Top 15 Content Marketing Tips to Elevate Your Strategy

By Livija Kasteckaitė Updated on October 2, 2024

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing involves the creation and distribution of content to effectively engage a target audience. In digital marketing, high-quality content can drive organic traffic and profitable customer action. That is if you can develop a content strategy that connects with your audience’s interests.

Creating content is an essential component of inbound marketing. This isn’t traditional advertising. A content marketing strategy is a natural growth driver for the following reasons:

• Brand trust: Increases brand recognition and trust across various channels.
• Personalization: Engages target audience at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
• Industry authority: Establishes your industry-specific thought leadership and authority.
• Revenue driver: Encourages potential customers to take a conversion-oriented action.

Eighty percent of marketers say that their content marketing strategy was successful. One of the reasons is the versatility that comes with the content creation process. You can test and experiment with any format you want.

Take a look at these trending content marketing examples in 2024:

• Short-form video content like TikTok reels and YouTube Shorts
• Live streaming via Twitch and social media platforms
• Interactive content, including quizzes, polls, and surveys
• User-generated content (UGC) such as customer reviews and branded hashtags
• Influencer marketing and affiliate content
• Immersive content on Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

Maybe you can also start a new trendy content format for your brand. Who knows?

Succeed at Content Marketing Strategy with These 15 Creative Tips

Spice up your marketing efforts with these engagement-focused content marketing tips.

1. Leverage user-generated content for authenticity

User-generated content (UGC) is a content marketing strategy where people create the content. You provide incentives to encourage people to share your brand. This helps establish your social media presence and brand credibility.

Here are tips to help you generate user content for your business:

• Run contests where participants are required to post and share your product.
• Promote branded hashtags on all your posts.
• Offer discount coupons or loyalty points to encourage customer reviews.
• Collaborate with influencers and feature your hashtags.
• Provide social sharing buttons on your web page.

What do you do before purchasing a product or availing a service? You check reviews and brand mentions. This way, you get a sense of a brand’s reputation before committing to an action.

People do the same thing when they’re interested in your products or services. Seeing positive UGC can ease their mind into trusting your brand.

2. Create interactive content to boost engagement

Interactive content is a marketing strategy that allows your audience to participate in an action. These types of content include quizzes, polls, surveys, and personalized experiences. Interactive content increases engagement and helps you collect useful customer data.

Other more specific examples of interactive content marketing strategies include:

• Personality, brand-specific, or pop culture quizzes
• Interactive maps and calculators
• Interactive shoppable videos
• Interactive heatmaps and visualizations
• Parallax scrolling for websites
• Personalized product recommendations from AI chatbots

Interactive content is a proven content marketing strategy. 81% of marketers say it is more effective than traditional content marketing strategies. Here are reasons why marketers are relying more on interactive content:

• Brings more quality leads to your lead generation efforts
• Collects valuable customer data for the analysis of your marketing team
• Increases engagement and conversion rates
• Improves dwell time and reduces bounce rates on websites

Test and experiment with different types of interactive content on your digital platforms. Analyze the results and stick with the formats that connect with your target audience.

3. Utilize micro-influencers for niche targeting

Micro-influencers have a more niche audience than bigger celebrities or macro-influencers. Typically, micro-influencers only have 10,000 to 100,000 followers. However, their access to a niche audience presents quality engagement opportunities for a business.

The benefits of working with micro-influencers cover these marketing aspects:

• Reach an audience that is more interested in your products and services
• Maximize your ROI with better leads
• Build a higher credibility and trust for your brand
• Gain a more loyal following and increase customer retention rate
• Enhances your visibility in local or regional markets

When done right, influencer marketing can drastically increase brand awareness. Our best recommendation is to ensure that you’re collaborating with influencers relevant to your niche. This guarantees that you’ll reach people with higher intent to purchase or take action.

4. Implement a content series to build anticipation

Content series is a strategy where you release episodes weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly. The idea is to get your audience at the edge of their seats. Build anticipation and have them check your platforms from time to time.

Follow these important steps when launching a compelling content series:

• Identify the target audience and theme of your content series. Use audience research tools like Google Trends or BuzzSumo to generate trending ideas.
• Plan the progression of your series. Make the sequence logical, with anticipation build-up as a priority in between episodes.
• Ensure that you can sustain a regular schedule. Missing a day in the schedule could turn away your audience.
• Create teasers and promotions through social media posts, newsletters, or short reels. Add micro-content like behind-the-scenes reels to keep your audience engaged.
• Track your content performance through tools like Google Analytics or Hootsuite. Focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like average viewing time and click-through rates.

You can also experiment with different formats. Don’t stick too long on low-performing content. Put up surveys or polls to collect feedback on your audience’s preferred formats.

5. Use data-driven storytelling

Data storytelling is a content marketing strategy that combines compelling narratives and data-driven insights. You create content that is backed by sets of data charts, visualizations, and comparisons.

Businesses look at data storytelling as a valuable content strategy. Here are the reasons why:

• Increases brand credibility and trust
• Makes your content more engaging and believable
• Allows you to break down your content into short-form bits
• Eases your audience into understanding complex data

More powerhouse brands are getting into this trend. Just recently, ESPN partnered with Genius Sports to advance its data-driven storytelling. Data is steadily becoming an essential element of a large-scale content marketing strategy.

6. Gamify your content marketing

Content gamification introduces game-like elements to your content marketing campaign. This motivates your audience to interact with your posts, increasing brand engagement. Moreover, you can also provide loyalty points or incentives to reduce customer churn.

There are a whole lot of content gamification techniques you can use. Take a look:

• Tiered systems like points, badges, and leaderboards
• Time-based and goal-based challenges
• Spin-to-win wheels
• Daily login rewards
• Progress bars
• Virtual avatars

Incorporate these gamification elements into your emails, video content, blog posts, and web pages. According to Gartner, 89% of individuals stay longer on a gamification-oriented platform. People absolutely love earning points, winning challenges, and accomplishing goals.

7. Host virtual events or webinars with a twist

Virtual events and webinars have become the norm these days. But there are ways for you to make a traditional webinar more engaging.

Have a look at these unique virtual even themes and elements:

• Live Q&A sessions with industry experts
• Virtual tours of a facility
• Virtual happy hours to encourage networking
• Leaderboards to track participant engagement
• Theme-focused events on wellness, sustainability, and productivity
• Live product demos and unboxing
• Live virtual performances of musicians, magicians, or stand-up comedians

You can also offer unique perks to your loyalty members and repeat customers. They can get exclusive access to product launches and collaborative workshops.

8. Leverage AI-generated content for inspiration

Content marketers view Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a very helpful tool. Why shouldn’t they? AI has become a useful aid, especially in scaling a content marketing strategy.

Recently, Microsoft launched “Correction”, which strongly enhances the accuracy of AI-generated content. Advancements in AI can only improve how it assists content marketers. Here are aspects where AI can help you in creating in-depth content:

• Inspiration: Overcome mental blocks through AI-generated content ideas and outlines. HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator is a tool you can use in brainstorming topics.
• Research: Dig deep into a topic with AI-powered research platforms. Rytr and Snopes FactBot are examples of such tools.
• Drafting: Use AI tools to improve the readability and syntax of your drafts. Try AI writing assistants like Jasper.ai or Copy.ai.
• Translation: Produce content in different languages, but with human supervision. Phrase and Matecat are specialized translation tools you can use.

Of course, AI cannot fully take charge of content creation. It cannot replace human writers, not even 20 or 30 years from now.

9. Create a private community for exclusive content

A private community is another effective content marketing strategy. You’re providing a select number of people with exclusive access to some of your content.

These private community techniques are trending in 2024:

• Membership-based content subscriptions
• Theme-based or interest-based social media groups
• Early access to product launches
• Invite-only channels on Slack or Discord
• Email newsletters
• Beta tester communities

Still, the best private content space is customer support. Personalize the onboarding and support process for your subscribers and customers. Offer helpful and unique tips for using your products and services.

10. Experiment with unconventional content formats

A blog post is always a great way to provide long-form content. Video marketing can help engage your audience through content they can watch. But how about experimenting with other non-traditional content formats?

Take a look at these unconventional but effective content formats:

• Audio content like podcasts and audible blog posts
• Interactive white papers with embedded quizzes and hover-over data points
• Interactive games and virtual tours using AR and VR
• Stories on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook
• Social audio rooms through X Spaces and Clubhouse
• Live shopping events

The key here is to experiment and measure the results. Optimization is an essential component of an effective content marketing program. You can use tools like Google Analytics and built-in analytics tools in social media marketing.

11. Use episodic content to build loyalty

Episodic content can build a loyal fan base on social media, search engine results pages, and email marketing. You capitalize on the anticipation that each episode brings. Essentially, your audience is left wanting for more.

You can use the dynamics of episodic content in multi-channel marketing. Here’s how:

• Sub-topic installments of a long-form blog post on search results
• Video series about trending niche topics on YouTube and social media
• Podcast episodes on streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music
• Live events and webinars on a social media platform like Facebook

Global brands have been capitalizing on episodic content for decades. It is just now that we’re experiencing it daily. This is already a proven strategy when doing enterprise, eCommerce, and SaaS content marketing.

12. Create shoppable content

Easily generate sales by integrating shoppable content into your content marketing funnel. Your sales team can embed purchase links when you create video content or blog posts. It’s a brilliant marketing method to leverage reach from social media users and search results.

Where and how can you integrate shoppable content into your campaign? Take a look at these strategies:

• Tag products and landing pages when you’re distributing relevant images or videos
• Embed purchase links directly on your blog content
• Include clickable product images in your email marketing campaigns
• Create a shoppable blog post on Instagram and other social channels

Ensure that your shoppable links are relevant to your videos or blog content. For instance, an enterprise email marketing campaign should utilize personalized recommendations. This increases your chances of converting subscribers into paying customers.

13. Leverage data visualizations for complex topics

Data visualizations show factual information and statistics through creative infographics. It’s a big component of content marketing statistics and data storytelling. You drive organic traffic while also building brand credibility.

We recommend these data visualization techniques in making your content marketing work:

• Use easy-to-understand language in your charts and descriptions
• Relate the data to current events in the community
• Consider trending formats like 3D visualizations and motion graphics
• Utilize data visualization tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Looker Studio

The important thing here is to tell data stories from a human standpoint. This will make your data visualizations more relatable and appealing.

14. Develop content around industry trends and predictions

Creating content is about connecting with your audience and potential customers. One way to do this is to make content about industry news and trends. This helps you interact with your audience and position your brand as a thought leader.

Targeting trending news in your niche can help establish your authority. Consider these strategies in planning your content:

• Identify trending topics and keywords in your niche
• Conduct original research for a more unique approach
• Provide your own insights or collaborate with industry experts
• Predict future developments and trends in your market

Keep up with trends in your market through industry publications and news aggregators. Also, don’t miss out on industry events and conferences. These events also present networking opportunities for you and your company.

15. Incorporate customer stories and case studies

Client feedback is the backbone of your brand’s reputation. You need social proof that your product or service works. This is where case studies and customer stories can help you.

Why shouldn’t you be proud of the success that you achieved with previous clients? Customer stories can boost your entire digital marketing playbook. Here’s how you can make the most out of your clients’ feedback:

• Identify customer stories that are currently trending in the market
• Back up your case studies with metrics like conversion rates and search traffic
• Highlight how you maximized the ROI of your clients
• Use direct quotes for blog posts and interviews for video content
• Promote customer stories on all your online platforms

You can also request media outlets to share how you’re helping customers in your niche. Just make sure that you have content that is relevant to their publications.

Tips for Staying Current with Content Marketing Trends

Creating quality content remains the biggest challenge in content marketing. To do that, you need to connect with your audience. And to do that, you need to stay current with content marketing trends.

An up-to-date, quality content marketing strategy gives you a competitive advantage. We recommend these trending tips for content marketing in 2024:

• Social listening: Utilize social listening tools to discover what your audience is talking about. Brandwatch is a great tool for monitoring trending conversations in social media. For search engine optimization, you can always use AnswerThePublic or Google Trends.
• Marketing publications: Follow reputable publications like Content Marketing Institute and other niche-specific outlets. Along with Content Marketing Institute, you can also subscribe to MarketingProfs or AdWeek.
• Marketing communities: Connect with fellow content marketers and experts. Content marketing communities like GrowthHackers and Superpath offer private channels for discussions and tips.
• Experimentation: Test out different content platforms and formats. Transform existing content into trending formats like short reels and infographics. Evaluate your content performance through content marketing tools like Marketo and Sprout Social.

You’re also advised to analyze your competitors’ content marketing performance. This gives you valuable insights into what works and what does not. Leverage competitive analysis tools like SimilarWeb and Google Analytics.

Common Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Investments in content marketing cost businesses tons of resources. As much as possible, you avoid missteps that can undermine your efforts.

We understand the difficulty of getting your content marketing playbook perfect. But what you can do is avoid these common content marketing mistakes:

• Overpromotion: Create content that genuinely helps your audience. Don’t rely too much on traditional or outbound marketing where you post ad after ad. Overpromoting content could turn away potential customers.
• Irrelevant content: Take your time in analyzing your audience’s interests and pain points. Otherwise, you’ll be crafting content that nobody wants to see or read. Personalize your content to each stage of the marketing funnel.
• Irregular schedule: Stay on top of your content calendar. Maintain a regular flow through content calendar tools like Trello and Notion.
• Ignoring SEO: Optimize your content and website for search engines. Organic search traffic is a sustainable growth driver.
• Lack of organic engagement: Don’t just rely on the content that you post. Spend time engaging with your audience on comment sections or online forums.

Your content strategy encompasses your entire digital marketing playbook. It’s why businesses outsource content marketing tasks to agencies and experts. They have teams that specialize in every aspect of content marketing.

For instance, a search marketing agency like Fortis Media can improve your multi-channel content strategy. These agencies offer innovative expertise in creating blog content, newsletters, and social media posts. You’re guaranteed a quality content strategy that resonates with your audience.

Successful Content Marketing Strategy: Key Takeaways

These content marketing tips revolve around one element: your audience. Understanding your audience is the most crucial aspect of your content marketing efforts. They won’t engage if they don’t relate to your messaging.

With that said, you have to continuously study your market. Identify the strong and weak points of your competitors’ content strategies. Use social listening tools to discover trending topics and hashtags in your niche.

If you make your content relatable, you’re almost guaranteed increased visibility across platforms.