While marketing fads tend to come and go, content marketing has proven to be a steady and exceptionally successful inbound marketing tool. As a matter of fact, businesses with a solid content marketing strategy in place experience almost eight times more site traffic than those who don’t, and have conversion rates that are six times higher than their competitors.
Blogs, in particular, are an absolute must for companies interested in doing business online. Not only are they recognized and rewarded by the SEO gods, but they provide a platform to share industry knowledge and allow you to position yourself as a thought leader. They also act as a launching pad to other areas of your website, increasing the likelihood that your web traffic will convert into customers.
While publishing regular content is a good practice for all industries, it is especially important for cannabis companies. Because of the lingering stigma and various misconceptions surrounding this relatively new industry, it is up to the businesses operating within the space to educate and inform readers via regular and quality content.
The trick, however, is knowing how to write content that will not only grab readers’ attention but will also position you as a resource so they continue to come back, and better yet, share your stuff.
Here are 5 tips for writing quality, attention-grabbing cannabis content:
Before anything else, it is important that you define your content strategy and create attainable and sustainable goals with a content calendar.
Content strategy: While it can be tempting to shoot off the cuff and write blogs as you feel inspired, they may come across as disjointed if they don’t organically flow together. Randomness and unpredictability are some of the main reasons that blogs fail. You can write amazing content, but if your readers can’t rely on the type of content that you produce, then they’ll view you as unorganized and go elsewhere.
To help you define your content strategy, consider the following:
Content calendar: Once your strategy is in place, you’ll want to create your content calendar. This will help define what topics you’ll write about and when, as well as the number of blogs you plan to publish per month. As a general rule, you’ll want to commit to at least four blogs per month, but if you can, more is better. There is research to suggest that companies that publish 16 blog posts per month received 3.5 times the traffic of those that publish four or fewer posts.
It can be easy to use your platform to try and sell your product or service, but that is not an approach that will build readership. People will continue to read your content if you are able to educate, entertain, and engage them. Therefore, it’s important that your content speaks to the interests of your readers, and not to those of your cannabis operation. Once your readers view you as an industry expert, they will come to you when they have a buying need.
The trick to getting people to actually read the content you’ve written is to be intentional with your layout. In order to keep your content skimmable and digestible, it’s best to:
The key to differentiation for Cannabis brands is to provide solution-focused content for their readers. Therefore, an emphasis should be placed on education and resources that can add value to your message. To enhance your content, try incorporating various assets like:
Including links to these types of resources are also a great way to capture leads. Simply gate them with a form and voila, you’ll build your email list in no time.
People like to consume content in different ways, so it’s important to create content that can be creatively repurposed again and again. For example, you can use a previous blog post to create an infographic, a short video, or a social media campaign. Either way, repurposed content is a great way to increase the awareness of your cannabis brand.
In summary, anyone can write content and post it online. Writing attention-grabbing content, on the other hand, takes skill and a commitment to providing value to your readers. It requires an understanding of your audience, a sound strategy, and a passion for the topic at large.
ContentBacon is a group of fierce advocates for inbound marketing and our customer’s goals. If your cannabis brand needs help with content marketing, then drop us a line.