traffic over time.

Valuable posts are rewarded by search engines and the content you put on social media sends out “social signals” to the search engine.  These social signals give weight to your content.  Remember, the higher the perceived value of your content by search engines, the more traffic you get. Take note it may be impossible to create evergreen content all the time. However, if at least half of your content is evergreen, you are headed in the right direction.

Self-promoting headlines

A good headline is one that garners clicks. Apart from being easy to remember, it is also worth sharing. In fact, posts that go viral do so due to their headlines. A great way to do this is by using ambiguity. Find a way to make readers want more.

You can create a great headline by teasing them with a question. For example, if there is a new social media platform going viral, you can create a great headline. A good headline would say something like “Why X Is The New “Twitter”. A great headline would state something like “Is X The End of Twitter?”

Make it worth reading

Make sure your published content is worth reading. Humans who are happy reading your content on social media will trust you more. Additionally, it drives business results and boosts social sharing. People share compelling content and ignore crappy content.

Strive to publish content created to be valuable, interesting, funny, and useful. The content needs these qualities to be experienced by the target audience. Advertising content is only a step forward. Whether the content “runs” is almost certainly determined by its value. Great content on social media is a guarantee of great results.

Use Your Inner Creative

In most cases, people give content that is not “human.” It happens by providing content that does not speak to the reader. A good place to start is getting rid of the barriers between you and your readers. For example, formal language may not go down well with an audience in the gaming industry. However, it may go well with people looking for a service such as HVAC or construction.

Speeds kill competition

It is a challenge for a brand to keep up with current events in their niche. With this in mind, it is paramount to ensure you have content that keeps you updating your audience, especially on social media. You may find this to be a daunting task. It is not!

All you need to do is get a single person or a member of your team to check updates on your competitors. This can be done by getting updates on your phone or email whenever something new comes up. The same individual can be used to create content with regards to the new development.  These are some of the strategies that should put you ahead in the social media marketing game.

The importance of good grammar

One final note, proper English grammar is critical to any online written content. This is very important! Search engines such as Google have now added advanced algorithms that can sniff out and penalize bad or incorrect grammar.  Believe it or not, but proper English grammar can be tricky even for native English speakers. To make sure that your content is up to par, using services such as Assignment Expert is very effected to get English grammar help.

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Now that everyone is joining the content game, it’s time to up the ante and suggest that just generating content is not enough. If your content is pretty generic, you are not winning any points from the SEO Gods, and you are certainly not growing a thriving or engaged audience.

Nope, what you need is proprietary content to make a real splash. 

What exactly is proprietary content? I know what you are thinking…we can’t actually be suggesting that you share your strategy or super secret business processes with the public (shudder)…could we?

Well no, not exactly.

Embrace You

There is a way to leverage some of what is deemed proprietary or intellectual property without leaving you vulnerable or exposing more than you are comfortable with.

1. Talk about your “it” factor. Every company has something that distinguishes them from the competition. Maybe it’s how you support your clients, or how you deliver your product. Your “it” factor is not easily replicated; it’s a secret sauce unique to your organization. This is something worth talking about and, since it is unique to your company, it’s proprietary!

2. Feature your employees! Showcase an individual or a team. Most companies have something unique about their organization and how their employees are structured. Perhaps you have an entire CrossFit team on staff, or maybe you allow dogs in your office. Whether quirky or procedural, your employees can offer up a bevy of content options.

3. Failure is your friend in content creation. Every company has them: mistakes. They happen, but your mistake can be valuable content to share. Have you selected a bad software option? Neglected to prioritize integration of your sales tool with your CMS? Take the altruistic path, and share a few trials and tribulations in the hopes of sparing another company the same pain.

The three ways to generate proprietary content above are merely a toe-dip into the proprietary content pool. We encourage all companies to dig deep and establish your organization as the expert in your industry or in corporate culture. All companies have something unique to offer that is home grown within their organization.

Share how you keep your content fresh and unique in the comments below.

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And on the flip side, there’s us. As an adult, I’m patient, well-versed in waiting, and solid in my understanding of delayed gratification. “I’ll wait”, “Go ahead”, “Take your time.” Yup, we live there. As adults. Yay, us.

But as a digital marketer…I’ll admit it, I’m a child. In fact, #creepyalert, there’s a good chance that I know you are reading this post right now. And even if I’m not creeping on real-time Google Analytics, it’s likely that I’m talking to myself right now: “Why haven’t my Twitter numbers increased?”, “Why hasn’t anyone left a comment?”, “Maybe I should share on Facebook again; it’s been a few minutes”, “Is the comments area broken?”, “I’ll just go ahead and tweet it, or maybe I’ll Buffer, but that’s not immediate enough, so maybe just a direct tweet”, “Perhaps I should leave the first comment myself,” and on and on and on. I’m a child. Me.

I hope, and expect, that you aren’t a child like me. But if you are, here are some lessons that we, as marketers (perhaps more accurately as content creators/publishers), need to learn.

Wait For It

Sure, the first 1, 12, 24 hours of content-sharing matters; 100%, it matters. But should it matter as much as it does? On the analytics side, we can show conversion rates, site visits, virality, etc. But where it really seems to matter is with our ego. We care about the numbers because we care about the numbers. It’s not often that we care about data (emotionally, I mean), but when our ego is factored in, we can’t help but to be personally invested in those specific numbers. Yes, it makes sense to care about how our personal content is performing; most of the time, we have invested much time, energy, and care in its creation before launching to the world. And we feel like proud parents once that content is birthed and well-received. But if our labor of love stagnates, doesn’t catch fire, or spreads slower that we would like, content marketers can quickly turn into pushy stage moms (no offense). And maybe that shouldn’t be the case. We’ve all seen articles get picked up, gain traction, and find their wings over 12 months after their initial posting. But we let our ego speak loudly, and our ego is all about now. We preach evergreen content, layered content, and resurrected content, but we tend to live (and tweet and share and promote) like Mission Impossible content (you know, “this message will self-destruct”). However, if your content doesn’t pop immediately, don’t waste your hours staring at graphs, talking to yourself, and pressing buttons. Let it go, and trust that your content will find its place in the digital world. Promote it, yes, but don’t let your ego drive the bus. It’s likely to drive you in the wrong direction.

Practice Karma

Being generous is one of the Be-attitudes in my last post, and it’s something that can never be overstated. Good will begets good will, and it’s really hard to spur people to action if you spend little to none of your time acting on other content provider’s behalf. One of the best ways to get attention is to give attention; to get help, give help; to reap, sow. If you are asking others to spend their time reading your content and, furthermore, to promote it, you need to buck up and do the same. (Sidenote: SME had a great post recently on how to structure content curation; you can find it here.) So put some time on your calendar to consume content, then start posting about it. You might just catch the eye of the very people you want to spread your own posts. In fact, I’m thinking a good exercise would be to set consume-and-share time aside immediately after my own post is published. Instead of watching analytics and social metrics like a crazy hawk, I think my time would be better spent helping others. So that is what I will do. #creepyalertover

Step Away From The Ego

I’m guessing that you have had that uplifting feeling of watching one of your campaigns take off. It’s a wonderful feeling and one that I hope we all get to experience many times over. I’m also guessing that you’ve had moments on the opposite side of the fence: no traffic, no traction, and a yucky, deflated feeling. Both are valid and valuable.

The unhealthy step is when we obsess over the now, the moment, the real-time and let our ego begin to drive decision-making. Step away from the reload button, and instead spend your time helping others. Consume and share the best content you can find, and be us and not them. Oh, and if sharing this article feels good to you, please do so; bonus good-will points for comments, especially those that make me think.

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Your Content Sucks

Instead of measuring the success of your content based upon its virality, start measuring content based on the quality of what you put out. It’s like a broken record we’ve been hearing scratching in our ears for too long, but it is so true. The majority of content that is put out from brands is so self-serving and boring that there is absolutely no reason anyone would want to share it. Try to start with making your content about serving the needs, wants, and desires of your audience instead of about the brand and you’ll do much better than you are today. It may not go viral, but you’ll be one step closer. Seriously, if you think that boring video talking about all of your products is going viral it’s time for an intervention. Get creative. Your customers don’t care about your products.

You Can’t Design Content to Go Viral, But You Can Design it to Be Great

If you think that following any formula for virality is going to work, you are setting yourself up for failure. This infographic gives you a lot of tips on how to make content much better, but it isn’t going to be a guarantee of virality. Think of going viral as a free upgrade to first class, not the destination. Design your content to be compelling first. It is near impossible to predict which chords you will strike until they’ve actually been struck. You can try, but realize that a very minute percentage of content ever goes viral. There is a lot of amazing content out there that never achieves virality, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t work. On the flipside there is a lot of content that goes viral that is a complete surprise to those who created it. Recognize that sometimes we don’t know if something is going to work until we are looking at it through the rear-view mirror.

Stop Blowing Smoke and Start With Holy Smokes

I believe one of the reasons there is so much sub-par content out there is because we don’t start with the intended emotion in mind. At SME Digital, we use the Holy Smokes test that Jason Falls created as a starting point for any content that is developed. Before the piece is written, we must define the Holy Smokes factor, which is filling in the blank in the statement “Holy Smokes! That’s _____!” We think about what we want the audience to say after they read or see the content and then we create the content to elicit that emotion. At the end, we check and see if it was able to deliver. If it wasn’t we fix it. Perhaps this will help you start to create your content with the emotional response in mind.

Here are some examples of Holy Smokes factors we’ve used:

• Holy Smokes! That’s Hilarious!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Incredibly Useful!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Amazing!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Shocking!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Mind Blowing!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Smart!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Exactly What I Needed!

At the end of the day if you create a great piece of content that your audience responds to, is it a win? I say yes. If it goes viral that’s even better.

Take a look at the infographic to see the tips. Do you agree? Disagree? How important is virality in the grand scheme of content? How do you make sure your content is stellar? Leave a comment and join the discussion. 

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Sure you know where the gold is buried, but without a shovel you have no way of getting to it.

Coincidentally, your content strategy is a lot like a treasure map. Obviously you aren’t going to find your content strategy stuffed inside an empty rum bottle; but like a treasure map, your content strategy does outline the steps you need to take to find true content success.

However, a content strategy will only take you so far. I’ve seen too many people create a content strategy and then assume that success is already theirs, “We’ve got our content strategy right here! The gold is ours!” A strategy is only part of the success equation, at some point you’re going to need to put down the map and start digging. 

You’re going to have to start producing content, great content.

How To Start Producing Great Content

Great content can’t simply be willed into being.  Consistently banging out last minute blog posts or frantically editing your company’s next podcast does not lead to consistent content greatness. Great content needs to be planned for. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Give Great Content The Resources Due

Take a look at your content strategy and compare it to the internal and external resources you have available. Great content takes both time and money. If need be, can you bring on new team members? Do you have the budget necessary to hire an outside partner to create those new webisodes you’re dreaming of publishing? If you don’t have the resources to produce the content identified in your current content strategy, than it might be time to redraw that treasure map.

Create A Content Production Calendar

A single calendar entry on a random Wednesday that reads, “Publish that blog post!” does not make a content calendar. If you really want to start digging, you need to think through the entire content production process. At the very least, a content production calendar should account for:

• Brainstorming
• Production Assignment
• Initial Version Received
• Iterative Reviews
• Finalized Content Version Received/Approved
• Content is Published
• Celebratory Drink!

Clarify Content Pieces Early On

Don’t wait until you’re in the middle of creating a piece of content to determine things like focus or audience. The sooner you clarify the main aspects of a content piece, the easier it will be to produce it. Once you have an idea for a content piece finalized, take a few moments and create a content outline to accompany it. The outline should identify the content’s intended audience, main focus, finished length and lastly, the Holy Smokes factor.  By identifying early what a piece of content needs in order to be considered “great,” the more likely you are to produce great content.

True content success comes from having both a solid content strategy and a clear production plan. As I said earlier, a treasure map without a shovel is just a sheet of paper with a pretty drawing on it. Conversely, if all you have are shovels, than sure you might dig a lot of holes, but you’ll never find that chest of gold.

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The word is brainpower trumps spending power now. Is it true?

It can be.

Content marketing brings home some bacon

Jump ten slides into the 2013 study on content marketing by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs and a list of objectives looks mighty tasty to any growing business. Atop the list are: (1) brand awareness (2) customer acquisition (3) lead generation, and (4) customer loyalty.

These goals bear a striking resemblance to the promises advertising agencies used to make to their clients. Not surprisingly, many of these agencies have gone digital—or gone away.

Today’s accomplished marketers will tell you creating remarkable content is the way a company connects with buyers. The evidence is served in the form of a blogging explosion, the proliferation of online video, the mind-boggling ascent of social media, and an array of infographics, slide decks, eBooks, podcasts, and a very long list of educational and entertaining content types buyers discover via search, subscriptions, social media and various other online escapades.

Are you ready for all this?