Content Marketing for Your Art & Design Website

Before you produce any content, you need a strategy in place. It's no longer enough to just churn out content for the sake of content's sake. You'll want to produce content that your audience engages with. This will help you boost your ranking and drive more traffic to your website. You can then leverage this increase in traffic, focusing on your specific goals. Whether you want to push sales, create awareness around your art and design brand, or generate leads, here's how to get started.

Define your goals

Before you dive into the world of content creation, ask yourself, why are you publishing content? What is it that you hope to achieve? Do you want to:

• Build brand awareness?


• Increase organic traffic to your site?


• Generate leads?


• Improve customer loyalty?


• Become a leader in your niche?


• Boost engagement?

Start with goals that relate to your overall mission. From there, you can create more specific goals based on key campaigns, events, and other operational goals.

For example, if your immediate goal is to increase awareness, invest in a white paper, an eBook, or blog posts. Once customers enter a sales funnel, adjust your content accordingly. If you are marketing art classes, once you increase brand awareness, invest in content that educates prospective clients at the evaluation phase. A FAQs page, case study, datasheet, or video will all work great here.

Research your target audience

Defining your target audience is imperative to your success. When you understand who your audience is, you can then create content that offers true value. In the art and design industry, prospective customers and clients will not be one select group of people. Depending on what it is you offer, and where, you may need to create several personas.

Related:

Tips for Developing Better Personas

As you unravel the interests, values, wants, and needs of these personas, develop engaging content that speaks to your audience. The goal here is to increase traffic to your site. You can achieve this through the power of quality content. Also, consider the type of content your audience is looking for in terms of its core purpose. Are you looking to educate or entertain?

Many experts recommend empathy mapping. This is a comprehensive approach that focuses on your customers' perspective, based on what they feel, see, hear, or think. Consider the following.

• What do your customers think, and how do they feel? What are their major concerns and aspirations?


• Who do they listen to? What do the important people in their life say, such as their family, friends, and boss?


• What discourages your customers? Think about their ongoing frustrations, fears, and obstacles.


• How do they behave?


• What do they see within their environment? What do they see in terms of market trends?


• What encourages them? What do they need or desire?

The above questions will help you understand who your customer is instead of assuming. Conduct market research and adapt your personas accordingly.

Once you publish regular content, don't underestimate the value of analytics. Google Analytics will help you determine the content that produces the best results.

Stay mindful of metrics such as:

• Bounce rate


• Pageviews


• Average time on page


• Unique page visits


• Click-through rates


• Downloads


• Content likes and shares


• The number of inbound links

This data can help you make more informed decisions, turning a high ROI. In addition to Google Analytics, dive deeper into your social media profiles, as well as your competition's profiles. What content is getting noticed? What's working and what isn't? Listen to what your audience is saying!

Develop a brand voice and focus on your niche

It's important to remain consistent as a brand. Before you create any content, you'll want to consider your brand voice. Do you plan to take a warm, human-centered approach — or are you planning on taking a more direct, formal approach? Think of this step as developing your brand's personality. This will differ from your brand's tone, as your tone will change depending on the content you publish. For example, a case study or press release will have a different tone than a social media post.

The arts and design industry is very broad. That is why you must focus on your niche, creating content that you can't find anywhere else. The more specific you are, the greater the chances are that you will establish yourself as an authority leader in your area of business or expertise.

When you first build your content marketingtop-software-sites strategy, you will probably focus on one or two types of content — which is great! However, don't be afraid to expand on the type of content you publish.

There are so many types of content out there, including:

Looking at this list is overwhelming, but remember, you don't need to create and publish all the above. Focus on what makes the most sense for your brand and audience. Being in the art and design industry, you will benefit from a blog and social media content, so let's start there.

One-third of all web pages online are blogs. Research shows that blogs remain the most effective form of content. To push blog content, marketers use social media (94%), SEO strategies (63%), and email marketing (66%). In this case, varying types of content support one another, helping brands reach a wider audience. To start, sit down and create a list of potential topics. Use this list during your research, especially in terms of your SEO and trending topics.

Here is a topic research tool to develop content ideas.

Although having a blog is important, you need to consider the quality of the content you publish. Nearly a quarter of readers say that bad content quality destroys a blog's credibility. Even if you offer a great product or service, poor quality content can significantly affect your ability to grow. That is why you must invest in consistent, quality content.

When you create your blog schedule, you will publish each post on your website. However, you may also decide to publish select posts elsewhere, depending on what makes sense for your business. For example, if you are marketing an art and design school, LinkedIn may be an excellent choice. The social media platforms you leverage will depend on where your target audience spends most of their time. The Pew Research Center summarizes the demographic groups that use the major social media platforms. Also, consider what it is you are marketing. Since Instagram remains one of the most popular visuals-based social media platforms, it is often a brilliant choice for anything art and design-related.

To start, focus on your blog, one or two social media platforms, and then your email subscriber list as it grows.

Since more traffic to your site will help you achieve so many goals, you need to invest in search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Since 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, keywords and featured snippets are critical to your success.

Although social media serves a specific purpose and is a key component of any digital marketing strategy, SEO drives 1000% more traffic than organic social media. SEO-based leads also have nearly a 15% close rate.

Whether you are an architecture firm in Seattle or an international clothing brand, you want your website to show up on the first page of Google and other search engines. That is vital. Research shows that of the billions of search results, over a quarter of searchers click on the first organic result. To achieve this, you'll need to optimize your on-page SEO strategy, focusing on specific keywords. This increased visibility will also encourage other blogs to link to your site.

To find those keywords, you need to know what your audience is searching for. What questions are they asking? Use keyword research tools, looking for both short- and long-tail keywords. Some of the best tools include:

• Google Keyword Planner


• Moz Keyword Explorer


• SEMrush


• Ubersuggest

For example, for the arts and design industry, when searching the keyword art classes, Ubersuggest lists the following based on search volume:

• art classes (14,800 searches per month)


• art classes near me (18,1000 searches per month)


• art classes online (9,900 searches per month)


• art classes kids near me (8,100 searches per month)


• art classes for kids near me (6,600 searches per month)

The better you know your audience, your industry, and your business, the easier this process will be. You know what you specialize in and what your customers want to know, so use that knowledge to find targeted terms.

Once you have a list of suggested keywords, optimize your content. When creating content based on these keywords, strive for a keyword density of about 1 to 2%. This means including each keyword 1 to 2 times per 100 words. This strategy will increase your chance of ranking for SEO and the content will read as naturally as possible.

When you are creating your content marketing strategy, you need to look to others in the art and design space. To be the best, you need to learn from the best. Besides analyzing the top art and design sites, you need to research your closest competitors as well. This will help you better understand what works and what doesn't. Although it's important to put your own spin on each content marketing tactic, as they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." The top art and design websites have chosen certain strategies for a reason, so draw inspiration from them.

SimilarWeb ranks websites based on their traffic, helping you see who ranks the highest online — and why!

When searching "the arts and design" category, some of the top sites include:

Once you visit all the sites above, you'll see that they are unique yet have one thing in common — the content they publish is valuable. It's well-written and purposeful, positioning each site and brand as a go-to resource for art, design, and creativity. These sites regularly post content on their blog and social media accounts and encourage their audience to "sign-up" to receive email newsletters. Evaluate these sites, pull key tactics, and create your own unique content strategy.