Whether you are a business or you are trying to promote yourself as a brand, you must have heard this a lot as tips or advice about creating a content marketing strategy. In this blog, I am going to discuss why is this so important for anyone who is trying to build a reputation and get known online.

As we see, how digitalization of business is flourishing, with the rise of the uses of internet-enabled devices and how people a larger amount of their time on the internet. So it only makes sense to use the online platforms right away to create a strong presence and image among the billions of people who a lot of time on the internet. Let’s break it down and discuss it in detail.

Setting your goals

To have an idea for the content which is suitable for you, you have to first understand what kind of message you want to convey to your target market. Let’s say, you are an interior designing business. What could possibly be the right kind for you? First, you have to ask yourself, what are you planning to achieve through content creation? Your content strategy will vary depending on your business goals. You can work on a number of goals. One of them could be creating content that is engaging so it creates awareness for your brand or business, where people can get to know who you are and what you are all about. So, in the case of an interior designer, you might want to create content that helps people know about what you do, which could be, creating design ideas, created virtually or in reality and showcasing them on your Instagram. If you have a website, you can have a blog section where you can publish articles about trending design ideas, how to design your dream home and much more.

Your goal could also be, to build an email list for prospective clients. In this scenario, your content will vary to some extent. Say. you are a  business consulting agency. Planning to build an email list. In such a case, your content cannot be entirely open or public, you need to make a call to action so that your prospective clients can use this call to action such as a subscription to access your content. Once you build content that demands your target audience to subscribe. You will be able to build an email list to whom you can pitch your ideas about consulting services through email. 

First understanding your goal is necessary and only then you should head to create content if you don’t, then you will be simply creating content that won’t deliver any results, and you will be wasting your time and resources. Knowing your goals, helps you shape your content accordingly and gives you results.

How can you reflect your brand or business through content?

I have seen prospective businesses and startups creating content of low quality and value, content that doesn’t resonate with their business at all. With content, you can either raise your values or create a poor brand image. 

In order to reflect your business in a positive way, you need to have the right vision and write down the values you are willing to provide, the problems you are willing to solve. 

Your content should be tailored to reflect who you are, the message you are trying to convey, if you don’t convey the right message through the right content, you will attract the wrong audience or no audience at all. Let’s take Deloitte’s Instagram as an example. Deloitte is a broad corporation primarily providing consulting services. If you look at the content you will notice, they are portraying strong brand values including helping the society, changing lives, engaging young people in their projects and causes, also designing content that shoutouts their position, values, and mission by using creative content strategy.

Clearly define your purpose and vision. Take the two and mix it with creativity and soon you will visualize your business or brand with content.  If you are just starting out, it can be hard, to come up with ideas, in such cases, take a look at businesses and brands of your niche, analyze their social media profiles and track how they are promoting their business with engaging content which actually reflects their purpose and presence and thus creating the right image among visitors and followers. 

Understanding social media platforms

Every social media platform out there is different. It is not always necessary that you to have a presence on every platform but it is important for you to understand the usefulness and specialty of each of them so you have a clear idea of which ones will be effective for your to promote your brand or business. If you are a small business or an entrepreneur, it might be hard for you to manage multiple platforms, so in this case, it is important for you to understand analyze and carefully select two or three platforms that you think would be best for you. But it is important for you to know that every social media site serves a different purpose and they should be considered and carefully implemented in your marketing strategy.

YouTube – This is solely used for video sharing which I think is close to essential for any business or any personal brand. Videos are consumed more than any other form of media or content and with a video, you can share so much more. YouTube is one of the most popular platforms and websites across the Internet and there’s a great market for you if you can harness the platform with the right video. The largest demographic of YouTube by age is 24 to 34.

Twitter – Twitter lets you keep your message short and simple. This platform limits your posts to 140 characters. So you have to keep that in mind. In this scenario, you have to get creative with your content and/or posts, so that it is short, but deliver the message you want to convey to your followers. 37% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29, 25% of its users are 30-49 years old.

LinkedIn – LinkedIn, on the other hand, allows you to publish entire blogs or articles. This platform is more professional rather than informal like Facebook. This is where you can harness all types of media from videos to large articles. LinkedIn enables you to connect with people from all professions and also connect with businesses. LinkedIn has the largest base of users from 30 to 49 years of age.

Facebook – Facebook is the most popular social networking site with 1.5 billion daily active users which is a great marketplace for any business. It lets you create a page categorized into different business types. You can harness the huge marketplace of Facebook and reach out to millions of people who might be interested in your business.

Instagram – The popularity of Instagram is ever-increasing now. But unlike other social media platforms, Instagram is used only for visual content that is, images and videos only. Earlier, there used to be some limitation, that you can only post images and videos which have the dimensions of a square, but now this limitation is removed and you can post content of different dimensions. Brands and businesses are utilizing the platform Instagram to deliver their message to their audience through visual storytelling which helps to promote a strong brand image. A large portion of Instagram users, about 53% are aged 18-23.

Quality content is King!  

Given the multiple numbers of social media platforms, it is crucial for you to understand which platforms you should use as I discussed earlier, each platform has its own importance, having different features, users of different age groups and much more. No matter which platform you choose to use, the most important factor for you to succeed in that is to tailor quality relevant content, which truly reflects your purpose and sends the right tone to the right audience.