Digital content marketing aiming to build brand awareness is quite different from the traditional, revenue-driven advertising that typically comes to mind. Although revenue-driven campaigns are extremely straightforward – to drive sales – the goal of content-driven marketing is to establish your brand as an interesting, valuable and trusted authority on anything and everything related to your industry.
If you don’t find a fresh, innovative way to stand out in today’s increasingly competitive online world, your brand and message will be overlooked. This is especially true at a time when many search engines reward businesses who regularly update their website content with higher rankings while tacitly penalizing stagnant websites with reduced organic rankings.
So, how do you create content that attracts attention and establishes your brand as a voice that exudes expertise and authority?
The answer is simpler than you may think (and contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, it’s definitely not about keyword stuffing). You can accomplish this feat by consistently generating fresh content that:
- Your audience finds interesting
- Is relevant to your customers’ needs, wants and goals
- Is original and offers value to them
Although you can use content marketing to boast about new products or prompt readers to take a specific action, these assets are best as tools to honestly and accurately express what your company and overall brand is all about. In this space, you can truly let the personality at the heart of your brand shine through, and the more you do, the more likely people will be to take interest in what your company has to say.
Content marketing allows you to create a narrative and explain to people how your business fits into their lives and addresses their needs. This content indicates to search engines that your business is an established industry leader worthy of an organic search ranking appropriate to your position in the marketplace, and it also shows your potential customers how your company fits into the context of their lives.
Below are just a handful of the many, many things you can do to start effectively building brand awareness through high-quality, content-driven marketing.
Jump Aboard the Branded Blog Train
A simple, yet highly effective way to prove your brand is an industry-leading authority is to create high-quality, content-driven blog posts. By creating content that has personality, value and is audience-oriented rather than profit- or action-oriented, your blogs can become an online destination for customers to gain a better understanding of your industry and how your brand epitomizes success, experience and credibility.
A company blog doesn’t have to be super formal. Instead, think of what voice you want your brand to convey, considering the demographics, goals and lifestyle of your audience, and then write using that voice.
One-Off Creative Pieces Can Go a Long Way
If you’ve ever come across a piece of content from a major, recognizable company that seemed out of the ordinary for that particular brand, yet it had a lasting impression on you, then their strategy of releasing a one-off creative piece was effective.
Your brand can do the same and create an extremely creative piece of content that’s funnier, more unique or more “out there” than your usual pieces. It’s a bold strategy, but it keeps your brand at the forefront of your customers’ minds for quite some time because it feels different and new.
Get Involved Online as Much as Possible
Another great way to increase brand awareness is to publish as many pieces of original, audience-oriented content on as many different online platforms as possible. Even if it’s not written content per se, getting your company involved in things such as podcasts, webinars, online meetings, LinkedIn Communities, social media platforms, etc. can work wonders in terms of helping potential customers become more familiar with everything your brand is about.
