The digital age is in full swing and a multitude of us are all on various platforms creating and consuming diverse content. Yet, not everyone is conversant in the best practices governing digital content in its various forms. Ascertaining one’s purpose in utilizing a particular digital content platform is central to understanding how to manage our habits in connection with such digital content.
Keep in mind that your digital content platforms will be advantageous in varied ways such as by increasing website traffic, optimizing your brand exposure, engaging audiences and even helping with analyzing data. Which platforms you use then, will be decided by the ultimate goal you envision for your company or brand.
In aiming to create digital content that will guarantee one of the above-mentioned objectives, a key practice to follow is to concentrate on quality and not quantity. In Search Engine Optimization (SEO) the superiority of the content that is posted will override the number of times content is made available, and therefore, striving for the best, most relevant and informative material is the golden rule.
Matching your content to your audience perfectly is how you will enjoy the best results. For instance, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are the trending platforms to reach Gen Zs and Gen Alphas. Millennials are more on board with Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, but don’t underestimate the number of them who are also on platforms like TikTok. In short, do your research and know where your audiences are.
Results-driven marketing
Goals are gold. Determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at the offset and know where you’re headed with your brand. If numbers are your target, then decide how big that number will be at the end of a certain time period, be it accumulation of customers, website traffic or lead generation. It is up to your Marketing team to track these performances and ensure that these goals are being met.
And this leads us to another important, but often overlooked piece of advice: track your existing content before creating new ones. Sometimes, the answer to underperforming digital content is not designing new ones and moving to new platforms, but taking a closer look at why your existing content isn’t yielding the desired results. There could be a number of reasons for this. Perhaps your content is not aligned with your audience’s habits, or perhaps your content does not even reach your audience because it does not show up high enough in searches. It could also be that your digital platform has changed its user experience recently and this has affected your audience. Whatever it may be, you ought to be aware of the causes and be prompt in addressing them before moving on to new platforms and new content.
Choose to use user-generated content (UGC) as well (with permission, of course!), because the benefits will be threefold. When you use UGC, the users of your brand know that their input is valuable and appreciated by your company, and from the audience’s point of view, this is more authentic and reliable. And of course, this will also save you time and money.
Going all-in
It is a given that your brand will use more than one digital platform (omnichannels) to meet your goals. According to clickz.com, using three or more channels resulted in an 18.96% audience engagement rate as opposed to the 5.4% engagement rate recorded by single-channel users. This means one thing; feel free to mix and match, but also review and change your platforms if the data is not satisfactory.
What you need to do is follow a schedule so that you are posting content on these platforms regularly. Creating a content calendar will be the optimum way to follow this schedule, fill in any gaps that may exist and maintain a balance between the platforms.
Likewise, since we’re going all in, don’t forget that the digital technology space is changing every day and that there are a host of tools that can come in handy in your bag of best practices. One highly recommended tool is Chatbots. This is an effective way of keeping the channels of communication open between your company and your customers. Using these chatbots to answer questions and resolve issues brought up by your customers will be excellent not only in satisfying customer needs but also in pointing you in the right direction in terms of changes, additions and deletions you need to make to your product. In order to carry out this task in an optimum fashion, however, technological expertise is necessary so that in the automation process these chatbots are equipped with the correct conversation strategies that do not fall short of what the customer requires.
You’ve got this!
Yes, indeed! If you’re a marketer in this tech-driven world, you already know most of the ropes. It never hurts to read and arm yourself with more knowledge as the digital world evolves every day. In a nutshell, what you need to do is to know your audience, create quality content, keep track of how your content is doing and use omnichannels to make it work.
In everything, be transparent and ethical, welcome customer feedback (comments on blogs and customer video uploads for example) and be open to change. A final word: remember that Artificial Intelligence has now taken over the digital space so there is a great deal of resources available there as well. How you use them is up to you, but you are the person in control so don’t hand it over to AI and sit back. This is your baby to rock.
(Anouk De Silva)