Content marketing is more than just a passing trend. Consumers are smart, and they want to be informed; that puts content marketing at center stage in 2018. Marketing strategists have caught on to the fact that consumers are done with the hype. People are busy, and their time is valuable, so if you want to dominate in this field, you must engage consumers throughout their journey.

You must build a connection with your target audience and feed their insatiable hunger for relevant nuggets of information. There is a correct method for doing this, which will bring a stronger, higher return on investment, and it involves more than just all-encompassing long-form content. You’ve got to pull out all the stops to maximize ROI from your content marketing strategy, so here are a few tips.

Use Timeless Works

Timeless works, often referred to as evergreen material, has the potential to remain relevant indefinitely. For instance, news pieces are not evergreen or timeless because their information expires as time passes. The timeless material can pay off consistently, over and over, making it more valuable content. All your content won’t be evergreen, but the more evergreen content you do have, the more money you will make from it in the long run.

Maximize Content with Alteration

You might already have some great content. Of course, you try to make all your content great, but sometimes you hit one out of the park. When you have those fantastic pieces, maximize their value by using them multiple different ways. For instance, if you create some excellent long-form content that has some valuable video embedded for the audience, can you take some snippets from that video to create some fresh posts for social media? Do you have pictures or video from multiple content pieces which you can pool together to create some awesome infographics in your niche? Think of all the different ways you can use the same content to maximize its value.

Create a Social Media Bomb

Social media bombing is similar to the above strategy, except that you first post the content on your site and then present it in multiple formats in a hundred different ways on social media. Ask the audience to share if they like it or find something helpful. There is a strategy for creating a social media bomb (which can find on the internet). You must include slides, video, and infographics to do it correctly, but it is very advantageous.

Connect Your Campaign Across Platforms

This approach, better known as OESP, refers to content which is owned, earned, shared and paid. Successful implementation requires that you know your audience and understand who they are (demographic) and where they are, including which platforms they frequent. You’ll also need to know the times they engage the most and the types of communication to which they will be most receptive. Harnessing all this information into an easy-to-digest format will allow you to integrate your content across multiple platforms.

Lose the Hype

There is a difference between hype and fluff. Everyone needs some levity because people can’t be serious all the time. There is enough “business” in the world, and people need humor. However, the days of marketing hype are long gone. Outdated (or even new) marketing hype makes consumers feel disrespected on many levels. Save yourself the time and effort; fill the void with value and relevance.

Content marketing in 2018 is nothing like it was in 2017 or before. In fact, content marketing is becoming increasingly difficult as the major search engines are making adjustments to overcome black-hat marketers. By using these suggestions, it should be easy to dominate the content marketing scene right now as well as in the future.