Looking for ways of creating a robust content marketing strategy in Singapore? Many Singapore businesses are making the mistake of creating content in a vacuum. They are posting blog posts about random topics and using keywords in hopes that something will actually stick. There is often little to no research or strategising involved. The problem is that this type of approach doesn’t lead to the best of results. In fact, it’s the equivalent of working in the dark. If you want to see real traffic and get quality leads, then you must create a solid content marketing strategy that is centred around solid SEO.
SEO needs to support your blog posts. Each blog post must be written with the goal of providing the readers with useful content and achieving higher rankings in the search engine. Most of your traffic should ideally come through organic search and the only way to do this is with the help of SEO and ranking for high-ROI keywords–the ones that your customers are actively searching for.
So, how can a Singapore business go about setting up the perfect SEO content strategy? The trick is to start with a strong foundation and then build upwards while incorporating SEO at each and every step.
How to Run a Successful Content Marketing Campaign in Singapore
Define the Topic
Most people would assume that the first thing you should start with is keyword research. Sure, keyword research is a necessity, but it is not the backbone of your SEO strategy. The first thing you should do is make sure that your topic is well-defined. By defining your topic you can ensure that you know exactly what your brand’s expertise and purpose are. You will know exactly what unique knowledge you will be able to impart to your industry and audience.
Once you choose a topic, you will find that it helps guide your keyword research. Also, it can help you to do a more efficient job of audience research and content creation. You will be able to create content that actually converts.
Define Your Target Audience
Next, it’s important that you know who your audience is. So when you are setting up your SEO content strategy, you need to ask yourself who are the people you’re addressing. Luckily, there are several ways that you can narrow this down. You can start by taking a look at all of your current customers. Find out what traits that have in common. Make a note of everything you discover. You can also take a close look at your competition and who they are targeting. Follow them on social media and read their blog comments and customer reviews. You don’t have to target the exact same audience, but you can figure out ways that you can branch off from them or create a new niche from them.
One of the most important things to do at this stage is to outline all of the benefits that your product/service provides. Figure out what type of people will actually need them. You can take surveys and find out what people think about what you offer and any questions that they have about it. Create personas for your audience based on the data that you gather. Each persona needs to represent your ideal customer. Whenever you create content, refer to them.
Perform Keyword Research and Target Your Audience
Now that you have a better idea of what information you will provide your audience as well as who they are, you can use this information to target them and conduct excellent keyword research. More specifically, you need to be on the lookout for keywords that reflect what your audience is interested in.
The best way to do this is to start out with a broad term which relates to your expertise. You can then narrow down this term by considering what products and services you sell, the variations of the keyword, product and service features, and questions that your customers may ask in Google. You should then create a rough list of ideas that you will be able to put into your keyword research tools. Finally, use your tools to find the best opportunities.
Optimise Wisely
After you have created a list of high-ROI keywords, it’s time to use spread them throughout your content. However, you need to be particularly mindful about how you use these keywords. More specifically, you need to place them in key places so that you give yourself as many chances to rank as possible. This means that you need to use your keywords in the H1, H2s, and in your meta description.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that your content needs to be relevant. It needs to be something that is useful to your audience. It also needs to be comprehensive. You should also make sure that you have a consistent publishing schedule and that you actually stick to it.
Build the Content on Your Own Site
If you want to ensure that you get the most out of your content marketing strategy, you need to make sure that you place the content on your own website. Sure, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and sites like Medium are great for content distribution. However, if you would like to build trust, authority and relevance then you need to publish content on your own platform, not space that is borrowed.
You see, the main problem with posted on borrowed space is that you may not always be able to post there. In fact, many of these sites can shut down without warning, which means that all of the publishing that you invest there will completely disappear and so will the face of your business. By publishing on your own website, you will have more our control. And this is a pivotal part of creating content that gets an SEO boost.
Building an Effective SEO Content Strategy
If you want to make sure that the traffic you get to your website is profitable, then it’s important that you build your content strategy around solid SEO marketing. A content marketing strategy that takes SEO into account is one that will help you to convert your leads more easily. As you can see, this is about more than just simple keyword research. It’s about taking the time to do the proper research.
It’s about knowing what your expertise is and the value that you can bring to your industry. It’s about understanding who your audience is. It’s about using this particular knowledge to appeal to the audience as well as to the search engines. It’s also about being smart about how you execute your content marketing strategy.
Now that we have looked at the critical pillars of a good content marketing in Singapore let us shift gears and look at some of the things that you have to do if you are to succeeding in increasing your website visibility and connecting well with the target customers.
Create a Documented Strategy
The first thing that you need to note about creating a documented strategy is that a robust content marketing campaign starts with a simple assessment of the current website’s performance. It is estimated that internet marketers in Singapore who have a documented content marketing strategy are five times more likely to get the expected results as compared to their counterparts.
If you want to discover the full potential of content marketing in Singapore, you need to have a guiding strategy. This strategy will act as a blueprint and will tell you exactly what you need to do and at what time. Carry out a comprehensive website assessment to identify the main challenges that have been hindering you from achieving the set goals. Then, come up with an outline of the specific actions that you will take to resolve them.
Examples of good points of interests that you can start with include SEO and lead generation. From there, you can customise the strategy depending on the goal that you want to achieve. More importantly, you need to incorporate the unique aspects or highlights of your company and find an approach that will set you apart from the other brands in your niche.
Brand Storytelling
The good old habits of writing “How To” lists will not help you achieve all your goals. Brand storytelling is a new content marketing hack that gives companies an opportunity to connect with the target customers authentically and in a humanising way.
Customers often gravitate towards brands that they can connect and relate with easily. Start the conversation by sharing your personal experiences such as how the company started and what it took to get it to the current level.
Once you have established the initial connection, go a step further and connect with satisfied customers. With their consent, record their feedback and post it on your website and other online marketing channels such as social media to convince prospects to make a purchase.
Live Video Works Magic
It is safe to say that video is the future of content marketing in Singapore. Research shows that Singapore internet users are spending hundreds of hours per month watching videos online. Cisco predicts that by 2021, 80% of all internet traffic will be from video posted online.
The different video formats give brands numerous opportunities to communicate with their target customers and establish cordial working relationships. One of the latest trends that is second to none is live video. Facebook users not only here in Singapore but also other parts of the world spend three times the amount of time they spend on the platform watching live videos over popular videos. Recent statistics also show that Instagram videos spur more engagement in terms of views and comments on photos.
One of the highlights of a live video is that it establishes a real-time connection with the audience thereby ramping up response and engagement. Just like brand storytelling, people love seeing their favourite companies humanised, and showing that, not everything is 100% perfect.
You can use a live stream or video to do many things, for example, host Q&A session, product review, service description, product launch and the list is endless.
Leverage Artificial Intelligence
Since its inception into the internet marketing world, artificial intelligence has gained massive traction across the globe. Compared to other conventional tools, AI is a more powerful technology for identifying keywords, reviewing research data, planning blog topics and interpreting data reports.
All the information that it presents will shape your content creation process. That is, you will be able to know which keywords to use in your content and the topics to discuss at different times of the year. More importantly, AI-powered predictive intelligence will help you gather market data for purposes of providing personalised experiences to your customers.
Concisely, by leveraging artificial intelligence, you will be able to get gold worthy insights about what potential customers are looking for online and when they do it. This information will help you to know which type of content will resonate with them well and revamp your content marketing strategy in Singapore.
Hire Micro-Influencers
In 2009, content marketing strategies helped companies from all across the globe generate more than $87.22 billion in revenue. This year, they are expected to make $300 billion as the internet industry has grown tremendously. Most of the notable brands in Singapore have a team of micro-influencers pushing their content on social media platforms.
In the past, companies used to hire influencers who have millions of followers only to realise that they do not deliver significant results. This is because such influencers are directly in touch with their audience.
Micro-influencer, those who have a small group of loyal followers overshadow the big influencers as they are connected with the audience. That is, the followers trust them and are more likely to purchase a product or use a service that they recommend.
Avoid spending thousands of dollars on macro influencers that are not dedicated to your project by hiring a micro influencer. He/she will do everything possible to ensure that your brand achieves its social media marketing objectives. They will add tremendous value to your content marketing strategy in Singapore.
Ask the Audience What They Want
There are some experts out there who will tell you to publish an article per day on any topic related to your niche and you will get more traffic to your website. If it were that easy, then every website that uploads fresh content on the site every day would be achieving this goal.
Ask the audience what they want to know exactly what you should be concentrating on in terms of content creation. Popup surveys can help you get a clearer understanding of the type of content that the audience is looking for when they land on your website.
The questions in the survey should be as straightforward as possible. For example;
- What do you want to learn more about digital marketing?
- Which aspect of email marketing are you struggling with today?
If you have an email list already, send an email requesting for ideas of topics that they would want discussed on your website. Go an extra mile to show them that you trust and believe in them by requesting them to reply to the email with a few sentences explaining what encourages them to open your emails.
Looking at the type of content that your competitors are publishing can also help you steer your Singapore content marketing strategy in the right direction. However, desist from copying their topics; instead, tweak the content to suit your audience.
Create Evergreen Content
Singapore digital marketing space is very dynamic. You cannot continue to get clients if you publish boring content that does not resonate with the needs of your target audience. One of the surest ways of jumping this hurdle is by creating and publishing evergreen content.
What is evergreen content? This is content that will continue to reign supreme on search engines and get traffic to your website long after you have published it. Here are some questions to help you identify topics that meet this criterion.
- Will the content stand the test of time? If someone comes across the article ten years from now, will it still resonate with his or her needs? Will it still be relevant?
- Focus on creating content that will be relevant throughout the year and not just in one season
- Consider deleting publishing dates from your posts
Be Yourself and Tell Stories
Storytelling is one of the powerful ways of grasping and retaining the attention of your readers. Singapore websites and blogs that enjoy tremendous amounts of traffic use the art of storytelling to engage with their readers. This is based on the fact that we human beings are wired to connect and resonate with other people’s experiences naturally.
Here are some tips on how to do this like a professional content creator in Singapore.
- Give Real life examples: The examples will show the audience that your business has also gone through a storm in the past but managed to come out of it stronger. Spice up your examples with humour to entertain the audience and encourage them to keep reading.
- Understand the psychology of storytelling: Numerous scientific studies have proven that we are wired to remember stories easily than facts. This is based on the fact that stories naturally draw in readers. They help people to establish a connection between what they already know and the new information you are providing.
- Foster good relationships: Unknown to most website owners in Singapore is that the website visitors want to establish a connection with them even if they are just reading the words in the articles you publish. One of the ways of establishing a relationship with readers is by including your personality in your writing.
Smart Keyword Research
The “Publish and Pray” strategy used to work more than a decade ago when everyone was publishing a ton of articles per week on their websites. Nowadays, this is not a smart content marketing strategy and you should avoid it completely.
If you are to succeed in increasing your website traffic, your content has to be developed around keywords that your ideal target audience is searching for online. Google Keyword Planner is one of the tools that you can use for this purpose.
However, do not rely only on Google Keyword Planner. Once you have identified a number of keywords using the tool, head over to BuzzSumo and enter some of them in the search field. Buzzsumo will then display a list of the best performing posts that are optimised for those keywords. Sift through the results to identify posts that best resonate with your brand then proceed to create similar copy.
Google Ads is also another great platform that most people rarely use to search for content ideas. Whenever you search for something on Google using a particular phrase and see ads at the top of the results page and on the side of the page, it means that a good number of Singapore digital marketers are spending money to target people like you who use the keyword to lookup information.
The higher the number of ads on the page, the more popular the topic you just searched for and that is an indication that you can jump in and create your own copy.
Create Enticing Titles
Titles are used to lure in people to read a post, and so, it is imperative to spend some time creating compelling and enticing titles. The title is what will motivate your target audience in Singapore to read your content. The ideal title should be:
- Short
- Relevant to the content
- Contain the keyword phrase
If you want to run a successful content marketing campaign, you need to create fantastic content.
Nothing is more significant to Google than the relevance of your content to searchers. Content is relevant when it offers value or solves a problem for the user. For this reason, it is the number one ranking factor for SEO in Singapore.
The Significance of Relevant Content
According to Google, relevant content ‘serves a purpose.’ This is the best description you can give to the highest ranked content on search results. In their Webmaster Guidelines, Google highlight the importance of relevant content.
Take look at the following screenshot.
As you would expect, content that is irrelevant gets the lowest ranking.
The two examples above are proof of how critical content is to the success of your content marketing strategy.
The challenge, however, is creating content that meets the standards set by Google.
How to Create Content that Improves Your Content Marketing
If you have been doing digital marketing in Singapore for a while now, you must be aware of the importance having a working content marketing strategy.
Here are the tips to help you in crafting content that will rank on the first page of search results.
- Use the language of your target audience
- Address the challenges of your target audience
- Use keywords appropriately
- Avoid industry jargon
How to Create Purposeful Content for Your Content Marketing Campaign
For business that practices digital marketing in Singapore, here is how to create content that will rank you highly on SERPs.
Use the Language of Your Target Audience
The first step of creating useful content is using the language of your target audience. It appears to be a straightforward task, but you need data to create such content. Guessing is a massive gamble that is unlikely to yield positive results.
Instead of guessing, you should consider talking to your clients, collecting examples and doing social listening. You should use the findings from these methods as the guide when creating your content.
Research enables you to learn the preferences of your typical customer. For instance, you know whether to use a formal or an informal tone in your posts. That said, you should always look to make your content direct and engaging.
Address the Challenges of Your Target Audience
Another significant benefit of audience research is that it highlights the challenges faced by your audience. Even better, it pinpoints the problems that your business can solve or alleviate. This is crucial if you want to create valuable and relevant content.
Consider an instance where your company does digital marketing in Singapore. Audience research might show you that potential customers are wary about investing in digital marketing. Since that is your area of specialisation, you are in a unique position to address their challenges.
You can create a variety of posts to solve this problem. An excellent starting point is ‘how to get started with digital marketing.’ You can then follow it up with ‘the benefits of digital marketing.’
If you can create content that helps solve the problems of your readers, your content marketing strategy is heading in the right direction.
Use Keywords Appropriately
As seen above, your content must always address the problems faced by your audience. The keywords you use in your blog posts should be in line with this goal. Also, the keywords should use the language of your readers.
Here are three main areas that you should focus on when integrating keywords to your content.
- The challenge you want to solve – you should look to condense the problem you are solving from a long statement to a short keyword phrase. For instance, ‘how to optimise a website for search engines in Singapore’ can change into ‘How to do SEO in Singapore.’
- The questions from your audience – these should form the keywords you use in your content. For instance, if your audience is asking ‘how to outperform competing websites,’ you create content with keywords centred on that subject.
- Related terms – if you search your primary keyword on Google, you can discover related terms by scrolling to the bottom of page. This can prove useful as a source for keywords to use in subsequent posts.
It is crucial to vet keywords before integrating them into your content. Use a keyword research tool to see what impact they would have on your SEO in Singapore. For example, if the keywords are highly competitive, it is hard to rank for them even if you use relevant and valuable content.
Avoid Jargon
When creating content, keep in mind that the way you talk to fellow experts is not the way customers talk about your business, products and services. Using jargon can significantly hurt your content marketing efforts.
Using technical terms makes your audience to feel confused, neglected and stupid. This is not a feeling you want to generate among your customers. Such terms should only be used when talking to fellow professionals.
Your content must always be easy to understand. The best way of doing this is by observing the following practices.
- Put your audience first – try reading your blog from a layperson’s point of view. If you notice any term or phrase that is difficult to digest, replace it with something simpler.
- Use a persuasive tone – the primary objective of digital content is increasing sales. However, you should not create content that appears to be pushing customers to buy your products. Instead, focus your post on what is valuable to the client and how your products are useful to them.
- Write a compelling introduction – humans have a short attention span. The introduction you use determines whether they read on or leave your site. You can make a killer intro by using a captivating statistic, an anecdote and so forth.
- Make it personal – make sure that reader can relate to your content. You can put in a few real-life examples to make the content more realistic.
Where possible, avoid using jargon. Try to understand the problems of your audience and make sure that your content is applicable.
Benefits of Content Marketing to Your Business in Singapore
If you are still undecided over whether content marketing is right for your business, here are a few benefits to motivate you.
Better SEO Results
As mentioned earlier, Google rewards you with better SERP ranking when you create valuable content. When you add quality content to your site, you add the number of webpages on your site that are indexed by Google. This translates into more opportunities to rank for the keywords used in the indexed content, which is the primary goal of SEO.
Increased Website Traffic
Creating valuable content for your audience increases the traffic to your website. With time, it increases the visibility of your website on Google, which further increase the number of people visiting your site.
Other content marketing strategies such as guest posting, native advertising and content syndication are also useful ways of increasing your site’s exposure. If a user notices a backlink on a prominent website, they are likely to click it. This will redirect them to your website. Over time, it significantly boosts your web traffic.
Build Brand Authority
The quality of the content you produce influences how people perceive your brand. It also affects the emotional appeal they have on your business. For example, they can label your business as trustworthy or dishonest, knowledgeable or misinformed and so forth.
Nowadays, most consumers conduct online research before purchasing products. If you establish your site as an authority in a particular niche, it puts you in contention as the go-to site when customers are doing research before purchasing.
It Generates Quality Leads
The biggest challenge for marketers in Singapore is generating leads and website traffic. Content marketing is useful in attracting qualified leads. Companies with blogs generate more traffic than companies without content-rich websites.
You can generate leads by adding downloadable eBooks, PDFs and infographics to your website. The most popular method used by marketers is offering these items in exchange of client emails or personal data.
Cost-effectiveness
The initial cost of a content marketing campaign is undoubtedly significant, but if you execute it properly, it can repay the investment for many years. When you provide consistent, engaging and valuable content, customers become loyal to your brand.
Loyal customers are always ready to buy your products and services. They are also likely to endorse your items to friends and family.
Increased Brand Awareness
Your content shows your audience the values of your brand. If you want your content to be impactful, you should center your focus on topics that appeal to authority sites with massive followings.
3 Ways of Amplifying your Content without Spending a Cent
To most people who are involved in internet marketing, content marketing is a soul-crushing endeavor. Needless to say, quality content that is search engine optimized is one of the pillars of your online business or initiative and so it is imperative to make sure that you leave nothing to chance.
Sometimes, a well-crafted blog post may fail to achieve the expected engagement level and reactions from the target audience. Today, we will share with you some tips on how to amplify your content without spending a cent.
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Include Original Research
The first step to amplifying your data is creating something that people are genuinely interested in. Including graphs, charts, statistics, and other forms of data will help the readers to understand the topic in-depth thereby motivating them to share it on social media platforms. Carrying out your research can be expensive and time-consuming, but it will pay the highest dividends in the long run.
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Exhaustive “How To” and “What Is” Guides
Nothing grasps the attention of the reader than an article title that directly addresses or resonates with their search intent. Based on this fact, it is recommended to focus on creating articles that address the target audience questions to get more shares and be recognized as an authority in the industry. The guide has to be thorough and exhaustive to motivate the readers to share it.
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Use Industry Trends as the Foundation of your Content
Writing topics that are related to the current industry trends will get more readership than boring content. One of the benefits of using this technique is that you already know that the target audience has an interest in the topic. Go an extra mile and prove the facts discussed in the article using graphics and other analytical metrics.
Finally, leverage the power of influencer marketing to dramatically amplifying your data reach. Getting your content featured or given a subtle nod by a key influencer in your niche will positively influence your Singapore content marketing strategies.
Conclusion
You must always create your content for the user. This should be the primary objective of your content marketing strategy.
In addition, Google loves content that is meaningful to the searcher. If you create such content, you get a higher ranking and more visibility on SERPs. Otherwise, your site will not generate any organic traffic from search engines.
If your goal is to appear on the first page on Google, your content should be in line with the tips mentioned in this article.
These tips on how to create a content marketing strategy in Singapore will scale up your business faster and affordably. Be sure to monitor the results that you get to be sure that you are headed in the right direction.
With the right content marketing strategy and a team of professional Singapore digital marketers on your side, your brand will grow. Get in touch with us today for stellar digital marketing services in Singapore.
