content marketing in 2018

Content marketing is set to be bigger than ever in 2018. In fact, by 2019, the industry is expected to grow by more than double. Its expected worth? $300 billion. That’s one huge pie. If you want a slice of it, it’s time to hop aboard the content marketing bandwagon. The thing is, when it comes to content marketing today, you can’t just blog 2-3x and call it a day. In 2018, marketers must be smarter and more strategic with their content strategy. I repeat: must be more strategic. If you want to pull ahead of the competition, you need to go the extra mile. All of the practices on my list today will help you get there. These are golden ways to make your content marketing work better, faster, and longer. Add these to your 2018 content marketing resolutions and prepare for a powerful, high-performing year. Ready? 5 Hot Content Marketing Predictions Every Content Marketer Must Add to Their New Year’s Resolution List 1. Start (and/or Build) a Community Prediction: Communities, and the power a community brings, will be hotter than ever in 2018. Starting a community, or focusing on building one if you’ve started but never actually built, gives you a pool of friends and followers who will cheer on your efforts, like and engage with your content, and generally boost everything you do. Real people, who will take action when you create and publish content just for them. A good community is based on shared interests, goals, and comradery. There are many ways to easily start up your own. Here are a few: Run a Twitter chat Run a Facebook group Start a podcast or weekly live show Bonus: tie multiple communities on multiple channels to each other. I’ll show you how I do that, coming up. When it comes to building a community, you simply need a place where you know you can commit to showing up regularly, and where people can easily continue to show up and listen to you. Facebook is one of the best platforms for this. 2.07 billion people use Facebook — 1.15 billion are on the mobile app alone every day. This ginormous reach ensures you get a real shot at reaching your audience. And, a Facebook group is perfect for engagement. You can consistently engage, re-engage, and excite your audience just by showing up live in your group, giving away your tidbits of wisdom, and being you. Real-Life Community Building Example: How I Route 3 Communities to An Active Facebook Group For over a year now, we’ve been running a Twitter Chat, #ContentWritingChat, and a podcast, Write Podcast. I started the Twitter Chat in January 2016, and the podcast in April of 2016. I’ve run the Write Blog since 2012. All three communities gain a lot of activity. The Write Blog earns over 1,000 views/day, and the chat has over 200 people joining us during the live hour. To date, I have over 6,000 downloads on the Write Podcast, and the show notes on our site generate a lot of inbound traffic. In September 2017, I decided to start a Facebook group and start tying CTAs (call-to-actions) to the group from each of my communities. I’d already started a private Facebook group for my course students, but I thought about a general group that I could easily recommend to all of my communities to boost more follow-up engagement. It would be a great way I could “funnel” all my traffic into a real-time channel where I could keep chatting with them, even after the community hour or podcast episode was over. The idea of my rough traffic funnel was something like this: Well, the trio-community-funnel idea was a hit. We’ve seen huge engagement in the group (Content Strategy & Marketing), and on average, during the live mentions of the group in our Twitter chat, I’ll see 8 new members join. Or, two organic new members find their way in from a high-traffic blog CTA – and I did absolutely nothing but update old content to earn that. It’s gotten to such an activity point where I’ve seen organic members join just because they saw the group recommended to them on Facebook’s feed – their role title was “content marketer.” Again, that’s using the power of Facebook (remember: Facebook does advertising for you to boost engagement on their platform!). For Facebook group content, I focus on adding value in the posts I share in the group. I share 1-3 posts/daily (M-F). My social media manager, Rachel, posts once in the group on Mondays with a sneak peek at our Tuesday Twitter chat questions. This week, I plan to start live streaming in the group. So, in just four months, with ZERO paid ads, we’ve grown to 389 members in the group. The real magic? Every single post we publish in the group has engagement! That’s because we’ve routed active communities, that already know, like and trust us, to the group. It’s not just a cold community building. One of the best things about running, specifically, a Facebook group is that it puts a “name to the face” – or rather, a face to the name. I’m live, right there, in the group — solidifying that I’m a real person, besides being an author, CEO, educator, etc. It’s low-cost and seriously low-effort to start your own group, but you do need a plan to consistently boost its growth. For starters, think of an easily recognizable name for the group that aligns with what you do, and what your audience does. For me, creating a group called Content Strategy & Marketing was a winner. One final Facebook group pro tip: Be sure to set up a new member questionnaire that members must submit before they can join your FB group. It’s an easy way to filter spam and ask for people to sign up to your list (win, win). Here’s how you can get to that: go to Manage Group > Edit Group Settings, then look for “Membership Requests” where you can click “Ask Questions.” Here’s what … Read more