Six tips for successful content marketing

A line-up of industry leaders shared their content marketing expertise with Wales’ business community at our fifth CIM Wales Marketing Masterclass, which took place at Cardiff’s Glamorgan County Cricket Club.

Here are six key learnings from the event.

1. Consider the role of PR in your SEO strategy
To prove to Google that your website is important, you need to secure good quality inbound links from relevant domains and authority domains. This involves creating content that others will want to use, hence why the relationship between SEO and PR is now closer than ever.
Gareth Morgan, founder and managing director of Liberty, talked through the basics of SEO as well as how to plan, fix, promote and measure content, before showcasing a Happy Beds case study to demonstrate how successful content marketing can lead to real business impact.
View the full presentation here.

2. *Really* get to know your audience
Sophie Harris, Account Director at Equinox, spoke about the importance of understanding your audience for successful content marketing.
Using a STAEDTLER Teachers’ Club case study, Sophie highlighted the need for thorough audience research and insight through focus groups, surveys and active ambassadors to help shape authentic, credible and relevant content that will resonate with the target audience.
View the full presentation here.

3. Create a Content Engine
Although L&G had a huge amount of legacy literature, there was no formal digital content marketing strategy in place. So, Debbie Lewis, Legal & General and Bryn Foweather, Punch Communications talked about how they developed one.
They used the Hero, Hub and Hygiene content structure methodology, identifying four key themes, each designed to meet a specific objective (Support, Educate, Engage, Convert).
With limited news or product development, the team developed a Content Engine to help generate creative content ideas under the core themes.
Download a template Content Engine here.

4. Keep on top of emerging content marketing trends
The team at BrandContent talked through the rise of AI, Voice Search and Interactive Content and how these emerging trends will impact content marketing.
As well as considering writing for traditional search, marketers now need to consider how their copy will play out through voice search and optimise accordingly.
The most important question to ask yourself when adopting new trends and technology in your content marketing strategy is ‘will this solve a problem or add value to our customer’s experience?’
View the full presentation here.

5. Use block-based web designs for greater flexibility
As well as giving delegates tips on producing good content, managing director of Illustrate Digital, Scott Jones talked about the importance of block-based web designs.
Presenting the Content Ecosystem, Scott showed the channels that many brands use daily to share their content because of their flexibility and how easy they are to update. The issues with these channels however, is that they are owned by third-parties and brands aren’t in control of their own content.
So, what’s a key element of good content marketing? Having a flexible and simple-to-use website to create, share and own your content. And block-based web design is great for that.
View the full presentation here.

6. Use these three ingredients for engaging video
Labclass’ Warren Blackmore took the audience through the four steps to successful video creation and shared his three must-have ingredients for compelling content: make it human, inspirational and credible.

Attended by near a hundred people from Wales’ marketing community, the event received an overall feedback score of 4.4 out of 5. To attend more upcoming CIM events in Wales, visit their website.
Thanks to Liberty and Illustrate Digital for kindly sponsoring the event.