Effective digital content marketing and branding strategies that are engaging, add value and inspire your prospects to take action are crucial to the realization of your business objectives. Content marketing is the creation and sharing of different types of content to educate, inspire, and entertain your target customers.

Content marketing is the heart of online marketing. It helps to drive organic traffic to your website and generate quality leads. Compelling content that is optimized to rank high on search engines and adds value will build trust with your audience and position your company as a leader in your industry.

With content being the heart of online marking, how can you use it to increase brand awareness? Below are some tips to making content marketing work for your business:

Create compelling content

Your target audience is bombarded with information in your industry from all angles. Regardless of your niche, you are competing for the same audience with other businesses. Therefore, you want to stand out from the crowd by providing educative and compelling content that will not bore your audience.

Your content should be in line with your brand’s objectives and worth sharing. If your users tip toe with joy when they receive a notification about your next blog post, then you are providing compelling content. Prospects buy solutions to their problems. Understand the problems of your target market and produce content that adds value to their lives. Educate your audience how your solution will make their lives easier.

Explore different media

Content marketing involves creating different content like eBooks, whitepapers, videos, podcasts, articles and infographics. Experiment with different content and see the level of engagement they produce. Have a regular content production schedule. Offering a mix of content provides a well-rounded and engaged user experience and keeps visitors longer on your website.

Coupled with a strong presence in social media, any useful or educational content you produce can increase your brand’s visibility. The content can be shared on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks and drive new visitors to your brand web properties. News aggregators like Reddit and Digg and social bookmarking sites like Delicious can pick up the content and drive more traffic to your website.

Be the authoritative brand in your industry

Creating content is not enough when your competition is also doing the same thing. You shouldn’t just create content for the sake of doing so. Instead, aim to be the information provider in your industry. Customers research products and services online before they buy. You want your audience to think about your brand every time they are faced with the problem you are solving.

Marketing with Search Engine Optimization

All content you produce should be optimized to rank well on search engines. When you produce great content, you also want it to be easily found on search engines. Carrying out keyword research, making it possible to share your content and link building are important in making your content rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Do not confuse great content with great marketing. Great content may not be found online if it is not optimized for search engines. SEO has long term benefits of generating quality traffic to your website. You can qualify the traffic and generate leads by offering valuable content in exchange for their email addresses.

Working content marketing and branding strategies will help to improve awareness and inspire your prospects to take action. Understand your market and educate them on your solution by providing regular high quality content. With increased brand awareness from content marketing and social media, your sales will improve.