Do you have a content marketing strategy in place for your business? If not, you should. Without one, you could be falling miles behind your competition.

To put it simply, content marketing is the creation and online sharing of targeted content. You probably receive content marketing on a daily basis via your email, social media accounts or blogs you follow. Since 90% of consumers find targeted content helpful and having engaging content is one of the top reasons people follow brands on social media, it should be a big slice of your business’s overall marketing strategy.

The thing is, the online world is drowning in content. Content just for the sake of having a presence online is no longer enough. Every man and his dog blogs these days. In order to stand out, you need to be doing things a little differently. Here are our top three recommendations for a solid content marketing strategy.

Diversify

If your content marketing strategy is simply blogging (for example), you’re going to get lost in a sea of articles pretty fast. You need to be presenting content in a variety of ways. We recommend:

  • Instagram TV – videos from 15 seconds to 1 hour. IGTV is best used to deliver helpful tips and information to your visually hungry audience. We suggest keeping it engaging but more polished and professional than your Insta stories.
  • Instagram stories – up to 15 seconds, your Insta stories are more casual and light-hearted. They give your audience a “behind the scenes” look at your business. Or you can string them together to create a fun story about whatever you feel like focusing on—or to sell a product or service.
  • Instagram – your Insta page should be taken seriously as a content marketing strategy. This is where people come to take stock of the visual representation of your brand. You want it to be polished, thought out and clean with professional looking images and designs.
  • Facebook – realistically, to get the most out of your Facebook page you need to be doing a combination of daily posting and regular advertising. Link your blogs to advertising or boost posts to get more people outside of your Facebook followers exposed to your brand and jumping through to your website.
  • eBooks – who doesn’t like a free eBook that dives deep into a topic? With eBooks as part of your content marketing strategy, you look like an expert in your field with so much to offer that you don’t mind giving content away for free.
  • YouTube – similar to IGTV, YouTube captures your visually hungry audiences. With an active user base of 1.9 billion, it’s a great platform to reach new people.
  • Blogging – simple yet still effective, blogs are a great way to keep your website current with new content while giving you plenty of material to share on social media and beyond. Check out our top tips for writing great website blog posts.
  • Email – don’t forget about the old faithful email marketing. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not dead and can still be a valuable part of your content marketing strategy. The trick is to not overdo it. Also ensure your subject line is eye-catching and enticing enough to tempt someone to click.

If your head is swimming and you’re suddenly feeling lightheaded about the prospect of delivering so much content, don’t worry. Diversifying your content marketing strategy doesn’t have to mean the creation of brand new marketing content for each platform (although that should always be the ultimate aim). You can use the same top tips and simply present them in different forums so that you’ve got something for everyone to enjoy.

Deliver genuinely helpful information

Thanks to the internet, we have more information coming at us on a daily basis than our grandparents were exposed to across their entire lifetime. Put yourself into your audiences’ shoes before you create any online marketing content and make sure you have a clear strategy for how it will help your business. Ask yourself:

  • Will this be helpful for my audience?
  • Will this be helpful for me?
  • What is my main aim in delivering this content?

Share—and then share again

There’s little point posting a blog on your website if you’re not going to share it with your audience. Yes, that content will be helpful for those who stumble onto your website or for anyone who is actively looking for information on the topic you’re discussing… but you’re missing a whole chunk of the pie if you don’t share it. Sharing helps you to diversify without the need to come up with fresh content. Use your blog post topic as a base for your next newsletter, share it to your Facebook page, or talk out the points in your IGTV or YouTube channel. Sharing should be a big part of your content marketing strategy.