9 content marketing strategies for 2023 and beyond!

In a world where the amount of online content is constantly increasing, it's more important than ever for businesses to create high-quality, original content that stands out from the competition. This can include blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, and other types of content that provide value to customers and help to establish the business as an authority in its industry. Jonathan Merry, Founder & CEO at Bankless Times, says, “When I say original and high-quality content, it sounds so ‘cliche’. We use these words so often for every content that these words have almost lost their meaning. What truly is a high-quality writeup? To me, it's content that’s super personal to your exact target audience, is effortlessly helpful, guides somewhere, and truly satisfies the intent so that readers won’t have to go to another site to fulfill their content needs.” So whether you’re an ecom brand, a B2B or SaaS platform, or just a media publication site, you want your content to become thorough and go-to one-stop for all your readers. That’s what it will take to win with content marketing in 2023 and beyond.

In order to reach a wider audience, businesses should make sure that their content is optimized for search engines. This includes conducting keyword research to identify the terms that potential customers are using to search for information, and incorporating those keywords into the content in a natural and effective way. It's also important to ensure that content is well-structured and easy to read, as this can help to improve the chances of it ranking on top in SERP. (Search Engine Results Page). Sparktoro's research discovered that a whopping 92.6% global traffic comes from the search engine god, Google. Plus, Hubspot’s research discovered that more than 60% of marketers said SEO and blog content still gives them the highest number of leads than any other method.

In order to produce high-quality content consistently, businesses need to invest in a strong content marketing team. This team should include individuals with a variety of skills, including writing, editing, design, and video production. Because…think about it. A copywriter has a separate warehouse of knowledge, an editor has a different skill set, a designer is different from the two, and…keep going. When you’ve experts across all of these departments, imagine the impact you’ll bring through your content. Not only will your content shine in the sea of competition, but also, experts will experiment and bring new ideas to the table. That’s why, having a full fledged team is always better, as compared to doing it all on your own, or hiring a VA to do it all. When we asked Derek Bruce, Operations Director at Skills Training Group, about building a content marketing team, he said, “The good thing is…now building a content marketing team is easier than ever. All you need to do is to visit platforms like LinkedIn, Upwork, and Fiverr, and pick the best talent. Then, you can work completely remotely as a team, even if you’re all from separate corners of the world.” But whether it’s a remote team, or in-house, it's also important to have a clear content marketing strategy in place, with specific goals and objectives, in order to ensure that the team is focused on achieving the desired results.

To reach a wide range of customers and engage them in different ways, businesses should experiment with a variety of content formats. This can include blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, podcasts, and other types of content that can be tailored to different audiences and platforms. By using a mix of formats, businesses can reach customers where they are and provide them with the information and entertainment they're looking for. Consider content formats as different touch points. Some people like long format blog posts, some like crunchy social media posts, some like entertaining videos, and others like reading emails. Meet every persona, right where they’re. In 2023 and beyond, you can’t afford to miss out on potential buyers that are on different channels. For instance, if you only focus on creating Tweets, you’ll miss out on buyers that love Instagram Reels. Keep a diverse approach in your content marketing efforts to ensure there are no ‘weak points’, or ‘leakage points’ in your content mix. You’ll also discover that some content types are working better than the others. Take notes, and double-down on what’s working best. That’s the way to maximize marketing efforts’ results.

One effective way to expand the reach of your business's content is to collaborate with influencers and other businesses. This can include guest blogging, cross-promotion, and other tactics that can help to introduce your business's content to a wider audience. By partnering with other organizations, you can tap into their networks and gain access to new customers and potential partners. Take the example of guest posting. By contributing with a valuable piece of content to your competitors’ or relevant industry website, you’ll gain access to new potential visitors. Those visitors then later can become your customers/clients for life. Also… Partnering with influencers can be an incredibly powerful tool for your business, as these individuals have the potential to reach a large and engaged audience. By collaborating with influencers, you can gain access to a new base of potential customers who are already familiar with the influencer's content and style. Influencers will help you spread the word about your products or services. You can even partner up with them to create custom content to target a hyper-specific audience persona.

To ensure that content marketing efforts are effective, businesses should use data and analytics to track the performance of their content and identify areas for improvement. This can include tracking metrics such as page views, clicks, and conversions. Use that information to adjust the content marketing strategy, and double-down on the types of content that are most effective. With data and analytics, measure and track the performance of your campaigns to gain insights about your target audience. By understanding the performance of your campaigns, tailor your content to your exact audience — and, optimize campaigns for better results. Additionally, data and analytics will help you understand the impact of your content, and reach more people. You’ll be able to discover trends in consumer behavior that can inform the creation of future content.

That’s the reason why, businesses who adapt data-driven strategies, earn five times more ROI, as compared to the companies who rely on ‘bookish’ knowledge — or worse, guess work. Sean Stevens, Director of Immerse Education, says, “If you’ve been around in the world of business for a while, you probably already understand that 2023 is the age of data. We, now, not even publish a single social media post without first looking at the data; if the data suggests certain posts are viral-worthy, are relevant to the audience, and can bring in more engagement or leads, only then we create content on those topics.”

To stay organized and consistent, create a content marketing calendar that outlines the types of content you will produce, the platforms you will use to publish it, and the dates and times that it will be published. This can help to ensure that content is released on a regular basis and that it aligns with other marketing and sales efforts. Content marketing calendar will help you to plan, organize, and track content creation, ensuring that you’re effectively communicating with your audience. A content calendar also allows you to plan out your content in advance — even for a whole year ahead — ensuring that each piece of content is released at an optimal time and is relevant to the target audience.

2023 and beyond, brands will be focusing on generating more and more content consistently. Why? Because, a) competition is rising. And, b) now, it’s not enough to only publish a single piece of content a day, and then anticipate massive returns. When every other brand is pushing more and more content, and appearing more and more on the feeds of your audience, your daily one piece of content won’t save you. Consistently create more and more content, to appear more frequently in front of your audience. That’s only possible when you’re organized via a calendar.

Social media is a powerful tool for content marketing, as it allows businesses to connect with customers and potential customers in real-time. By creating engaging and relevant content, you can attract followers, start conversations, and build relationships with customers on social media platforms. In 2023 and beyond, social media will boom. To give you some specific numbers, 61% of the world’s population will be on social media in 2023. Which, in simple words, means you’ll get access to 5 billion people at the tip of your fingers. Think about it. Can you imagine someone today without a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter profile? Even 70 year old baby boomers are online today. And…imagine… if social media is not included in your content marketing efforts in 2023, how much potential business you’ll lose. Here are some tips to engage with your audience on social media:

• Create Interesting and Engaging Content: Develop content that is unique and tailored to your target audience. Focus on topics that you know will be of interest to your audience.

• Listen and Respond to Your Audience: Make sure you are actively listening to your audience and responding to their comments, questions, and concerns.

• Ask Questions: Ask your audience questions and create polls to get their feedback and opinions.

• Be Personable: Share stories and anecdotes, and be conversational in your posts.

• Use Visuals: Use eye-catching visuals such as photos and videos to engage your audience.

• Run Contests and Giveaways: Run contests and giveaways to reward and engage your audience.

• Use Hashtags: Use relevant and trending hashtags to reach a wider audience.

• Monitor and Analyze: Monitor and analyze your social media performance to understand what is resonating with your audience.

Lastly, to maximize the value of the content that you produce, it’s super-helpful to repurpose and recycle your old content in different formats and on different platforms. This can include turning blog posts into videos, creating infographics based on existing articles, and sharing old content on social media. “Think about it. Not every single follower has already seen your posts. Or, when new followers engage with you on social media, they’ve not got value from your previous posts. Repurposing your old content, with a slightly new flare, will not only help engage new followers, but also maximize your efforts’ results”, says Miriam Domer, Content Marketer at Legal Finders, on the importance of repurposing existing content. Here are some tips on how you can repurpose your content:

• Create a series of posts - Take your old content and create a series of posts that focus on different aspects of the same topic.

• Update content - Revise or update the content with new information or statistics.

• Create different visuals - Create different visuals based on the same content to make it more visually appealing.

• Post at different times - Post the content at different times and on different days to increase visibility.

• Ask questions - Ask questions related to the content to encourage engagement and discussion.

• Share snippets - Share snippets of the content to entice readers to read more.

• Repurpose for different platforms - Repurpose the content for different social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

• Link to the original post - Link back to the original post in order to drive traffic to it.

Content marketing is a vital part of any successful marketing strategy, and it is only going to become increasingly important in the future. Companies must be willing to experiment with different content marketing strategies in order to remain competitive and take advantage of the many opportunities that content marketing can offer. Content marketing strategies that focus on creating engaging, valuable content, and using data to inform decisions will be essential for businesses to succeed in the future.

If you want to leave with one key element from this post, it should at least be this: in 2023, focus on building a deep, personal, and emotional relationship with your audience. With entertaining and helpful content, build a community around your brand. Build your tribe. That will help you withstand the test of time, and help you stay robust in the changing landscape of marketing and business.