It’s no secret that marketers are always on the lookout for unique content to help them stand out from their competitors and provide value to their audience. To have a strong content marketing strategy, you’ll need to publish content consistently. Consistency is key when it comes to producing content - your readers will want to know that your brand is the place to go for up-to-date industry news and information.
So, What is Unique Content?
Unique content is online content created for websites, which is completely different from other content found on the web. Creating this type of content is important because it enhances relationships with your customers and can provide additional value to your target audience.
Oftentimes, the challenge with creating consistent content is having the right resources to produce and push this content out. So if you are looking into how to create content for your website, read on for some ideas.
Content for Your Website: The Planning Stage
Since content is arguably one of the most important tools you can have to achieve your company’s marketing goals, it's important to take some adequate time to plan out your blog content strategy. You can do so with the following steps.
1. Research Your Audience
The research stage begins with knowing your audience inside and out. This means accurately identifying who they are, the questions they’re asking, the content they are consuming, what content formats they like, etc. Understanding the answers to these questions will drive your strategy going forward.
2. Look into Your Competitors
You’ll also want to look at what your competitors are doing in their marketing space. What kind of content are they producing, how are they marketing themselves, and how are they communicating with clients? Take a deep dive and identify what they are doing well, what they are doing poorly, and how you can differentiate yourself from them.
3. Identify What Makes You Unique
What is your unique value proposition? How are you any different from your competitors, and why should potential customers purchase from you? A company’s unique value proposition will answer these questions and the messaging should be prominent throughout your marketing content.
4. Explore Media Types
Content for your website doesn’t just have to be blog posts and long-form articles. Consider the impact videos, photographs, and other graphics can bring.
5. Develop an Editorial Calendar
Developing an editorial calendar holds you and your team accountable for producing content consistently. Plus, having an editorial calendar fleshed out can help you to visualize your whole content strategy and how it will work for you from day one.
6. Measure Your Performance
It will be quite hard to see if your content strategy is working if you don’t adequately measure your marketing performance. Make it a habit to check in on your content marketing KPIs at least once a month and ask yourself if the content is resonating with your audience, and is it bringing in more traffic? If the answer to these questions is no, then it’s time for a change in strategy.
6 Ways to Legally Get Content for Your Website
So how do you go about legally sourcing content for your blog or website? Here are some ideas.
1. Use Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
Chances are, you have great resources sitting right in your office! Look internally for some inspiration, there are people from your company who are experts in certain areas of your business that can easily create content for you. This can be someone involved with product development, research, sales, etc. Plus, showcasing the subject matter experts you already have is a great way for any and all customers to put faces to the names in your business.
2. Outsource Thought Leadership Content
Guest posts are increasing in popularity because they can help a company’s marketing efforts in more ways than one. Typically, guest posts can create backlinks for your website, add valuable content and keywords to your webpages, and showcase larger names in your industry who may work elsewhere. Providing the opportunity to allow guests to contribute to your blog can be very beneficial, and the guest posts can be as versatile as you want them to be.
Alternatively, you can work together with industry experts to create thought leadership content. Your team can do this through content licensing, by outsourcing this content development or by leveraging pre-existing relationships.
3. Brainstorm Across Departments
As mentioned before, your own team is full of great ideas! Plan a brainstorming session with every member of your team, you never know what you’ll come up with. Getting a fresh perspective from internal team members is an awesome way to ensure you’re staying relevant and fresh. Product, sales, and business development can work with marketing to provide unique insights from customers and prospects.
Here are some additional tips for creating content for your site:
- Utilize multiple sources when writing a blog post
- Try to not look directly at existing content when writing
- Try writing from your own memory
- Use a style unique to your website or brand
- Never copy and paste content from other places on the web
- Cite research and give credit when it’s due to others
- Use a duplicate content checker
4. Refresh Old Content
Instead of creating completely new content, often your current blogs and articles can be repurposed and refreshed. Understanding how to increase engagement on your blog can be extremely beneficial. Take a look at any pieces that may have old statistics and information, and give them a little update. Sometimes the smallest of changes can make a big impact.
5. Complete In-Depth Keyword Research
Not only will you want to create content that is informative to your readers and potential customers, you will want to ensure your website comes up within the search engine result pages (SERPs). The best way of doing this is by completing in-depth keyword research on both industry-relevant terms and terms users are searching that bring them to your website.
There are many free tools available, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console that can help you with identifying what keywords your customers are using and which ones your website already ranks for. Then from there, you can identify some keyword themes, and create fresh content from your findings.
6. Explore Licensing Options
Valuable content is increasingly found behind a paywall. Most people are not paying for an online news subscription. Additionally, only about 37% of those who do in the US, pay for two or more subscriptions.
By leveraging a copyright license, you can give your audience access to high-quality information from world-class writers on a wide range of topics. Licensing content for your website also allows you to save time and internal resources that you may not be able to spare. Plus, content licensing will help to shake up your usual content production with new perspectives.
Why Does Unique Content Perform Better?
A large problem with content production in our digital age is that the content doesn’t always deliver valuable insights in an oversaturated market. According to the Edelman 2021 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study, researchers found that thought leadership content is becoming more and more diluted, especially after the pandemic.
The shift to a digital B2B content marketing landscape was rapidly accelerated by the pandemic, and because of this, approximately 40% of all final decision makers in the B2B marketplace say there is more thought leadership content than they can manage. What’s more is that 71% of decision makers report that less than half of all the thought leadership they consume gives them valuable insights.
By leveraging licensed news stories, you can easily deliver unique content that offers timely industry insights. When you curate news stories fromThe New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and National Geographic, you can expose your audiences to information they may otherwise not come into contact with. Combine that with the fact that publishers are increasingly adding paywalls to reach their content, and only 20% of Americans are paying for the news, and you will find that your target audience cannot easily access the information they are interested in.
One example of successful content creation is the partnership between AdvisorStream and The New York Times Licensing Group. AdvisorStream is an award-winning marketing platform that helps financial advisors grow their practices by building trust and credibility with clients through content. Their platform promotes highly engaging and personalized communications while using licensed third-party content from reputable publishers, like The New York Times Licensing Group, to drive engagement and conversions.
AdvisorStream used licensed content centered around wellness during the pandemic, and as a result, experienced an increase in engagement. From January to June 2020, AdvisorStream experienced a 200% increase in views from licensed content and a 260% increase in lead capture on its platform.
Final Thoughts
Content is the bread and butter of any marketer’s content strategy, and it’s important to remember that consistency is key. Producing consistent content doesn’t have to be a challenge when you partner with The NYTLicensing Group, as our variety of content packages can meet the needs of your audience no matter your marketing goals.
Explore more about our curated content options and how a partnership can help bolster your brand with NYTLicensing’s expert storytelling.
