As a marketer, you work hard to make sure your website and your content marketing efforts are working hand-in-hand to drive customer and prospect engagement. Both are powerful tools that if combined and used the right way can become a powerhouse that can darn near eclipse all other marketing tools. Here are three ways to be sure one doesn’t leave home without the other.
Give every piece of content a good home.
There are a number of good reasons to assign each piece of content a dedicated home on your website — in other words, a unique URL. In addition to being able to drive customers and prospects directly to the content that’s most relevant to them, you’ll also be able to utilize tools like Google Analytics to gather valuable data on which pieces are effective and which have run their course.
For example, to promote a piece of content you’ve created, you may choose to tweet about it and provide a link to the full article. Without a dedicated home, or specific URL, your customer heads to your homepage, pokes around, becomes frustrated and heads for the door. Instead, make it easy for them to find exactly what they’re looking for and where appropriate, include a strong call-to-action so it’s obvious where you want them to go or what you want them to do next — maximizing what else your website has to offer.
Put your blog to work.
A corporate blog is so much more than a way to communicate with your customers and prospects. Be sure it’s not sitting idle waiting for readers to happen upon it. The blog can be the workhorse of content marketing by serving as a platform for publishing thought leadership content, a landing page for e-communication and a magnet for new subscribers.
As well, by adding to this content on a regular basis and by driving to it from your social media channels in order to create traffic on your site, it takes on another role as ‘promoter.’ Google will recognize new content and consistent traffic to your website and reward you for it in its rankings.
Stay on the move.
Chances are, not too many of your customers or prospects are logging into Twitter or accessing your corporate blog on their desktop computer. With busy schedules and remote working arrangements, customers’ and prospects’ mobile devices are often their lifelines.
Because of this, be sure your website is responsive, providing an optimized view, no matter the device it is viewed on. Additionally, apply these same principles to all the site’s assets; customer engagement is much more likely if the article or paper is easy to read.
With the right alignment between your content and your website, your message becomes clear, consistent and easy to find. And once they find it, make sure they then move your message along by making it easy for users to share it through social media and email. The easier it is to share and the more people that see it, the better bang you’ll get for your content marketing buck.
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