Education, Education, Education. Once the phrase coined by former PM; Tony Blair, now the phrase that you should use as part of your content strategy. Whilst the Easter holidays are approaching, it doesn’t mean you should be slacking on your educational content. In fact, educational content should be bedrock of your content marketing strategy. All year round. So fingers on lips please, as we discuss how to create educational content marketing, why you should be creating it as well as some great examples of educational content marketing.
What is educational content marketing?
Educational content is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a form of content marketing that looks to educate the audience whilst marketing yourself as a thought leader in your industry. In fact, the content we’re producing right now is educational content. Educational content marketing can come in many different mediums, such as blog posts, video content, infographics and even social media posts
How educational content marketing helps your SEO strategy
Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust (E-E-A-T)
Content marketing in general is important for any SEO strategy, but educational content is different gravy, and one of the main reasons why educational content reigns supreme is E-E-A-T (Experience,Expertise, Authority and Trust). Showing your expertise in your field is really important to Google as part of its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. E-E-A-T are a specific set of guidelines that’s used by the people who manually audit pages for Google. Producing high quality educational content ticks all three of those guidelines, showing that you are an expert in your field, you’re an authority in your field and that you can be trusted. By producing educational content, you’re letting Google know that you are an expert in your field, and once more, you can be trusted.
Got Links?
Want to get deep page, natural backlinks to your website? Don’t we all. We all know how important backlinks are to your SEO, but educational content is by far one of the best strategies to gain natural coverage across the web. Backlinks will increase your position on the search engine results page, and when that happens a snowball affect arises. With you’re position being higher, you’re more likely to get additional links as people search for an answer to their question and find your answer ranking at the top. Moreover, they’re likely to see your brand as an authority in the industry. Want links? Get educational content.
Rich Snippets
Educational content can also get you featured in rich snippets. These rich snippets are displayed at the top of a Google search, and educational content normally finds its way into the accordion section titled “people also ask” as well as other rich snippets. When you’ve produced educational content that caters to the search history and questions people are asking, you can sometimes find yourself up in the accordion. But the great thing is, users can often click through to your site to get more information on the topic.
How to implement educational content marketing into your content strategy
How do you convince someone to buy your product or service? As professionals in ecommerce, we ask this question all the time. The answer is there are many ways, but educational content marketing is by far one of the best methods and has been for a very long time. When done correctly, educational content can become the most sophisticated sales pitch you’ll make to customers. We’ll be showing you exactly how to do it, with the use of one of the best in the business at educational content, Health and Beauty provider Dr Barbara Sturm.
<
Tell them what they need…
Telling a customer what they need sounds to many like a waste of time, surely, they know what they need? Well, kind of. At the very start of the customers buying journey, they’re in what’s called the “awareness” stage. During this stage, customers may already have a subconscious idea as to what they need, or may not have any idea whatsoever, and as a marketer, it’s your job to bring that subconscious idea to the conscious mind. Barbara Sturm do this very well, with educational content they identify problems that people have and give them content telling them what they need. An example of this is the blog content below. They give detailed advice on how to treat acne scars with a specific blog.
In this incident, consumers may be looking for a cure for acne scars. With Dr Sturms guide to getting rid of them, users will be able to find detailed information on what they need to do to get rid of them. Further inspection into the blog gives a number of remedies to this issue, with some provided by Dr Sturm. The key to Dr Sturms success is that it’s a soft sell. While they share some of their own products (as seen below), they also provide other solutions to this problem.
Give them an identity…
Our role as marketers is to try and ensure that the customer self-identifies with our product/service. You need to make sure that your product/service identifies with the consumer, so you need to specifically market to them with educational content that reiterates why it is perfect for them. Have you ever wondered why those super-duper, all-in-one, beauty products fail? It’s not the product, clearly the product can do absolutely everything which is its biggest problem when it comes to marketing. Customers can often struggle to identify with these sets of products because these products claim to identify with everyone, and as a customer you think “well I’m not everyone”. With Dr Sturm, they manage to do this really well by showing particular products that suit your particular individuality.
As you can see above, Dr Sturm shows a number of routines based on different demographics. Not only do they offer routines based on needs, they also offer it based on locations and age, with educational content on each page explaining why you need that particular product.
As you can see below, Dr Sturm explains why the unpredictable weather as well as hard water can affect people from the area of London. Valuable education that helps to encourage purchase and trust.
<
Why you?
Here is your time to shine. The customer is at the end of the end of the journey and is in the market for a product to solve their problem. Again, Dr Sturn does this extremely well, with product pages jam packed with information. Not only is this good for SEO purposes with content, it’s also good for SEO purposes in terms of dwell time. Here you can see very detailed information about the benefits of using the product, with Barbara herself demonstrating the cleanser below;
Barbara explains the advantages of the product once more. At this stage of the process, its known what is needed to alleviate the skin issue you have. The customer knows they need to rehydrate their skin and cleanse their skin, and what vitamins and minerals are needed to do this, to which Barbara goes one step further explaining what is in the product in her videos and interactive graphics such as below;
Final Thoughts…
Creating educational content has a multitude of benefits and can really esteem you as an authority voice in your industry. Whilst flashy digital PR campaigns and other SEO tactics can improve your position on Google, none can quite deliver the expertise, authority and trust from both Google and the consumer more than thorough and in-depth educational content can. It’s all well and good ranking for top keywords, but what’s even better is ranking for them and having a fantastic brand to go with it. Educational content can ensure you get there but when used correctly, can quickly become the most sophisticated sales pitch you’ll ever make. If you’re looking to implement educational content as part of your content marketing strategy, then get in touch with the team here at Found at One.
