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It can sometimes feel like the content marketing world is talking in a foreign language. You’re entering an industry that loves jargon, but never fear – Wizeo is here to help it make sense.
So, if you’ve ever wondered what is content marketing? Or, what the difference is between tone and voice, or what on earth keyword research has to do with anything, then read on. Our content marketing dictionary has your back.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy through which a brand creates and shares relevant, quality content with its target audience, intending to attract and retain customers, secure better search engine rankings, and increase organic traffic to its website. Content marketing can be undertaken in-house or outsourced to a specialist content marketing agency.
Blog
An online space, usually part of your website, where you can regularly publish content. This includes articles, guides, interviews, and any other content relevant to your brand, your industry, and your customers.
Brand Values
The things that are important to you and shape everything you do as a company. What are brand values? Ethically-minded clothing company, Patagonia, offers a great example:
- Build the best product
- Cause no unnecessary harm
- Use business to protect nature
- Not bound by convention
Whatever your core values are, they act as your guide through every business decision, piece of content you write, and every communication you make.
Calls To Action (CTAs)
What is a call to action? A short body of text or design within your content that tells your customers exactly what they need to do next and encourages them to do it. Calls to action are best when they are clear, simple, engaging, and easy to find on the page.
{CTA – Ready to Get Your Content Strategy up and Running? Book A Content Wizard}
See what we’ve done there?
Content Brief
What you will provide to your content writer – whether in-house or via a content writing agency. The best content briefs will not only outline what you want the content to include, but where it will be published, insights about the target audience, what tone and voice you need, any specific branding details, and key message you want to include.
Engagement
A customer interacts with your brand as a result of your content. Content engagement could be a ‘like’, ‘follow’, or ‘share’ via social media, someone subscribing to your newsletter, sending you an email, or clicking on a call to action (see below) to find out more.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
The metrics you measure and track to see whether your content marketing is working. Which KPIs are most important to you will depend on the overarching aims of your content marketing strategy. Some common KPIs include the number of leads you receive, social engagement, click-throughs, brand authority, cost-per-lead, conversion rate, or the number of email subscribers for a campaign.
Keyword Research
Keyword research analyzes what your customers type into search engines to find your and your competitors’ websites. Keyword research also involves looking for search terms relevant to your customers to find content topics. Remember, effective content addresses a customer’s need, but needs to be seen. Keyword research gives you that visibility. Several online tools can help, including Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs.
Keywords
What is content marketing? That’s something we can’t answer without talking about keywords. Keywords are words or phrases that match what your customers would type into a search engine to find your website. Relevant keywords will dictate what you write and share with your audience. The aim is to improve your website SEO by including specific, relevant keywords in your content so you appear in the SERPs for those terms.
Some short-tail keywords – things like ‘Marketing’ or ‘Content Marketing’ will have lots of searches per month, but the competition to rank highly for them can be stiff. Long-tail keywords – ‘Content Marketing for beginners’ or ‘How to write a content marketing strategy?’ – might be searched for less often but could be more relevant to your content. And could generate higher rankings more easily.
Marketing Channels
The medium through which you talk to your customers and share your content. Most businesses will use multiple channels to communicate with their target audience. These include your website, a blog, emails, in-store information, newsletters, social media, brochures, advertising, events, and face-to-face meetings.
Marketing Personas
Hypothetical descriptions of your customers. Well-researched marketing personas will include details on who they are, what they enjoy, what values are important to them, where they live, and what pain points they experience. Your marketing personas take the guesswork out of your content, and ensure everything you create is useful and relevant to your customers. What is content marketing? The art of delivering valuable content which addresses your customers’ needs.
Organic Traffic
The visitors that arrive on your website after finding you in the SERPs (see below). Paid traffic, by contrast, is the visitors who come via a pay-per-click advertisement, or another paid digital ad.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
An acronym is ubiquitous in content marketing. SEO is the process of tailoring your website content to help your website pages rank more highly in Google (and other search engines) results pages. What is SEO writing? Content that pushes your pages to the top of the SERPs (see below). The higher you rank, the more organic traffic you’ll receive.
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
The page of website listings that appear after you type a word, phrase, or question into a search engine. Given its global dominance and the sheer volume of traffic through its site, Google SERPs are perhaps the most important for content marketers.
Whether your webpage is on pages one, two, three, or more, and whether it appears at the top or bottom of that page will impact how many people click through to view your site.
Page one of the Google SERPs will account for 71% of all website clicks generated by that search term. Rank too far down the listings, and your website is nigh-on invisible.
Social Media
Online platforms on which you can share content and interact with your target audience. Social media platforms your business might primarily use include Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, YouTube, Twitter, and Linked In. Each is quite distinct – TikTok focuses on video, for example, and attracts a younger user base, while LinkedIn is strictly B2B – and requires a different strategy.
Target Audience
The people – potential customers – who you want to read or view your content. Online or in person.
Tone
Not to be confused with voice (see below). Your content tone is not what you say but how you say it. Your brand personality and overall voice stay the same in all communications. However, your tone of voice will change depending on who you are talking to and through what means. For example, on social media, you might be more informal or tongue-in-cheek, but while dealing with a customer complaint you will be more respectful and empathetic.
Verbal Identity
Guidelines outlining what your brand says and how it says it. Your verbal identity is the bible that defines every aspect of your written communications, from product descriptions to customer emails. As an internal document, it dictates the language, your voice, and the tone you should use in different situations. It helps keep a consistent brand image and ensures you remain true to your values.
Voice
How the personality of your brand shines through your written content. Defining your brand voice is a process that takes time and introspection. You’ll need to consider your brand mission, your values, and by which qualities you want to be recognized. Are you energetic? Professional? Calm? Easygoing? What is a brand voice? The sum of your unique mix of brand characteristics.
So, what is content marketing? A compelling, cost-effective marketing strategy to engage with your customers, boost organic traffic, and drive increased leads and conversions. But, consistency is key. So, if you don’t have time to write multiple blogs per week, or if you’d prefer to stick to the bits of business you know best, why not leave your content creation in the hands of experts?
SEO content writing services like Wizeo can take the strain for you, providing access to helpful content marketing resources and conjuring up SEO-focused creative content that performs when you need it most.
