Win the reader's heart

Win the reader's heart

Content marketing, or content production as it is called in good Norwegian, is a term that is heard and read about more and more often. The form of marketing has been around for a number of years, but it is only in recent years that it has really taken off in Norway. So what exactly is content marketing and how do you succeed at it?

‍Show, don't tell

‍In short, it is a form of marketing that involves creating and sharing content that is relevant to your target audience. The goal is to convince the customer to choose your product and/or service over someone else's. Let's say you're sitting on the best product on the market. Where traditional marketing is used to say this directly to your customers, content marketing is used to flaunt that to your customers.

In many cases, this is easier said than done. First of all, you must have:

1: A clear plan. You need to know your goal and what you want to achieve using content production. Most people have more good stories and news to impart. The trick is to find the best way and the right channel to get it out.

‍2: For these good stories and news to have an effect, you must also know who your target audience is. Simply who to approach and how to reach them. This work is incredibly important. If the content is not relevant to the target audience, it has little, if any, effect. A good tip is to use personas -- fictional people who represent the ones you want to reach. The more accurate these are, the easier it is to produce good, relevant content.

‍3: Quality is more important than quantitet. The content published must be of high quality. If it is not perceived as engaging or relevant to readers, you are wasting both your own and the customer's time. Also remember that it is your target audience that decides what is relevant and not. In some cases, one can have many different audiences. It is all the more important to adapt the content to the people you want to reach.

‍4th: Continuity is important. There is a fine balance between publishing too often and too little. Of course, this varies from company to company, but it is very important to have control over how often you should publish your content. Then you may want to have an annual plan that you relate to. It should include planned posts, where they will be published and what target audience it will be aimed at. This will allow you to see what content your target audience is interested in.

‍5: Think journalistic. Having experience in journalistic work, can be a great advantage in content production. As we mentioned earlier, show that your product is the best, don't say it. You can also have countless good news to tell, but you have to angle and write it in a way that engages and informs your audience. So instead of writing about how good your product and/or services are, you use content marketing to write about how your product and services help customers. The goal is for your audience to know that they are getting useful information and tips on your website. Take us in the Cure as an example. We can say that we build the coolest websites and brands in Norway. You, as a customer, take that with a big pinch of salt. “Of course they say so,” you think. But through our reading material, we want to offer great tips and content to show that we really have a handle on what we do. If you benefit from the tips and find the content relevant, you will hopefully be left with a good impression.

‍6th: Think about search engine optimization. The posts are aimed at the target audience, but it helps little if they can't find it on Google. It is therefore important that you use keywords that customers use when searching online. Few, if none, bother to scroll to page 13 on Google to read about Content Marketing.

Immediate and long-term gains

This is just one way to use content marketing. You can also use it as advertising. You've probably been to online newspapers and seen articles tagged “sponsored content”, “advertiser content”, “advertising” and the like. This is also a very nice way to do it. Through such a way, you get quite an immediate effect of the content. If you use the tips above, you will get a much greater effect over time. And that's one of the most important things about content production. It takes time to build good, relevant content that is perceived as relevant by both your target audience and search engines, but if you succeed, you won't regret it.

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