Source: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/6-content-marketing-rules-to-live-by-01328412
Businesses today are prepared to make bigger investments in content marketing game. If you want to stand out, then you also have to be prepared to work extra hard and extra smart to make your content strategy more results-driven.
To create more unique, more relevant and more valuable content, consider the following timeless principles:
Get to know your target audience. Focus more on your audience, less on the competition. Develop buyer personas that will inform you when choosing topics or deciding on distribution channels.
Go where they are. Make sure to publish content that addresses the context and situation of how they are consumed by your buyer personas. Position your content where your customers hang out, so you gain fast visibility and reach.
Avoid the pushy approach. Pushy, salesy, hardselling content turns people off. Content that provides them useful or interesting information gets their respect and trust.
Make your content dynamic. Your customers move through the different phases of the buyer’s journey. It’s your job to offer them content that corresponds to their changing needs and preferences.
Establish a long-term perspective. Map out your content strategy with tools such as an editorial calendar to make sure you will always have fresh, high-quality content on a consistent basis.
Measure, measure, measure. Monitor the response you receive from the content you put out. This way, you can continuously fine-tune your strategy to improve your results.