If you want to get people to visit your website (and thus buy into the products or services your company offers) producing high-quality content your target audience wants to consume is key. Kevin Schlittenhardt, the Senior Manager of Editorial at Major League Gaming (MLG), knows a lot about content marketing strategy. In his role at MLG, he’s responsible for every piece of content published on the company’s website—from videos, to live stream updates, to photo and video descriptions. Prior to this role, he was a freelance writer for publications such as The Bleacher Report and HellaWella, an editor for Elite Daily, and the Managing Editor for Thrillist Media Group. According to Schlittenhardt, the secret to a successful content marketing strategy lies with your audience.
How do you come up with good ideas for content marketing?
Good ideas for content marketing involves two different ways of thinking. The first is figuring out how to work on something that you’re both knowledgeable and passionate about. The second is thinking about the audience. Ultimately, you are performing a service for other people and every piece should have an objective with the audience in mind. So, who is this piece for? What is the motive? Is this information your target audience wants? As long as your content marketing strategy revolves around your audience, you have a very good chance of coming up with awesome pieces that people will read.
How do you figure out what type of content your audience wants to consume?
You might not be personally interested in analytics, but when something goes viral—if it gets a lot of views or shares—you know you’ve hit some kind of mark. You’ve resonated with the audience in some way. Eventually, you will figure out the types of content your audience will always respond to positively.
For some publications, it’s horoscopes. For others, like Thrillist, it’s articles like, “100-year-old Woman Says Drinking Beer Every Day Is the Key to a Long Life!” Try to figure out what that “something” is for your organization and craft your content marketing strategy with it in mind. Just make sure you find different angles to tackle it from so each piece of content is fresh.
How do you make sure your posts aren’t clickbait?
You always want your title to incite some sort of intrigue, to pique someone’s interest enough that they click it. Titles do this by withholding information. But clickbait titles do it the wrong way. They manipulate the audience into clicking, but the content doesn’t provide what the title promised. And while this does achieve short-term gains in viewership, there are definitely negative long-term effects because you’re harming the credibility of your publication. Tricking your audience should not be your content marketing strategy. To avoid being clickbait, always, always follow up an intriguing title with quality content. If you draw your audience in, what are they going to want to learn after they click?
A solid content marketing strategy is crucial to the success of your business or company. But it’s not as easy as just pushing any sort of content out there. Focus on your audience. Figure out what they want to know, then deliver that.
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