Want to beat your competitors online? Focus on magnetic content

Back in the day, having a website was all that you needed to be seen and succeed online. There were almost no competition for top traffic generating keywords and no other content were available but the content on your website for your target audience to read.

Back then, digital marketing was a term not many people had heard about. There weren’t a lot of companies using online methods for marketing purposes and of those that did, only a handful understood the rules for getting their website and business ranked at the top of the organic and paid searched results.

Much has changed since then.

We now living in a digital savvy world. Many businesses now know the importance of having a digital footprint even if they don’t clearly understand how to strengthen their reputation online.

There’s also an endless supply of designers and techies that can build awesome looking websites in a blink of an eye. Just having a website, publishing blog posts, having a digital marketing strategy or being active on social media doesn’t mean you are going to be successful. There’s a very good chance that your competition is also practicing the same methods to generate awareness online.

The online world is extremely noisy and crowded. Google has indexed millions of pages and everyone wants a top position for targeted keywords on the search engines. Competition online is getting nasty and just the movement of a couple of positions on the search engines or getting a social media campaign to go viral can be worth millions. That is the reality of digital marketing.

How do you get noticed above your competition?

The answer is simple. By focusing on your core business and using various optimised digital marketing and social media strategies that consists of content to support your business goals. Your content should be geared and focused around your targeted audience and what they are looking for. You must have heard the saying before that content is king and it still is. Many social media gurus will tell you that conversation is king, but to start a conversion online that is useful you still need quality content.

Content is the heart and soul of any digital marketing campaign. Not just any content but “magnetic content” that pulls people in rather than pushing it out like a sausage machine. Since I can remember, Google has always stated that quality content is needed to succeed online and this clearly shows that if you are really serious about beating your competition online and making an impact, focus on quality content with everything that you do. Your social media updates, blog posts, website static content and even your images should be top quality. Not mediocre slap stick stuff, but of the highest quality to make an impact and dent in your industry.

How do you get started with producing quality content?

Start by researching your target audience in detail. What are they looking for online? What questions do they have? What are their problems? What do they need help with? What type of content are they consuming online? How old are they? What interests them? Can you help them?

By answering these questions, start by creating a persona of your most perfect customer. If you have multiple demographics you are targeting, create a persona for each, but start the process by creating one. Include everything that might stand out when you are creating personas and even include detail such as favourite sport teams, interests and hobbies.

Even though you might not hit the nail on the head the first time when you create dedicated personas for your marketing strategies, it’s a start and a learning process. Update your personas as you are learning more about them and what works until you have the best personas describing your target audience and what content works best for them.

Also research your competition and the content they are using with their marketing efforts. Are they busy with a content marketing campaign? Are they blogging regularly? Are they engaging with the people they want to reach? Are they successful?

Learn from your competitors successes as well as their failures to strengthen your digital marketing campaign.

Image: Bob Mical via Flickr.