Content targeting: 5 tips you need to know

Content Marketing 

The perception of digital marketing has seen a sea change in the last one decade. Few years back, digital content was perceived to be anyone's game. You wrote something and published letting the Internet decide if it was worthwhile. If you hit the quality benchmark of good content, the ranking will automatically rise to the top.

But in current times, the digital marketing space is too crowded with too many players competing against each other. Every form of content is battling for grabbing viewer's attention (which is too short lived). The old forms of building a set of clientele (by creating relationships with other sites, syndicating, link sharing and using cost-effective social media promotion) may not prove helpful now. Say if you have identified a topic which has been largely covered, such as finance, beauty, and so on, you have a rough road ahead.

So does that imply there's no point in even giving it a shot and companies can pack up their content departments in the fear of facing defeat? Not really!

The need of the hour is to act smart about a concept that's gaining a lot of momentum: amplification.
It is one way of getting content within eyeball range of your desired audience. The new generation of amplification is all about using better tools that can dig deep into solving the two most complex questions for success with content marketing:

1) Who is the audience I am targeting with this post
AND
2) How do I connect with them? 

Lets have a look at the types of targeting at your disposal.

Till recently Facebook and LinkedIn both used to offer substantial organic reach, but now these social networks charge brands and users for organic reach while ramping up their content targeting offerings.

Paid distribution is arguably the most effective way to use both social networks.

The targeting ranges in price and it depend on information that users provide in their profiles. It is advisable to figure out where to allocate your amplification dollars and do some thorough analysis. For instance, if you are looking to connect with CMOs, then LinkedIn is probably the best choice.

Retargeting
This focuses on targeting those people who've already visited your website and/or interacted with your content in the past. It keeps their identity, then segments them by demographic info (such as household income, and so on) and targets them with a sequence of additional information.

The idea is to keep people inside the orbit who have already expressed interest. Here the limitation is that you're only targeting a selected group and not masses.

Going deeper
To get a deeper penetration, tools such as Storylift (http://www.storylift.com/), can craft surveys to your demographic target that point to whether or not A or B person will be more likely to use your services. After you have narrowed down those people, and targeted your content to them (usually through a Facebook post) your cost per lead drops dramatically.

So are you prepared to spend on these tools? Cost for each tool varies depending on volume, targeting level, and many such factors. Picking the right tool that will give you exactly what you are looking for and keep your cost-per-lead optimized. So how do you pick? Coordinating and working with a skilled content strategy team will help you figure out which tools are worth your time and money.

Global Data Brokers is into making business processes smooth and easy. We believe keeping the sales, marketing and client services teams in sync is what makes a business smooth. Our excellent Marketing Database provides services that support customers and businesses and help them keep their organizations in sync.

Publish content at the right place and at the right time

Great bloggers know how to publish their content in the right place and at the right time. It is important to identify which post deserves to see the light of the day and which post needs to be kept on hold until the time is suitable. They also know the medium where the particular piece of content will do better, be it their own blog, or on a site like LinkedIn. They know the art to constantly balance, weigh different options, juggle several content pieces and hence make better business decisions.

Content scheduling

To be a great blogger, you need to be a great decision maker and decide on the content where it can reach your target audience. Also you have to decide whether the time is right for the content to be published.

Let’s consider some factors that can help you determine content placement.

• Target the right niche
  Being a blogger, you need to find out how well a post will perform on third party sites which specializes in a particular niche compared to your own. This is because many at times, readers devour particular type of content that their own blog may not contain as they deal in some different kind of business.

• Choose the right type of content This plays an important role to consider the type of content, it can be in the form of visual content, blog, infographic, long form articles, predictions, and PPTs. While visual content is best suited for social media platforms, blogging is best for guest posts.

• Set the right tone The tone of the content decides the place where it should be published. Something thought-provoking or a controversial piece will be suitable for publishing on LinkedIn, and other active communities and forums to garner more views for your post.

• Content timing  People search for the recipe of cakes and pie all through the year, but that doesn’t mean you write about it in the month of February. Hence timing is not just important but absolutely necessary. Many bloggers are stuck in a rut and fail to understand the importance of dynamics of timing and content. 

No matter how great your content piece is, or how much effort you have invested in writing it, the ultimate result of your post is sealed by the time and the place you publish it. So its time to revisit your strategies and make wise decisions to effectively market your content.