Online marketing is no longer about deciding whether content, social media or SEO should be your priority. Instead a successful strategy will harmonise these elements so that each complements the others.
Content
Content marketing involves creating useful, engaging content to grab the attention of your target audience, with the objective of building your relationship with them.
It is not about writing awesome sales copy. Sucking your audience in with the lure of helpful advice, then rounding the article off with a sales pitch will leave a sour taste in their mouth.
Great content will build engagement with your audience, and boost the other elements of your online marketing strategy.
Readers who have enjoyed your article and want to see more will follow your Facebook and Twitter profiles. And tailored search engine results, means that one extended visit to your site, makes it more likely your business will be shown to that customer in future search results for relevant queries.
Social Media
A successful social media approach will enhance your organisation’s brand, build loyalty, and help gain new customers through the power of peer approval.
As with content, social media is not all about driving sales, it’s about building engagement. Occasionally, if you have a special offer that will be genuinely useful for your audience, or a piece of engaging content, you can use your social media platforms to drive traffic to your website, but this technique should be used sparingly.
Be attentive to your social media followers by responding to their posts and queries, and keeping the content on your accounts fresh and relevant.
SEO
SEO is the near-magical practice of using various techniques to get your website into the results displayed when a potential customer types in a relevant search query into a search engine.
The first step is to understand your customers. What are they searching for, and what phrases do they use to find it? You might be selling ‘laptop coolers’, but if potential customers don’t know such a device exists, they will be frantically looking up ‘laptop keeps overheating’.
Google looks for signals that content is engaging and useful, such as social media shares, comments and page view time, before gracing that content with a top spot in the results.
A successful online marketing strategy will use content, social media and SEO in harmony to complement each other, and create online activity which builds customer numbers and customer loyalty.
