Do you want better results in 2023 with your content marketing strategy?
The good news – it’s not as intimidating as you may think.
With the right mix of tactics and strategies, you can create compelling content that will help you engage with customers, drive website traffic, keep up with changing trends and ultimately grow your business.
In this blog post, we’ll share 23 ways your business can unlock the potential of content marketing for more successful outcomes in 2023.
Let’s dive in!
1 – Create content for a specific audience
Knowing your audience so you can create content that speaks directly to their unique challenges is essential.
With a deep understanding of your target audience, you will know whether or not your content will hit its target.
To produce content that resonates with the customers you want (and are best placed to) serve will set you up for the best possible chance of success in 2023.
>>>5 Steps to Identifying Your Perfect Customer and Developing a Customer Profile<<<
2 – Repurpose everything
Do you have enough hours to create the content you need to stand out in a crowded market and appeal to your ideal customers?
Repurposing is your friend.
Invest 80% of your content-creating time into producing pillar content, and then repurpose this to create multiple pieces of micro-content to publish across the Internet.
>>>Content is king but repurposing is queen<<<
3 – Try a new platform
Over time, we get complacent and tend to rely on those platforms with which we have become most comfortable.
As we saw recently during the new ownership at Twitter, platforms can and do change. What worked in the past isn’t guaranteed to work as well in the future.
Hedge your bets and diversify across different social media platforms in 2023. Give at least one new platform a try next year.
4 – Keep it short
Our attention spans are reducing, year after year.
A recent study by Microsoft found that our typical attention span has been reduced by a quarter in the past few years.
Various platforms are promoting shorter-form content, notably YouTube with its Shorts format and the ubiquitous TikTok.
What short, snappy content can you create in 2023?
5 – Get personal
People buy people, but many businesses are reluctant to allow their personalities to shine in their content marketing.
At the very least, introduce your team on your website. Share photos of key people.
If you’re feeling brave, get personal from time to time and give your customers an insight into what makes you tick as humans. You’re likely to find they like it.
6 – Plan your content in advance
Do you have a content calendar in place for 2023?
Having at least the bare bones of a content plan for the year ahead removes a great deal of pressure when it comes to content creation.
Pick your key themes and events for the year, and fill in the gaps with content ideas that will resonate with your target audience.
7 – Keep a note of customer questions
If someone asks you a question in 2023, keep a note of it. You can create content answering these questions.
This approach to content idea generation, known as They Ask, You Answer, is potent as most Internet search is based around finding the answers to questions.
Please don’t assume the question asked is too simplistic; we make this assumption when we work in a specific field, as our expertise automatically fills in the blanks.
What feels obvious to you will likely be incredibly valuable to those posing the question.
>>>The one simple trick to getting unlimited content marketing ideas<<<
8 – Look at what worked well in 2022
When was the last time you reviewed your website analytics?
Look at the best-performing content on your site in the past year and double down on that success.
Identify the most visited posts and create more content around that topic.
9 – Experiment with new content and tactics
Don’t allow your content creation to get stale in 2023. Experiment.
Take a look at what the competition is doing. Look at the content marketing from brands you admire too.
These inspiring brands don’t need to be within your sector. In fact, it’s better to draw inspiration from other industries and then apply your personal approach.
10 – Invest in quality cornerstone content
Content creation doesn’t need to be highly professional, using professional photographers and cinema-grade video cameras.
But… there’s a time and a place for investing in quality content production.
Your cornerstone content should be the best it can be.
Pay a professional to get the photos on your website up to standard and to produce the introductory video that every new visitor to your business will watch. It’s a small price to pay to make an excellent first impression.
11 – Increase your publishing frequency
If you’re used to publishing one piece of content weekly, try posting twice a week in 2023.
The frequency of your content creation and publishing is key to your content marketing success.
We’re all operating in an increasingly noisy environment. There’s so much more content vying for our limited attention.
You can make your content stand out from the crowd by producing better content, but it also pays to create more content.
12 – Get involved in your community
Don’t spread your net too widely in 2023. Think local.
You can get more bang for your marketing buck with a local focus.
Focus on a small enough locality, and it becomes relatively affordable to give the impression that you’re the only game in town.
Start small, dominate a particular geographical area with your marketing efforts, and then widen your reach.
13 – Pay attention to SEO fundamentals
To be found online, you need to understand SEO and consistently implement several tactics.
Review your website to get the SEO basics up to scratch, and keep SEO in mind each time you publish a piece of content.
We love the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress; never settle for anything less than a green light each time you press publish!
>>>5 essential website SEO elements<<<
14 – Bring your customers to the fore
Your customers should be the heroes of your business.
Focus your content on your customers; answer their questions, address their challenges, and make the content you produce all about them.
Change the website copy from talking about you to talking about them.
15 – Update your website photography
That website profile photo. Be honest; when was it last updated?
If you do one thing to keep your website up to date in 2023, update your photography.
A few hours with a professional photographer can yield a series of headshots you love and custom ‘stock’ photography to accompany your content marketing for the year ahead.
Great photographers place people who hate having their photographs taken at ease and can even make the process enjoyable.
>>>Capture special moments and elevate your brand with professional photography<<<
16 – Know your ideal keywords
When publishing content on your website, which keywords and key phrases are you seeking to dominate?
Carrying out keyword research at the start of the year will give you a list of words and phrases your content production aims to cover.
Aim for keywords that have a reasonably high search volume and little competition. These are the Holy Grail.
Without these highly desirable keywords, you can pursue a long-tail strategy, producing a lot of content to target many keywords with lower search volumes.
>>>How to identify keywords to target with your content marketing<<<
17 – Introduce a little marketing psychology
Do you know what makes your prospective customers tick and, most importantly, take action?
Understanding and introducing some marketing psychology can improve conversion rates, gently encouraging people to take the desired action.
After all, we’re only human, and our brains are wired in a specific way that is simple to nudge towards action when adequately understood.
>>>The six marketing influence weapons that will boost your small business success<<<
18 – Ask customers for a video testimonial
Social proof is a powerful form of content marketing, and customer testimonials fall squarely into this category.
Don’t settle for written customer testimonials in 2023. Unless they are accompanied by a full name and photo of the customer, there’s a good chance people will think they are fake anyway.
Video testimonials offer the most authentic and believable social proof in 2023.
Chances are, the barrier to obtaining customer video testimonials isn’t the customer saying no but your fear of asking in the first place.
>>>11 ways to gather social proof for your business that actually work<<<
19 – Think like a media company
Inspired by marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk, having a media company mentality means creating and distributing content around your brand or business.
Vaynerchuk advocates documenting your journey, showing your customers and audience your daily life in business.
Prioritise your brand by showing what happens within your brand.
20 – Grow your network (collaborate)
Collaboration is key to amplifying your messaging. Look for opportunities to network with like-minded souls and identify mutually beneficial collaborations.
We fell out of the habit of attending networking events during the pandemic, but 2023 is a great chance to get back to these meetings, and making new connections as you go.
>>>Post pandemic networking: how to build your professional and personal networks after Covid<<<
21 – Pitch to the press
While digital media are rapidly replacing traditional PR, there are still opportunities to raise your profile and reach a wider audience by commenting in the press.
Make yourself available to journalists in 2023, pitch your unique story, and prepare case studies to illustrate what’s happening in your profession.
A little media training can go a long way, helping you to hone your message and prepare as press opportunities arise.
22 – Never stop learning
The world of content marketing is constantly evolving.
Whatever your preferred learning method, embrace new knowledge in 2023 and sharpen your content marketing skills.
Read books, watch YouTube videos and listen to podcasts. We’re incredibly fortunate to have so many free ways to learn available, many for free.
23 – Let AI do the heavy lifting
2023 is the year that AI goes mainstream, rapidly replacing many jobs as its capabilities become apparent.
Within your content marketing workflow, there are already many excellent AI tools that can do a lot of the heavy lifting, for example writing the outline of your blog posts before you add a personal touch, or editing your copy to improve its grammar.
Keep an eye open for AI enhancements as the year progresses, and keep asking yourself how you can incorporate what AI offers into your marketing.
>>>AI content marketing – 5 factors to consider<<<
***
If you want to get the most out of your content marketing in 2023, adopt one or more of these 23 tips.
They range from developing buyer personas to coming up with ideas for new pieces of content to evaluating the performance of your existing content.
By incorporating even just a few of these best practices into your content marketing strategy next year, you’ll be well on your way to generating better results for your business.
So…which of these 23 tips will you use in your content marketing in 2023?
