Creative content can generate new leads, and engage and entertain loyal customers.

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways for brands to actively engage with customers without interacting face-to-face. Creative content can generate new leads, and engage and entertain loyal customers.
More than a quarter of U.S. adults are always online, part of the 77 percent who go online once and up to several times a day, finds Pew Research. Worldwide, Statista says the global digital population is just over 4 billion users.

Content Marketing Institute (CMI) statistics show 91 percent of B2B marketers and 86 percent of B2C use content marketing to reach their customers, deeming it a key strategy to promote business. In fact, 72 percent of marketers find content marketing increases engagement and leads.

But CMI research also reveals how challenging it is for brands to manage, as more than 60 percent of businesses do not have a documented content strategy, and a third consider their content creation workflow fair to poor.

Tell More Stories
The jewelry industry is at such an advantage because the product itself is so visually compelling, with so many amazing stories that you can create around it, tells Monica Elias, owner of Elias World Media, in a podcast for The Plumb Club.

“There’s magic in storytelling around the products jewelers curate and about their businesses that can be captured in different content,” says Elias, noting that jewelry is about emotion. “The power of storytelling makes consumers feel something. It brings positivity and optimism. Now is a good time to reach out.”

To help ensure frequency and consistency, Elias advocates jewelers create a yearlong content calendar around themes, holidays, fashion and bridal seasons. She suggests jewelers identify a different theme a day for social media posts that get followers back to the website: Monday Moments, Tuesday Tips, Wednesday Wow, Thursday Throwback, Friday Family, and Saturday Styling.

Good content encourages engagement that helps brands get to know their customers, and vice versa. Elias advocates jewelers have genuine conversations with their customers. Ask them which social media platforms they look for jewelry information, which influencers they follow. Through conversation and observation jewelers can become more relevant to customers.

Check with vendors for content you can use. Quality Gold, for example has independent websites and social media created for its most popular brands. Retailers can use them as selling tools, virtual catalogs, marketing materials, educational resources, and website traffic driver.

Pack with SEO Terms
Test things out, encourages Andrea Hill, owner of Hill Management Group. Experiment with images, headlines, and copy words and see what works.

Images are a great starting point when looking at content marketing effectiveness, CMI finds, because content with images gets more views and shares, widening your audience. Images that show partial body profiles with product perform better than full body view or just product no person.

Dana Cali, marketing and communications for the pearl house, Mastoloni, is active on social, media, especially Instagram, showing a variety of pearl jewelry styles against the backdrop of New York City outside her office window. She says the brand took that theme a step further in its latest brochure for 2020. Images of the new collections are built around raw-edge marble styling, echoing the Manhattan skyline imagery seen across its social media.

“We felt it important to incorporate imagery that we’re known for, without doing so in such a literal sense,” Cali describes, noting that the visuals will be repurposed for in-store signage, and social media and website use for retailers.

Hill underscores the value of compelling product descriptions, packed with SEO terms that get customers to your website. The product listings, in the back end of most product websites, include SEO analytics set up for search engines, with the title and slug key search-tool words. She advocates the title include three to five highly descriptive words about the piece/post, and the slug be a two-line description of great sales copy. She views each product as a “gift box of SEO terms” in telling compelling jewelry stories, with every story searchable.
“SEO is all about words, and words are the currency of the Internet,” Hill explains. “The website with the best words, most words, frequently updated words — wins!”

Provide Value
Use social media as both a marketing platform and customer service portal to improve the customer experience, by being more responsive and engaged with followers, says Laryssa Wirstluk, founder of Joy Joya Marketing.
What you put out there, Hill reminds, must be meaningful and add something to your customers’ lives. Blogs are important channels for content, with 77 percent of Internet users reading them, according to OptinMonster.
In fact, 72 percent of online marketers cite blog content as their most effective SEO tactic, and nearly 60 percent say they’ve gained customers specifically through blogging. Look to create content that is evergreen and provides value to your targeted audience. Listicle and how-to blogs are among the most popular.

Seize on topics with global interest and localize. Sustainability is a big draw for brands with a great story like Benchmark, an advocate for recycled metals used throughout its extensive band collection. A recent report by Lyst, largest global fashion search platform, sustainability and keywords related to “sustainable fashion” rose 75 percent since 2018, including 27,000 searches specifically for the phrase each month in 2019.