Broaden Your Content Marketing

Written by: Gary Horsman

Broadening Your Content Marketing 

Content Marketing is not just a buzzword. It is a major force when it comes to marketing your business online.

It is important to have a content marketing plan that has a focus on creating high-quality content works and that meshes with all other aspects of your online marketing. Content marketing works with on-site SEO, linking and social media.

The key is to create desire for your content.

Your starting point:

1. Perform a content audit. Do not just look at what you created in the past and what you now have in terms of a content inventory. Look at your content in a critical way. Ask what worked and what didn’t work. If you are like many content marketing creators your have created content items in the past that did not produce the results you wanted.
2. Study your competitors.
3. Dig out your content marketing plan and look it over in a critical manner. Develop a plan that will out-perform your prior plan and out-perform your competitors. Your plan should help you to define what to create and when.
4. Be sure to build into your improved plan how you will promote your content.

Some Basics: 

Focus on quality. You need to create content that people desire. Your content needs to be of high enough value so that people will naturally share it. A big part of content marketing is related to sharing and sharing meshes perfectly with social media.

Even better is that your content is so good that a big name will endorse it and may even promote it.

Things to consider:

Blog: You need a blog and you need to blog. If you don’t have one and a blogging plan and the necessary support to create winning content then you will struggle with content marketing.

Guest Blog: Guest blogging enables you to build your authority. If you can guest post on a high page rank site with lots of visitors then this can create a big positive result.

Infographics: A great infographic can be strong link bait. Strong link bait will help you to gain in-coming links. In-coming links are vital for search position and traffic.

White Papers: If you can educate potential customers then this is high-value content. Remember, people are almost always searching for an answer or a solution and white papers can be quite helpful. A cousin of a white paper could be a user guide that helps people work through issues and difficulties.

Surveys: Surveys are another way to create in-coming links. Surveys produce data which can help people to understand and can lead to answers and solutions. Be clever with your surveys and you and your potential clients will both learn something.

Videos: People love good video content. Again, a nicely done video will help to build links to your center of content (your website and blog). Using YouTube will help you to gain exposure. For certain video content YouTube may be ideal. It may also be wise for you to set up a YouTube channel.

Images: Images really can add to your content. They can help to add depth to your story and can complement your story. Your graphics should always be high-quality. Do not be afraid to experiment and create a connection with a good graphics support person.

Landing Pages: If you create content such that it is shared by others then create a landing page for the content that is also shared. I reviewed an online marketing plan sent to me in frustration by a potential client who was doing promotions using facebook. The facebook part was fine but the facebook promotions sent everyone to the home page rather than to a special landing page. The end result was a very low conversion rate. A landing page should have been meshed with the promotion.

Special Note – If you do not have conversions then you really don’t’ have anything. Your content needs to create conversions.

Content Experiments: If you have a worthy promotion (meaning that it is driving traffic to your site or blog but you are not fully satisfied with the conversion results then perhaps content experiments could help. You can create 2 or 3 versions of your landing page and test in a live market which one converts the best. Let the market provide you with insights into your best converting landing page.

The way to compete online today is to delight your audience and your potential customers with high-quality sharable content.

Take the next step – download our simple and straight-forward content marketing planning checklist.