These 28 content marketing tips will help you develop a marketing strategy to benefit your SEO as well as drive traffic to your business site
Content marketing can help establish you and your business as a leader in your industry. You can involve various members of your team to give the greatest results and you can establish a blog, social media profiles, and various other content channels to help greatly increase your inbound traffic levels. Below are 28 tips to help improve your content marketing efforts.
Planning
Before you start producing, publishing, or promoting your content, you should develop a strategy that will be used to drive your content efforts in the coming months. As with any form of marketing, poor planning will lead to poor execution so the planning stage is vital to the performance of your ongoing efforts.
1 – Schedule Content – Create a schedule of when you will produce or curate content and how often you will publish using the various channels. Publish the schedule on your website and let potential readers know what to expect and when to expect it. This will ensure that you keep to your schedule.
2 – Curate Content – Look for sources to curate content from. Content curation can help you develop more content and ensure that you offer a good range of opinions and views on the industry you cover.
3 – Value – Always ensure that you provide some value to readers. Value can take many forms. You may offer information, guides, tips, or content that excites and entertains but be certain that you offer value.
4 – Targeting – Consider the different readers that each content type and variety will attract and then target the content that you will create to each group. The more targeted your content the better it is likely to perform.
Content Styles
There are many styles of content that you can utilise. Multimedia content can include video and audio as well as text. Combining these content styles is also a highly beneficial addition to your content marketing plan.
5 – Audio – Create podcasts, audio Tweets, and spoken interviews and publish them on your website or your blog. Make sure the audio clips you use have real value and benefit or consider an alternative form of media.
6 – Video – Video content may prove very powerful indeed and it can be highly efficient as an addition to your marketing strategies too. Create video clips and post to YouTube, Facebook, and post 6 second clips to Vine on Twitter.
7 – Text – Text content will usually make up the bulk of your content and will include page content, blog posts, and more. Text can also be published on other blogs and a variety of social media websites.
8 – Infographics – Combine graphics with charts, images, and short-form text to create appealing and compelling infographics. There are infographics websites where you can submit your work and enjoy increased exposure for your site.
9 – Long Form – Long form content can include blog posts and page content. Longer video content can also be considered long-form. This will usually offer the greatest value to your readers.
10 – Short Form – Short form posts will include Tweets and Vine clips. Anything that is shorter than a few lines long or is only a few seconds long is short-form content and it can work to attract visitors to your site and potential leads to your business.
11 – Conversation – Some content is considered conversation. Blog comments, Tweeted responses, and Facebook discussions are conversational and are typically used to increase conversions and performance rather than to market your site.
Content Types
Whether you are publishing content on your website or away from it, there are numerous types of content that can be created. Consider your strengths and those of your team members to help create a diverse range of content to attract and appeal to as many visitors as possible.
12 – Interviews – Find thought leaders and experts in your industry and sector. Interview them, formulate the responses, and then create a post to show off the full interview. Consider face to face or audio interviews as well, where applicable.
13 – Contests – Set up contests and competitions because these are highly attractive to potential website visitors. Prizes don’t have to be expensive but the appeal will not only attract visitors but will usually attract links and exposure too.
14 – QnA – Sites like Yahoo Answers attract a lot of interactive traffic from people looking for specific information. Scour these pages and look at your site analytics and other data to help create questions and answers on your own page.
15 – Commentary – Visit trade events, exhibitions, and shows and report on what happens. This commentary can prove invaluable for those that were unable to attend the events themselves and they provide a beneficial means of publishing content while attending an event that you would visit anyway.
Content Channels
There are many channels that you can use in order to publish and disseminate your content. Make sure your website is set up so that you can publish content as and when required, and on a regular basis and look for other locations too.
16 – Mobile – Use a responsive web design or set up a dedicated mobile website. Mobile content is usually much more concise than standard web or blog content so be prepared to write content and edit it down.
17 – Blogs – You should, absolutely, have at least one blog of your own, and many businesses can benefit from having multiple blogs covering various subtopics. Also look for blogs belonging to others that will be willing to publish your content to give you increased exposure.
18 – Slideshare – Look for websites that enable you to publish slideshows, infogrpahics, and specialist content. Slideshare is a popular website and can help bring traffic to the pages of your site too.
19 – Auto Responders – Set up autoresponders offering tips, articles, and other forms of content for anybody that chooses to sign up. This can be a good way to improve conversions and to generate more sales from your site.
Performance
Publishing and curating content is only a portion of your content marketing strategy. Below are some tips to help ensure that you enjoy the best performance from your content strategy and marketing.
20 – Calls To Action – Every piece of content should have a Call To Action. Some pages can benefit from more than one CTA but other websites find that a single Call To Action offers the greatest benefits. Experiment, test, and optimise your CTAs.
21 – Team Involvement – Get all of the members of your team involved in the process content creation and marketing. This gives your readers access to more diverse views and it means that there is less pressure on you to make sure that you post regularly.
22 – Integrate With Social Media – Use social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. When you have a content idea, make sure you utilise it by turning one idea into several pieces of content for publication on various sites.
23 – Share, Share, Share – Don’t just set up social media profiles; be sure to share your content and publish new content on the sites regularly. Share everything you publish and consider sharing on more than one channel.
Optimisation
Track results and make small changes while tracking those changes. By doing this you will be able to improve results in all of your content marketing efforts and the optimisation process should be considered an ongoing process.
24 – Aim To Convert – Don’t forget that the aim of your online business website is to convert paying customers. Make sure your content has a Call To Action and don’t get caught up in the conversation if you won’t gain anything from it.
25 – Measure Results – Make sure you have a strong analytics package set up and that you use it to track data. You will be able to see how people arrive on your site, what they do while they’re there, and how they end their experience.
26 – Adapt And Evolve – Don’t be afraid to adapt your marketing strategy according to results. If something isn’t working, then stop and move on. Always have an exit strategy and be prepared to use it.
27 – Identify Pain Points – Ask your sales team to highlight the greatest pain points. These are barriers that prevent visitors from making purchases or progressing to the next stage. Once you know the pain points you will be able to help combat them and improve conversion rates.
28 – Don’t Give Up – Even if you don’t see the kind of results that you wanted, don’t give up. Keep plugging away, amending your strategy, and keep posting and publishing. Content marketing, like any marketing, should be an ongoing process to give you the best results possible.
Ethical Link Building is dedicated to the provision of a high quality and effective content marketing strategy. Contact us today to see how we can help develop a content schedule, create powerful content, and increase exposure for your brand.
Matt Jackson is an experienced and professional content writer. He has been writing content on a host of different topics, ranging from toilet brushes to social media marketing, for the past 6 years.
