In this digital age, content marketing strategies have changed dramatically. Search engines and social media have made it possible to reach a huge audience cheaply and quickly. With such a variety of content formats and different methods of delivery, businesses and marketers have more lead generation opportunities than ever before.
Content Marketing Benefits
Ultimately, when you create quality content more consumers will hear about your brand, visit your website, trust your company, and end up buying your products and services. Your search rankings will also improve, so it’s good for SEO. Compared to traditional advertising, it’s also relatively inexpensive.
Content marketing is not going away, so it’s worth getting to know the jargon. If you need to get up to speed with some of the terminology, here’s a quick glossary:
Analytics
The collection, measurement, and analysis of Internet data for the purpose of improving future strategies. Analytics tools like Google Analytics help you discover which content is attracting more traffic or getting more shares.
Blog
Short for a web log, a blog is web page content that is updated frequently, featuring articles, opinions, discussions, and links to other useful pages. They strengthen brand personality and credibility, drive traffic, boost SEO, and build customer relationships.
Call to Action (CTA)
An image, a button, or a line of text meant to prompt the user to take a desired action. This could be to share your content, subscribe to your blog, or download an ebook.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of users that click on a link, button, or ad. The data can help you see which content types and subjects engage your readers more.
Content Curation
Gathering, organizing, and presenting content that is relevant to your audience or is focused on a particular topic.
Content Shock
A debatable concept used by some marketers to describe how content marketing may not be a sustainable strategy for some businesses. Similar to “information overload,” it’s the idea that we’ll be so flooded with content we’ll start to turn away from it.
Conversion Rate
The measurement used to see how many visitors complete a specific action, such as sign up to your newsletter or make a purchase.
Ebook
Often used by marketers to generate leads, an Ebook is a downloadable piece of informational content that is longer than a whitepaper, from 20 to 100 pages long.
Editorial Calendar
Keeping you focused on your content marketing goals, an editorial calendar details what subjects your content should cover, the content format, and when and where to publish each piece.
Evergreen Content
Content that remains relevant to your audience in the long term. For this reason, it has more long-term marketing value.
Inbound Link
A link on another website that points to a page on your website. Google often uses link data like this to rank your website. Links from “quality” websites can help you appear higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Infographic
These are graphic visual representations of data or other information that can be easier to consume than chunks of text.
Keyword
Keywords or keyword phrases are words that searchers type into search engines to find specific information. They are also included in content to show search engines that your content is relevant. The overuse of keywords can now harm your search engine rankings.
Newsjacking
Creating content based around a news story to draw attention to your content. This type of content can rank well in SERPs.
Personalization
This is tailoring your content to match specific segments of your audience. It can involve delivering content to different channels depending on your marketing goals.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO covers all strategies that are aimed at making a website easier for search engines to index and rank. The purpose of writing SEO articles is to make content and websites rank higher in search engine results pages.
Using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ to increase brand awareness, promote content sharing, generate leads, and boost SEO.
Snackable Content
This is typically short-form and visual content such as infographics, images, videos, and short blog posts. It’s designed to quickly and clearly convey an idea or message.
Visual Content
As opposed to text, visual content is used by marketers to make an instant impression. Videos, animations, slide presentations, and infographics are also highly shareable.
Whitepaper
Used to generate leads and show industry expertise, a whitepaper is an extended article that is often offered to users as a download to build a marketing database.