When you look at the definition of relevant content marketing from the Content Marketing Institute, you find this: Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Not just any old type of content will do or pass muster when your brand is using content marketing. That content needs to provide some value and be relevant to your audience. But what does “relevant” mean? How can you incorporate relevant content into your content marketing?
What Makes Content Marketing Relevant?
If you look up the word relevant in the Cambridge Dictionary, you come across two meanings:
- connected with what is happening or being discussed
- correct or suitable for a particular purpose
Content marketing is marketing that serves a purpose and has some connection to what’s on people’s minds.
Relevant content marketing also ties into the other must-haves when it comes to content marketing. It provides value and is useful. Let’s say a person wants to learn how shorten the length of a pair of jeans but doesn’t want the finished product to look “homemade.”
A piece of content relevant to that person’s search would be a video showing how to hem jeans and create a finished edge that looks like what you’d get on a typical pair of jeans. A written tutorial describing how to shorten jeans and create a finished hem would also be relevant.
An infographic explaining the history of jeans wouldn’t be relevant. Even though it would discuss jeans, the person doing a search would be looking for information on jeans.
In order to make content marketing relevant, it needs to meet the following criteria:
- It needs to be related to the information people seeking.
- It needs to be useful. Can someone take action and get the results wanted from the content?
- It needs to be valuable. A person should know more after reading/viewing the content than at the start.
When it comes to relevancy, you don’t just think about what an audience wants. It’s important to think about how the content fits in with your brand’s overall message and goals. A tutorial about hemming jeans only makes sense if it’s coming from a company that sells jeans or a company that focuses on sewing instruction or showing people how to mend clothing.
Why Should You Care About Relevant Content Marketing?
Why bother to focus on relevant content marketing? Well, being relevant can help you stand out in a crowded field that’s only going to get more crowded. According to Wired, one person will never be able to consume or interact with all of the content that’s available online. There’s just too much of it.
For that reason, people need to be choosy about what they consume. It also helps when brands are choosy about the type of content they produce. Will basic blog posts do anything to really help your brand? Will they cause people to tune you out? They could perceive your content as just more noise that adds nothing of value to their lives.
Another reason to care about relevant content marketing is that doing so can give your brand a boost when it comes to SEO. Yes, Google and other search engines are getting smarter. They aren’t only looking for keywords and the like when determining how to rank pages. They’re also looking at overall quality of content. This includes how useful or relevant that content is for the intended user.
Finally, focusing on relevant content marketing can help to position your brand as a leader or as a trustworthy source of information. Once people know you produce blog posts or videos that effectively answers their questions, they are likely to return to you time and again for more information.
Examples of Relevant Content Marketing
Money Diaries from Refinery29
Refinery29’s Money Diaries series checks all the right content marketing checkboxes. It’s user-generated content, created by anonymous women who track their spending for a week. It’s relevant because it gives people a chance to jump in and discuss people’s spending or savings habits. It tries to confront common taboos people want to discuss but might otherwise be too shy to talk about. It has spawned a slew of imitators, demonstrating that the anonymous diary concept can be relevant to people’s lives.
Michael’s Projects Blog
If you’ve ever shopped at Michael’s, the arts and crafts store, it’s likely you had some sort of crafty project in mind. On its website, the retailer has a list of project ideas and instructions, allowing people to satisfy their crafty craving. The projects are relevant because they are all crafts and can be done using materials a person would easily find at Michael’s. The project ideas are also sorted by season, ease of use, and popularity, making it simple for someone to find an idea that fits his or her needs and skill level.
How to Get Started With Relevant Content Marketing
Ready to get started with relevant content marketing? Here’s what to do:
Know thyself
Figure out what relevant content marketing is right for your brand. You need to know who you are and what your goals are.
Know your audience
Next, determine your audience and figure out its needs. Knowing this will help you craft content that speaks directly to users.
Choose a format
Knowing your audience can help you narrow down your format choices. Does your audience prefer blog posts to videos or the reverse? Relevancy doesn’t just have to do with the content of the content. How it’s presented also matters.
Create content and assess it
Create some content and take a step back to see whether it provides any value or is useful. Does it show someone how to do something? Does it contain useful or factual information? If the answer is no, head back to the drawing board and try again.
Distribute and track your content
Relevance in content marketing also refers to how and where you distribute your content. You want to promote it so your intended audience will see it. Knowing where your audience hangs out can help you decide what methods of distribution or promotion are best, such as email or social media. Tracking your content’s performance such as traffic, responses to the calls to action, or conversions, can also help you determine whether or not your content is relevant to your intended audience.
It’s a crowded world out there. Relevant content marketing allows your brand to stand heads and shoulders above the rest.
Learn the in’s & outs of Content Marketing Software
Download your FREE Ebook!
See how top brands leverage Content Marketing Software.
