Content marketing
Contents![a camera lens looking straight at the viewer]()
What is content marketing?
Your website needs content to make it interesting, relevant and engaging to visitors. Creating and promoting quality content should be an important part of your digital marketing.
Content can take all kinds of different forms – videos, images, audio, blog posts, social media feeds – as well as all the basic information you’ll want people to know about your business, such as opening times, prices and contact information.
If possible, you should create a simple content marketing strategy to help you plan out the different content you want to create and post throughout the year. This will keep your website feeling fresh and interesting, on top of the permanent/ ‘static’ sections.
Using images and video for content marketing
Visual content has been proven to help people remember information, a real digital marketing win.
A study entitled ‘Vision Trumps all Other Senses’ by molecular biologist Dr John Medina revealed that when people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of it three days later – but if the same information is paired with an image, they remember 65%.
Visual elements also:
- make your website more attractive and memorable
- help tell the story of your brand and business
- encourage ‘sharing’ of your website pages on social media
- help with search engine rankings (if tagged correctly – see below)
When including visual content you might choose to have professional photos taken or take them yourself. You could also connect your feeds from social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and Vimeo to automatically update your site with images you’ve added to your social media channels. See the Social Media section for more about this.
YouTube is a good place to start if you’re thinking of using videos in your marketing. Here, you can upload video content to your own channel and then embed it into your website. Find out more about YouTube in our Social Media section. Remember, making videos can take more time and energy to capture what you want and look good. If you’re starting out you might want to begin with photography and progress to video when you have more understanding and skills, and time, or budget.
Whenever you use visual elements on your site, it is important to use alternate text, also known as Alt text or Alt tags.
These are text tags that describe the content of that image or video. They are mainly used by search engines, but can also help with accessibility (for example, for users who employ screen readers). All Content Management System (CMS) platforms include the facility to add Alt text when you upload an image.
However, images which are too big can slow your website down, while poor quality images will make your website look untrustworthy. Read ‘Image SEO: How Images Impact Search Engine Rankings’ for more on how to make your images work for you.
Case study: Black Country Living Museum
"Think about what is really distinctive about your business, and try and capture it and emphasise it via your various channels. For us, it’s the historic appearance of the museum’s outdoor site, as well as our costumed characters.
Our social media videos are produced by the four of us in our Audiences and Communications team, as we are best placed to understand which historic character to cast in a given role and direct them effectively. The team also handle location, set-dressing, and lighting. Longer videos will be scripted in consultation with our Research and Interpretation team so that we can be historically accurate where this is required."
Black Country Living Museum, West Midlands
Images and videos content marketing checklist
- Think about how you will use images to tell the story of your business: people, place, products or services etc.
- Consider employing a professional if you don’t feel confident taking your own photos or filming videos. You’ll need to factor this into your digital marketing budget.
- Check that any stock imagery isn’t copyrighted and that you aren’t using an image that your competitors also have on their site.
- Tag images with Alt text to improve searchability and accessibility.
Images and video content resources
Optimising images for search engines
Yoast has lots of useful strategies for content optimisation and using images to boost your SEO.
Using images legally online
Search Engine Journal covers the important topic of the legal aspect of using images online.
The importance of images on a website
Carmelon Digital discusses the importance of images from a digital marketing perspective.
How to take your own business photos
If you decide to take your own pictures, Web Ascender has a beginners’ guide to the basics.
Photography tips to increase direct bookings
Evivo’s guide offers helpful tips on how to take high quality photos and why it’s so important for your business.
Why images are important for your website
Yellow Pages for Business gives more information on the value of images for your business.
Content marketing statistics you should know
This article from Hubspot highlights some priorities for businesses when it comes to using images in their content.
Case study: Exmoor Character Cottages
"We’ve been recording our own podcasts since March 2021. We use them to promote Exmoor – the countryside, things to do in the area, local personalities and producers, and other businesses that we think our visitors would be interested in.
We’ve interviewed farmers, shop keepers, musicians, artists, chefs – basically if they love Exmoor as much as we do, we’ll do it! We get from 100 to 1,500 listens per podcast and now have almost 25,000 in total. It’s a big investment and requires technical skills, so they’re not for everyone – but for me, the real selling point is that they’re a really natural form of communication. They’re a fantastic way to communicate our values, our interests and our local expertise as a business."
Lucy Green, Exmoor Character Cottages, Somerset
Using blogs for content marketing![screenshot of a blog post on a laptop]()
A blog is a regularly updated section or page on a website, similar to an online journal, magazine or diary.
Blogs can add useful, timely information and stories to help your site appear more authoritative and deepen readers’ understanding of your brand. For example, you could use your blog to answer common questions, help customers understand something, or solve problems (like suggesting things to do on a rainy day).
Every time you write a blog post, it creates another page that a search engine can index, increasing your site’s visibility. Once posted, blogs remain visible until you remove them: this kind of ‘evergreen’ content can be very useful.
A few other reasons to consider adding a blog to your site:
- Blogging regularly tells search engines your website is active, and encourages it to check back for updates.
- Blogging can provide your users with local expertise and insider tips.
- Informative blog posts are often shared via social media, exposing your business to more readers and more potential customers.
- Blogs are a good way to include a ‘Call to Action’ (CTA) – a clickable button or link designed to engage users with your site; for example, making a booking or answering a survey.
Blogs content marketing checklist
- Consider how much time you will have to blog – it’s generally more effective to post regularly, even if the entries are short.
- Research other blogs as inspiration for topics to cover
Blogs content marketing resources
What is a Call To Action (CTA)?
For more detail on (CTAs), read The Balance’s blog post What is a Call To Action and How Do I Make One?
The benefits of blogging for marketing
This article from The HubSpot discusses why you should consider blogging as a business.
Why blogging is a ‘must’ in tourism
Tourism eSchool’s post has an excellent overview on the importance of blogging in travel and tourism.
