Strengthen Your Content to Build Authority: Here’s How
Apparently, there is still no alternative to content. That’s why we keep writing. That’s why your competitors are still producing articles, blog posts, or press releases because these are still potential drivers of traffic and bringers of consumers to blogs, websites, and social channels. We know content can be anything you see on the Internet, including images and videos. But the context of web content has oftentimes revolved around text. Thus, sometimes we distinguish between content and multimedia in the operational sense.
It’s not enough to produce content. We tell clients to plan what to write. More importantly, deliver quality. Quality, however, is subjective. It depends on your niche, audience, and needs. At the end of the day, you want to be relevant to your audience. Ultimately, you want to catch the attention of key people, and that’s true in the marketing world whether you’re doing influencer marketing or not.
An important goal is to build authority with your content. Early on, you work on your content. After a while, you make it work for you.
Question-and-Answer Articles
People just don’t run out of questions about anything. Go to forums. Read comments. Go to discussion pages. You will find a host of questions. Take note of the relevant questions, especially those that appear most often. Write content around them. People sometimes type questions on search bars, and they love to sift through the search results. Hopefully, you write a nice title that grabs their attention. We love it when you can give honest answers to our questions.
Marketers overlook this simplicity, dismissing common questions as banal and not worthy of contemplation. An opportunity is therefore lost. However, its being basic is its strength. Questions that seem easy to answer are the ones that many people need answers to the most.
As a tip, pay attention to the questions of people in your niche. More importantly, pay attention to your audience’s questions.
Controversial Opinions
Even we are guilty of jumping on the bandwagon and write like everyone else does. Who’s tough enough to veer from the status quo and be a trendsetter? You know what, you sometimes need to stop being too nice and just pour out your unique thoughts. What happens when you do that? Simple: you get people’s attention. And if your unorthodox tactics come with trustworthy meat that’s a comprehensible and no-nonsense affair, you’ll get the positive regard you’re looking for.
Many marketers follow the trend and fail to devise unique means to sell their brands. Most do the safe formula, evading controversy because they want to avoid offending associates and competitors.
How do you give not only controversial but also compelling content?
- You need sufficient experience in your niche. You know the ins and outs. You know a lot of things most people don’t. That’s where you start.
- Honesty is your friend here. Obviously, you can’t keep saying what the others are saying just so you can blend in. There is that information your audience can get from you that they haven’t yet read or heard anywhere else. When you can tell them what others haven’t, they’ll tune in. This aspect is especially crucial if you’re doing influencer marketing. Imagine if you catch the attention of someone with a hundred thousand followers because of your sheer honesty and strong views.
- Don’t be rude. Just because you’re frustrated at how things are in your industry doesn’t give you a license to drop your manners. Don’t malign your competition.
Facts!
Your opinion matters to your audience, but make sure what you’re telling your people are based on facts. Every now and then you have to look at research and statistical data that’s relevant to your business and build content around these facts. Figures and citations increase your reputation and trustworthiness.
Over time, your pool of fact-based content becomes the strength of your website. Other websites will start referring to your articles and sending readers to your pages. This is how we build good links over time. It takes a lot of work and patience. It’s just that your audience loves facts. Facts are particularly important in B2B marketing. Influencer marketing is also anchored in production of quality content that’s based on research and statistics. You just can’t convince people with anecdotal accounts and biases — at least not forever.
Influencers
Influencers are famous people that advocate for your brand. Ideally, we want to get their attention organically. So we need to write something really good and interesting that gets shared around until it reaches potential influencers. It takes an exceptional piece of content for this to happen. No one shares boring blog posts with their friends or followers.
Influencer marketing is a multifaceted tactic on its own and is a tough venture. One thing you should keep in mind is that your influencers can take your content marketing to a whole new realm. Yes, you can write for them. But what you really want is them writing about you. That’s the stage in influencer marketing companies want to achieve.
When you’re marketing through them, you’re letting them do the heavy lifting without making it seem they do. Moreover, they boost your reputation. When a popular person talks about you, it means you’re worth talking about.
