8 Content Marketing Skills to be a Marketing Pro in the age of Voice Search and AI

Content marketing is more than a savior in a world where people despise advertisements. According to a recent report shared by AdBlock Plus and Global Web Index, around 40% of surveyed people affirmed that they used an ad blocker on their desktops and laptops in the past month. Plus, 22% were using ad blockers on their mobile devices.

Another survey by PageFair revealed that mobile ad blocking is exponentially increasing in Asia and projected to increase in North America and Europe as well.

It clearly shows that you are missing out on a huge number of people even with paid advertisements. The good news is that you can reach these people via excellent content marketing strategies.

This is not all. You might have imagined AI automation through high-end movies like Terminator and Star Wars; however, the truth is that AI-powered tools are already commercially available in the real world and helping marketers to get far ahead of the competition. In fact, according to The Content Advantage by Colleen Jones, more than 80% of CEOs think of AI as an extremely important tool.

Before you go into the relaxation mode, think about the increasing importance of voice search and its impact on content creation and marketing.

As all these technological trends are sneaking into our daily lives and going to be present in the future as well, it is getting immensely vital for bloggers, SEOs, marketers, and other relevant professionals to develop great content marketing skills to fly ahead of their rivals and competitors.

Let’s dive deep into the top 8 content marketing skills that you must master to achieve desired results.

1. Research and Digging Deep – to find out useful information about the audience

Unless you don’t know who you are speaking to or sharing your content with, even the most compelling content will fail to make the desired impact. When you know your audience more closely and know about their behaviour patterns, it becomes easier to produce content that they would love to read or have an appetite to dig in.

Tips on How to Conduct Research on Your Audience

  • Use Google Analytics – It is a free tool for analysis with which you can find out who is your audience and get more in-depth demographic information about the visitors of your website.

google analytics

  • Visit Quora and Reddit – Know what people are talking about, what they think, and what fears, desires, dreams, or problems they have. Getting familiar with people of your niche is important to know what kind of content you should produce and market.

Quora and Reddit

  • Use tools like BuzzSumo – Know how people are reacting or responding to your content. With such tools, you can identify what kind of content engaged them most and what made your content appealing to the audience.

Buzz Sumo

  • Offer surveys with incentives – If you are conducting a survey, it is best to incentivize your audience by free downloads, a mini e-book, or a cheat sheet.

Offer surveys

  • Use comment section aptly – When you post content, ask questions, or their opinions. Carefully analyze what they are saying and respond directly and appropriately.

Use comment

2. Subject Matter Expert (SME) Interviewing – to produce authentic content

Make one thing sure. Whenever you decide to write about a topic, you need to be an expert on that topic. It’s because E-A-T is one of the critical factors that Google algorithms use to rank content. If your content does not demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, the chances of getting it noticed by your audience will reduce significantly.

Just take a look at what Search Quality Evaluator guidelines say:

EAT

Thus, interview SMEs to gain deeper insights and find out answers that are not commonly available on the Internet.

However, conducting an interview requires a lot of preparation. Before interviewing an expert, prepare a list of questions that address your audience’s pain points, issues, curiosity, and provide your audience with new information or revelations that are useful for them. Wondering how to make your interview more valuable? Take a look at the tips given below.

Tips to Conduct a Value-Rich Interview

A. Prepare yourself – Before calling an expert, enlist questions that you couldn’t find online and do as much research on the topic as you can.

B. Break the ice with open-ended questions – Ask questions that would make SME discuss the topic openly. Don’t hesitate to ask unusual questions and bring out more insights and new information. For instance, ask “How do you handle the challenges of your profession?” rather than “Do you find it difficult to continue this profession?”

C. Keep your content outline with you – To avoid wasting time on irrelevant questions, it’s better to base your questions on the content outline. For instance, if you are talking to an SEO expert about content marketing, it is best to skip questions related to the website enhancement.

D. Record the interview – To go back to a specific sentence said by the interviewee, having a recorded conversation will keep you from distracting and confusing with other things.

E. Ask for clarification – If you are not getting some answer properly or finding it hard to grasp, you can ask the SME to clarify more. This way, you can dive deeper into the topic.

Interviewing Subject Matter Experts is a great way to build your knowledge base about a particular topic and explore things that you and your audience want to know.

3. Setting Goal before Writing Content

When you decide to write content about a topic, first of all, set a goal. Just writing anything about any topic won’t do much good to your website. Plus, you won’t be able to attract the audience of your niche. Setting a goal is not all about selling your products or services. You can have other kinds of goals as well.

For instance, you can write content to divert the traffic to different blogs on your website or you can write content to help solve the problems of your audience that fall under the same or similar category of your business or targeted stream.

4. Finding Ways How to Outsmart Your Competitors

One of the goals of content creation is to attract your audience to read your content rather than that of your competitors. How can it be achieved? Let’s check it out.

Tips on Creating Content That You Can’t Find Online

A. Analyze your competitor’s content – Spy on what information your competitor is providing and what’s missing from their content.

B. Use a different yet compelling way of presenting content – Since you and your competitor’s niche is the same, there is a higher possibility that content can be similar and saying the same thing. But, if you present the information differently and in a more compelling way, it would give the illusion of something new.

C. Groom your writing style – So many people become the regular visitor of a blog or journal just because of the writing style. So, develop a style that your audience finds the most appealing.

5. Intensive Keywords Research

Keywords make the base of your content and allow you to stick to the main topic. We often encounter many blogs or articles these days that discuss a different topic with the targeted keyword stuffed in it. Though it may help in ranking or increasing the number of clicks, it will also lead to a higher bounce rate. Why? The reader won’t stay on the page for long when he/she won’t find anything useful. Readers are likely to be frustrated by such headings and blogs that are not coherent with the keyword. Apart from a lower retention rate and higher bounce rate, the reputation of the blogger or article author will also go down.

Thus, stay relevant to the targeted keywords. Now, you might be wondering – how to find keywords that are in trend? Let’s have a look.

Tips on How to Find Trendy and Relevant Keywords

A. Go for Keyword Planners – You can use free keyword planner tools to find out which related keywords are in trend these days.

B. Also use long-tail keywords – Since voice search is making it easy to browse for people by spelling out long sentences or keywords, choosing long-tail keywords will also help you target the audience that performs voice search rather than textual search. For instance, rather than using “wedding gift ideas”, you can use “Suggest me top wedding gifts ideas for the groom”.

C. Include low-competition keywords – Going for common or highly-competitive keywords will put you in competition with big players in the market. So, to avoid getting lost in the competition against huge brands, choose keywords with a score below 50.

D. Don’t hesitate to select keywords with low-search volume – You can use a keyword as long as people are searching for that particular keyword. Remember that millions and even billions of people surf the internet nowadays. If your keyword is targeting even a small fraction of people, it still makes up a large number of people reaching out to your content.

6. Optimizing Content for Voice Search and AI

Indisputably, voice search and AI are going to be the major trends in the upcoming days. To be honest, voice search is already making a significant impact on search results. If you are not optimizing your content for voice search, there are chances that you are already missing out on several opportunities and Google’s search engine attention. Thus, it’s better to be ready for what is going to be ubiquitous in the future.

Now, the question pops out – how to optimize the content for voice search?

Tips on How to Optimize Content for Voice Search

A. Write complete questions instead of small phrases

According to Google, 41% of people talk to their voice assistants like a friend. Consequently, they ask the whole question rather than just saying a few words.

Image Source – Think with Google

 

So, rather than using “best restaurants near me”, you should prefer to use “which are the top five best restaurants near me?” or “when do the best restaurants near me offer discounts or deals of the day?

B.  Structure your content so that it can be used by voice assistants

When people perform voice searches through their smart speakers or voice assistants, they don’t need to click on the link to get the answers. Google will do the task of finding answers through its voice assistant. Now, the thing is that the answer may also come from your website, only if your content is well structured. To increase the likeliness, categorize your content into H2s and H3s and use targeted keywords in them. If possible, also make numbered and bulleted lists.

7. Building Authority and Credibility via Relevant LinksUsing relevant and valid links are essential to show that you are not just putting out random words in the air. Authentic links show that what you are saying has a solid base and can be considered trustworthy.

Besides, there are several other benefits of using links in your content, for instance helping Google understand what your site or blog is about by linking it with higher authority sites of the same niche and allowing other influencers to link to you if you are producing great content.

8. Assessing the Success Metrics of Your Content

It is important to know how to assess your content success to make needed improvements and advancements in your content. After all, seeking feedback and performance rate is what makes us better.

3 Strong Indicators of Your Content Success

A. Bounce Rate

If people are not finding your content interesting, they won’t spend enough time and also won’t go through other pages of your website. If your bounce rate is higher than 70%, you need to make serious changes in your writing style and improve your content.

Image Source: CXL.com

 

B. Scroll Depth

Find out if people are scrolling to the bottom of your page. If most people are just reading the introduction and then leaving the page immediately, it means you need to make a strong start and introduce more appealing headings ahead to make them continue further.

Image Source: Blastanalytics.com

 

C. Click-Through Rate

Check out which series of content is getting a higher click-through rate and then analyze how it was different from others.

Image Source: MOZ.com

 

On a Final Note

Content marketing has become an indispensable part of marketing strategies to reach out to the audience that is often missed through other media. So, focus on what your audience wants to know, present reliable information from authentic sources in a unique way, incorporate features that make your content noticed by Google, and stay updated on how your content is performing in the market.

If you start cultivating the right content marketing skills, you will be able to withstand the stiff competition spurred by the emerging technologies (like voice search, AI automation, and machine learning) that are deemed to rule not only the marketing industry but also the daily lives of future generations.

Dhirendra Kumar

Dhirendra Pandey is the Co-Founder & CEO of Media Search Group. He has been working in the Digital Marketing industry more than 10+years.

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