Just think about it: having an excellent content strategy is like having money in the bank. There’s at least one good reason why you should always plan ahead when it comes to crafting content: it’s easier to reach your destination when you know where you’re heading. Truth be told, at this point your prospects can be influenced to respond to your calls-to-action through a plentitude of marketing channels. But the question is this: do you promote and distribute your web writing randomly or is your content strategy as elaborated as a well-played game of chess?
3 DangerousPitfalls of Content Strategizing
A cohesive, personalized, long-term content strategy can help you become an extremely competitive player in your industry over a short period of time, leading to:
Improved conversion rates
Increased brand visibility
A solid community and a bigger client database built around your brand
Superior organic search rankings
Reinforced social following
However, these improvements can’t be witnessed overnight and require sustained efforts on your part. To stay on the right path to content strategizing success, you have to be able to spot and avoid the most common pitfalls associated with this process.
3 of the Worst Mistakes You Could Make Instead of a Great Content Strategy
1. Putting the responsibility on somebody else’s shoulders. (Half-heartedly tossing a list of keywords at your secretary and having her come up with a few blogs for the week, for example. Is this you? Don’t feel too bad…we have some helpful steps for you below.)
2. Thinking that your product, brand or industry is boring. There are no boring products; there are only boring marketers. Every item available for sale has a value, a price and a well-defined market. Your job as a marketer or content creator is to put its unique features and benefits on full display and make it look insanely attractive in the eyes of all potential buyers.
3. Acting like what you write and how you write about your company won’t affect your online reputation and your bottom line. In a world in which online interactions are your most powerful ally when it comes to getting and staying on the same page with your audience, what you write helps your readers determine who you are and why they should (or shouldn’t) do business with you.
10 Ways to Guide Your Content Strategy
1) Evaluate Your Unique Marketing Techniques and Unique Business Objectives. Before getting to work, make sure you know what you’re trying to achieve and how you plan to accomplish your mission. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s not. Many content creators, strategists and marketers get stuck at some point simply because they don’t know which business goals they are supposed to follow. So ask yourself this: why are you investing time, money and energy in a content strategy in the first place? Do you want to rank higher in search engine results, boost customer loyalty or increase conversion rates?
All these objectives are different and require different courses of action. Instead of opting for an overarching goal that doesn’t say a lot about who you are and who you plan to become, it would be better to come up with a list of smaller, manageable ones.
For instance, if you run a small-scale auto shop ensuring affordable repairs and you also sell used cars, you will try to attract 2 different segments of prospects: those who wish to get their car fixed and those who are interested in buying a used vehicle from a local dealership. In this case, you will most likely try to grab the attention of local clients by promoting your inexpensive, high-quality repair services, while spreading the word about your decently-priced line of used cars. Based on these small goals, you can elaborate your own content strategy and make wiser decisions.
2) Understand Your Audience. According to Search Engine Watch, it is extremely important to build your content marketing strategy based on the particular interests of your targeted audience. We all get it: your end goal is to improve sales and increase brand awareness but to do so, first you need to build credibility and trust. Keyword research and social media listening tools are two valuable elements that you can rely on to find out what makes your segment of public tick.
3) Understand Your Industry. If youwant to win big you have to become familiar with the rules of the game. Find the most accurate answers to the following questions:
What motivates your prospects make online purchases?
Who are the most powerful influencers in your industry?
Is your audience service-oriented (and eager to spend more on premium packages) or price-focused (and always determined to pinch pennies)?
Are you out-shined by an influent competitor that is currently dominating the entire industry? (If the answer is yes, it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at its community, web content and social media presence).
What type of content is received with more enthusiasm in your niche?
Are there any gaps in the content creation strategies displayed by your competitors, which you may be able to fill?
Would you be able to create and maintain solid relationships with industry experts and influencers?
4) Find the Perfect Distribution Channels. How exactly do you plan to reach your audience while distributing your first-class content? According to The Guardian, the mix of media channels that you select to broadcast your message is extremely important. You should evaluate the strengths, drawbacks and costs associated with every single channel before making a final call.
5) Use Surveys and Rely on Real Customer Input. Do you want to know how your digital content, blog or website is performing? Are you really ready to assess the quality and effectiveness of your web writing? If so, explore the unmatched power of surveys, accessible online or included within a certain publication. Surveys are the 21st century oracles that will tell you what you need to know about your current content strategy and the best course of action that you may want to embrace.
Furthermore, note that big brands do everything in their power to guarantee a memorable experience for all their buyers every single step of the way: from the “I’m just looking” phase to checkout and doorstep delivery.
For excellent results, follow in their footsteps and listen to what your clients have to say long after they hit your “buy now” button. How would they rate your content? Did the product match its description? Sometimes, the most brilliant ideas allowing you to take your content strategy to the next level come straight from your buyers.
Since they get to test your product, they are the ones who could point to flaws, features and benefits that you would have never thought about. Therefore, you should keep in mind that a good strategist is always a good listener. Pay attention to new directions indicated by clients and find the best way to include real customer input in your content pieces. There’s one more aspect that you should take into consideration: credible testimonials are a great way to build trust and attract new potential buyers.
6) When in Doubt, Just Ask! Even the most experienced strategists get stuck at some point. If you don’t know how to resonate with your audience and how to guide your content strategy in a new direction, don’t hesitate to ask the right questions. At the end of the day, your curiosity will be rewarded. Ask your visitors:
What do they enjoy reading the most?
What are the topics that they would like you to expand on more often?
What kind of content are they interested in finding on your website or blog? Do they prefer text-based content, videos, infographics or a combination of all these elements?
By simplyasking a few basic questions, you show that you care and that you are looking forward to improving your content strategy based on the specific needs, demands and expectations of your targeted audience.
7) Look for Awesome Opportunities in Your Own Backyard. Before setting extremelyambitious goals and targeting new playgrounds, make sure you explore all the tempting opportunities that may be hiding in your backyard. Analyze your existing audience and find out if you could deliver more value to your customers.
After all, you can enjoy pancakes without that delicious maple syrup, but what would be the point to do so? In this case, value represents the sweet syrup that prospects wish to taste when they choose to buy your product or do business with you. A feature blog would enable you to inform, educate and entertain your prospects and give them another reason to land on your website, purchase your merchandise, subscribe to your newsletter or spread the word about your brand or your new line of products.
8) Create a Useful Editorial Calendar (and Stick to It). One thing’s certain: content planning should not involve any guesswork. Unfortunately, in some cases, this is easier said than done. To prioritize your goals, stay relevant and come up with first-class content pieces designed to attract clients like a magnet and improve your bottom line, you have to stay organized at all times. According to HubSpot, when it comes to guiding your content strategy, you have to map your web writing to the buying cycle and elaborate an editorial calendar.
In this case, the key is to set up and follow very strict weekly (or monthly) benchmarks, indicating who your public really is and what it wants from you, what kind of topics you should expand on, the best ways to share your content, what type of formatting you should use and so on. Never forget that practice makes perfect; creating and following a strict timeframe will give you the chance to put your thoughts in order, avoid distractions and strategize in a much more effective manner.
Ideally, you should be able to take a small step back every 3, 6 or 12 months, harvest the fruits of your labor, evaluate the end results of your content strategy and optimize the aspects requiring urgent improvements. Before you start working on your content pieces, first make sure that you can count on a large audience that is interested in what you have to say and is willing to share your web writing. This is the moment when you start reading what your competitors are writing, while keeping an eye on social media to spot excellent engagement opportunities. According to Moz, by investing in long-term relationships with influencers and powerful players in your industry you will manage to get the bigger picture and upgrade your current content strategy fast and painlessly, without breaking the bank to make it happen.
9) Give the Green Light to the First Batch of Fresh Web Content. Ultimately, you will guide your content strategy based on a trial-and-error process. Even though you’ve done your fair share of keyword research and have used every SEO tool in the box to perfect your web writing, only time will tell how your readers will rate your content. Before launching the final version of your content piece, you have to make sure that it actually:
addresses the real needs and concerns of your readers
provides value and presents certain topics from a different perspective
helps you reposition yourself as an industry leader
reflects the vision, mission and purpose in business of your company and is accompanied by a number of extras ( illustrations, photography, charts, infographics, videos and so on), which enable your audience to filter and assimilate your message much more effectively
10) Measure Your Results. After a certain period of time, you have to go back to your old content pieces and measure their effectiveness. By assessing your own website and reviewing past campaigns you can find out what types of content make your prospects rub their hands in anticipation and which ones make them yawn. You can use various tools to measure your success and improve your interactions with your readers. For example, Google Analytics allows you to reengage with your potential buyers by interpreting their particular set of on-site actions.
All in all, a clear understanding of your industry, audience and your own business goals will help you make the best decisions when it comes to creating and implementing a successful strategy. Keep in mind that no industry or product is truly boring. The key is to identify and reach your own segment of public and build interesting, informative content based on a solid plan. As long as your content is shared and enjoyed by a large audience, you are ready to strategize for success in the long run.
It has been almost three years since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two came out and almost seven years since the last Harry Potter book was published, yet Warner Brother’s is still winning at marketing. They have yet to give up on Harry Potter as quickly as most companies give up on their mega-films, which is proving to be an excellent strategy for them. Scholastic’s marketing team is also not giving up on Harry Potter bringing in customers and money. Both of these companies know just how to engage everyone while also providing people with wonderful items to buy. People say Harry Potter is a cash cow for these two companies and they’re right! Let’s take a quick look at how these companies are still making millions by using excellent content.
Pottermore: Which House Are You?
This is an excellent example of utilizing fun content while convincing people to buy your brand. J. K. Rowling and Scholastic teamed up to offer fans an experience with the world of Harry Potter by immersing them in Hogwarts and the wizarding world. They started with beta users to test out the site and, in fact, made a big hoopla about becoming a beta user. You were able to take a trip into the virtual world of Diagon Alley to purchase your books, your wand, your animal (cat, frog, or owl), your robes, and anything else Hogwarts required of you. While doing so, you were able to find random little things along the way such as chocolate frog cards or Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.
The wand purchasing required you to take a test written up by the master herself, J. K. Rowling, ensuring you got the correct wand. “The wand chooses the wizard, Harry.” You can then go through Harry Potter’s first chapters in the Sorcerer’s (or Philosopher’s) Stone and then proceed to be sorted into your house. This was the moment every Harry Potter fan was waiting for and the moment new fans are excited about. This quiz was, yet again, written by Rowling, ensuring you couldn’t guess your way into your favorite house and made sure you were sorted correctly. This caused much rejoicing and much sorrow, depending on house loyalties.
The lesson you can learn from this is that you should be creating content that is fun and engaging for your customers. The more engaging you make your content, the more likely your client base will grow, bringing in more revenue and readers. In addition, you should be involved with your content just like Rowling. This will make sure adequate knowledge is shared about your product and people will enjoy that you took the time to be involved.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
To keep audiences craving Harry Potter goods, Warner Brother’s studio created an excellent Harry Potter theme park for all the old and new fans. At first, the park was limited in what it offered, yet it was still, dare we say, a magical experience for everyone. People got to go through Hogwarts, purchase wands, and drink Butterbeer, and, of course, purchase many other Harry Potter items. The park is a huge success and because of this, the park will be expanding to allow people a ride on the Hogwarts Express, head to Gringotts, and many other fanciful locations we all want to experience.
How can copywriters take inspiration from this? Copywriters can use this as inspiration to keep their product out there in different ways. You don’t have to go to the extreme of the Wizarding World, but come up with some neat ideas to let people use your product in various ways. This could also be a great time to do some storytelling with your product. Basically, anything that engages your audience will keep your product out there longer and will bring in more buyers and customers. You can also use this as a chance to recycle and repurpose old content. As you can see, the possibilities are endless.
Accio New and Gorgeous Covers!
Older Harry Potter fans all enjoy the older covers and remember seeing them revealed upon release. It was an exciting time seeing the latest artwork but now there is a new audience growing up and that audience needs new covers. Or so says Scholastic. The new covers are just as gorgeous and still capture the magic of Harry Potter but connects with a newer audience. These new covers aren’t only for the newbies though, because many old-time Harry Potter fans are finding themselves purchasing the new books just for the covers. In fact, the spines of the new books make the castle of Hogwarts and who wouldn’t want that on their bookshelf? What a great marketing ploy, Scholastic!
Gain Marketing Inspiration from the Boy Who Lived
Sure, your product will probably never reach the Harry Potter level but Scholastic and Warner Brother’s Studio can give you great inspiration. Follow a few of their steps by engaging with your clients, using your product in different ways, and spice things up with new content. Try implementing these three elements and watch your content and product soar! You’ll graduate from the realm of Muggles to the wonderfully magical Wizarding world in no time.
The World’s Largest Webinar happened last Wednesday (#WLW14). Hosted by Hubspot, it featured three awesome leaders from today’s most powerful online platforms: Hubspot, Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter. We at Express Writers were a part of the lucky 34,000 who attended. Our exclusive recap blog features our notes from the webinar.
During the webinar, Russ, Twitter’s speaker, spoke about some ingenious ways to get more mileage out of your web content. He basically described content as if you have “fundamental” pieces like blogs, ebooks, etc. These can be cut up and delivered in bite size pieces to your social media audience and go a LONG way.
How Do You Repurpose Web Content?
It’s pretty simple, really. It may seem a little daunting at first, but you will find yourself getting more bite size pieces of content quicker than ever before. In the following section, we will talk about the different ways in which you can repurpose your content and get more mileage out of one simple post! How nifty is that?
1. Use Your Email Campaigns. This is often a lost gold mine of information. Russ, Twitter speaker at #WLW14, shared some awesome tips regarding using email campaigns for Twitter. You might not realize it, but those emails can produce some amazing Twitter content! Here are a few ways you can use your email content in this fashion:
Cut Up That Newsletter. Instead of telling people to click the link and read a longer blog, give them small pieces of information from your newsletter. You can fashion this by saying, “did you know?” or giving other information that your client base will appreciate.
Send Out Tips All Day. An important aspect with Twitter is consistent interaction. Once a tweet has been made, it will be seen for a few minutes before being lost in the myriad of other tweets. Tweet out tips from your long newsletter or blog post. Those bullet points you love so dearly will help a lot when doing this!
Always remember TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read) when it comes to content and Twitter. The Twitter universe relies on short tidbits of info, not long drawn out opinions or news.
2. Cut Up E-Books Into Blogs. Give your blog copywriters your ebook — they can easily use that as fodder for more than 5-15 blogs, depending on the length and the topic areas covered in your company ebooks. The sub-sections of an ebook will make excellent blog postings and each post can end by encouraging people to pick up your ebook to learn more.
3. Re-share Older Blogs. SocialMediaToday often retweets blogs published on their site over a week ago. They re-purpose the blog by tweeting it many days after it was published. Consider doing this for your “older” blogs. In Internet-land, a few days old is very old and a week old blog is ancient. If you want to make sure your readers read a specific blog or blogs, retweet, retweet, retweet!
4. For Your Social Media, Get Someone Who Can Speak Social. It’s not easy to write those one-liners that go viral on Twitter – being concise, short and still impactful can be more difficult for some brains. A social media manager is a great investment. That is, someone who knows how to copy write for your social media. For example, a person can take your old blogs and give them a fresh new one-liner for a short Twitter message. These one-liners are what will bring in the Millennials and the Millennials are who will bring in the business for many companies.
5. Create a SlideShare. Many people love slideshows. It gives them the ability to learn bits of information at their speed and is always divided up nicely. This is a great way to highlight the most important parts of your content. This ensures that your readers will read what you want them to. Just make sure you don’t over share on a slide show. Professors did this to us in university and we all hated it, so don’t make their mistake.
6. Make a Whitepaper Post Out of Your Content. Do you want higher-ups to take notice of a content piece your company has published? Craft a Whitepaper. This may be a chance for you to hire a professional, but creating a Whitepaper for your business is a great way to publish content in a more professional setting. It will get you noticed from professional entities and they are more apt to take your company seriously if the content isn’t in blog format.
7. Turn that Long-winded Post Into A Handy Infographic. The Internet really has a hard time sticking with long posts, as we stated above. Millennials use that annoying semi-colon phrase (TL;DR) but it holds a lot of weight when it comes to constructing great online content. Infographics are very popular with many in the web community and are great if you are aiming to get your content viral, according to Quicksprout.com. Don’t worry, you can still write up that long-winded post! Infographics serve as a chance for you to highlight key points that readers might miss if they are reading the long version. These are easier to read for many people and you’ll find those people want more, in-depth information after reading one. (This is where that long-winded post comes in handy.)
8. Lights, Camera, Action: Make A Blog Post A Video Post! Video blogs and posts are all the rage right now. This is a chance to put a face and voice to the business. Videos make readers feel like they are getting a different, more personal experience when they see someone from your company sharing information via video blog (also known as a vlog). You can write up a script from your blog or select a specific aspect of your blog to define. A great example of this is Mashable’s blog series on the Heartbleed bug that affected a huge portion of the Internet. They wrote various articles on different aspects of the bug and attached a video at the bottom discussing what the bug was. This helped readers learn what the bug was without having to search through hundreds of articles. It is important to have someone who is comfortable being in front of the camera and speaking without notes. It needs to come across as natural. If you are afraid of the camera, don’t put yourself in front of it. Ask other employees or hire someone – an awkward presentation will chase viewers away pretty quickly.
9. Podcasts Are The Future. These handy audio tools are great for commuters or those who work data entry jobs. Many listen to a wide selection of podcasts and always look for new ones to learn about different topics. Some non-science folks find themselves listening to science podcasts while non-literature folks find themselves listening to literature podcasts. Podcasts vary in length and are generally broken up into a multi-week series. This will work perfectly to repurpose your blog post or article. Talk about one point in one podcast and unpack it with further detail than made available in your blog. For example, if we were to do a podcast on this topic, we would do one session focusing on the first, and possibly, second points and expound on them and then the following week we would do points three and four and so on. This will engage your reader base and provide some excellent, sharable resources. The same rule from point eight applies to this point, as well. Get someone who is comfortable talking into a microphone and being recorded. The less awkward the person sounds, the better.
10. Share Your Knowledge: Provide A Webinar. Webinars are excellent ways to repurpose your content and teach information to others. These are done in a class format and are easily viewed at any time. You can break your content down and share it in teachable moments. Use this as a way to share information with others in your field and help their knowledge base grow. This works particularly well for librarians or those who can’t travel to conferences. They are able to learn about one specific topic and focus on implementing that into their daily work. Webinars can also be done in a live format where you can have viewers ask questions and can interact with your client base. It is recommended that you field questions instead of letting them appear live without being checked. You never know when someone is going to play a little prank!
11. Don’t Leave the Leftovers To Rot. Don’t throw out those clips and snippets you took out of your video for the sake of length. Don’t let them gather dust and grow moldy. Utilize those leftovers. C.S. Lewis said that you could always tell the quality of a writer’s content by how full the wastebasket is; what he didn’t say is that “waste” can actually be put to good use. If you are unsure of how to use the leftovers, call a professional in and have them create different content from them. Put it in an infographic, in a slideshow; use it in a Whitepaper post, or as a point in your next blog post. The only time you need to leave content in the wastebasket is if it is really stinky, but you can usually find someone who can freshen it up.
12. Repurpose Your Content While You Are Still Writing It. While you are writing up your long content, how about Tweeting out a few tidbits or trying out smaller bits to see how well they work. This will help you see if the content you are crafting will work and if it doesn’t, you can change before making the huge commitment of writing it all and then publishing. This can save you a lot of time if you find you have to change your approach to your content strategy.
13. Take That Blog Post and Format It Every Which Way. Seriously, don’t ignore any format – you’ve got to catch them all! Every format will bring in a different type of reader and viewer. If you focus on one form of content only, you will only bring in a select few – you don’t want this. You want a diverse reader and client base because diversity will grow your business. Hubspot discusses the importance of using multiple formats for your content and points out that you will generate more leads for your company, therefore, increasing sales. If you find yourself struggling to adapt your content into multiple formats, ask others in your company if they are skilled with a particular format. You can also hire professionals to do things such as videos or making infographics. The money you put into multiple formats will be worth it. People love variety; the more you mix it up the better.
14. Stop Yakking About Yourself, Write About Others. Repurposing your own content might get a bit droll; consider having guest bloggers on your site and repurposing their material. You can utilize their writings for your site in other formats and can generate new leads if the person redirects their readers to your site. You can also gain inspiration from your competitors and repurpose lessons you’ve learned from them. However, we will say that if you repurpose something a competitor has done, it is important that you do so without plagiarizing. Plagiarism is awful, often illegal, always unethical, and you need to avoid it. If you find yourself plagiarizing your competition too much, scrap it.
15. Make It Pin-able. Pinterest is a social network that seems to be on the sideline of all the social network excitement, but it is becoming quite the contender in the social media marketing world. This is a great opportunity for you to not only reach out to a new demographic but to begin a marketing strategy many of your competitors aren’t thinking about yet. Craft your content into a pin-able format such as an infographic or photograph with a quote from your blog. By doing this, you can link the pin to your website so that pinners are able to follow the link to the source material. You can also set up your content in a format that allows people to do crafts, do a DIY project with your product or that promotes your product, and also gives them life hacks for basic every day projects. Pinterest is an easy way to share all of these on “boards” and doesn’t take up a whole Facebook feed. Go take a look at Pinterest and the way some companies are using it to see how your company can benefit from this social media format.
16. Cheesy Photo – Simple One-liner. We’ve all seen those cheesy stock photos with a quote over them and while we all joke about them, we like them. We also know that others like them and will share them. This is a great opportunity for you to highlight poignant quotes from your blog and create a shareable format this is easily shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. This is a great way to cover your content on multiple sites and repurpose it for those multiple sites. If you don’t want to keep using stock photos, hire a photographer or take your own photos. Just make sure they are eye-catching; this is the only way these photos and quotes stand out on Facebook.
How Does Repurposing Content Benefit You?
The simple answer is that repurposing content saves you time spent on crafting content. Yes, you want to stay fresh but staying fresh does not mean publishing consistently new content. You can stay fresh with your content by reusing it in different formats and those “old” blogs can still be relevant in the “future.”
Here are a few ways repurposing your content will benefit your company:
1. It is Excellent For Your SEO Strategy. This is a simple concept to grasp. You utilized certain SEO practices with your original content and repurposing it gives you a chance to utilize those practices again. Repurposing will improve Google’s view of you and will bump your rankings right on up.
2. You Reach A Wider Audience. As we’ve said, repurposing brings in a lot of different clientele for your business, which is important to business growth. All of these different formats are difficult to maintain but repurposing your original content into the different formats will save you time and bring in a diverse reader base.
3. Repurposing Will Retain Clients and Generate New Leads. By repurposing your content, you are able to publish great content while also spending time by building relationships with your customers. Customers that have a relationship with a company will stay with that company for a long time. In addition, the consistent updates of repurposed content will generate buzz and bring in new readers and clients.
Your content is written, but your funds are limited. So what do you do? Clearly you would think that you should start looking for marketers to market your content, but those limited funds come right back up. This is a chance for you to save some money and begin marketing on your own. You can still utilize the services from other companies, but this blog is going to help you learn several nifty ways to market your content without breaking your bank account.
To Market or Not To Market
Believe it or not, there are people who wonder if marketing is important. In fact, you might be one of those! We can tell you that marketing is of the utmost importance when it comes to getting your content and product out there. How else will people find you? How else can they learn about your amazing products and services? Just because you have published your content does not mean it stops there. You have to market or else your other efforts will fall flat and you will notice your site going downhill fast. There are many ways in which you can market your content and according to Convince and Convert, some of these are:
Emailing employees on an internal network. If you do not have an internal network, you can still do this via Google+ or sending out an employee newsletter.
Social Media news release.
Traditional news releases.
Appearing on local news stations.
YouTube demos for apps and other products.
These are based on what one company did when creating a nifty app to help parents find the best car seat for their children. The app was successful because of the marketing this company did. Instead of treating the release as the end of the line, they advertised their product as much as they possibly could. While some of their methods may not work for your business, following some of what is listed above will help you. Do not neglect marketing or you will live to regret it.
Now, we are sure you are wondering how to market your product, content, and services. We will discuss a few handy tips and products that can help you immensely as you begin your marketing campaign.
1. Great Strategies and Strong Foundations. In order to market your content, you need to have solid content foundation. You cannot just jump into the content marketing game, you need to have a plan and follow it. Strategy is the best way to make sure your content will be noticed. If you do not have a strategy for your content and your content marketing campaigns, you will see it slipping. Once you have a strategy and a strong foundation, you can begin to publish great content and market it wonderfully. A good strategy will help you keep up with your marketing needs, but bad strategy will make you lose more customers and money. Never underestimate the power of great strategy!
2. Street Teams. These have proven to be pretty effective for a lot of groups and companies. Street teams rely on clients to give out information regarding a company or group. These can be done in numerous ways. For example, the International Geek Girl Pen Pal Club (IGGPPC) has several street teams throughout the world. Their teams give out postcards, pins, stickers, pencils, and other things that relate to letter writing. This is a great way for people outside of the IGGPPC friend circle to hear about this group. Because of the street teams, this group has approximately 45,000 site views a month. The street teams combined with social media get the information out there to a huge audience, creating a tremendous success for this year old group. Utilize your social networks and start creating a street team that will be appropriate for your business and content, you’ll be amazed at how much your name will get out there by getting clients to give out information around their towns!
3. Social Media. One of the biggest helps in marketing your own content is social media. It is so important that you have read it a thousand times over, but we keep saying it because a lot of people are ignoring this. Social media is a great marketing technique. A big help in social media is that share or retweet button. When you have an active social media marketing campaign, you will see more and more of your information being shared on the basic social media sites. It is really great when your info starts being shared a lot; it means you are one step closer to going viral, which is absolutely perfect in the world of the Internet and marketing!
While Facebook and Twitter are great ways to market, there are some other social media sites and tools that will help you in your marketing campaign. It is time to start thinking outside of the generic social media box. (And do not worry; we will be discussing these awesome tools in this blog!) As we have said and will continue to say, social media is the greatest way to self-market and promote your content and product, as it gets to a wider audience and can be shared many times over.
4. StumbleUpon. This is a great resource for marketing. StumbleUpon users will “stumble upon” various webpages that have been added. They then rank the web page as being something they are interested in or not, which will help StumbleUpon streamline the web pages the user sees most. This is a great opportunity for your marketing campaigns. Firmology gives a few examples of how StumbleUpon can be used in your content marketing:
Add a Page. This is an easy way to promote your page. Go to the drop down menu beneath your profile photo and locate the link that is appropriately titled, “add a page.” From there, you can add links to pages from all over your website. Be sure to add applicable tags so users can find you quicker! Make sure the content you add is engaging and do not overwhelm users with a lot of information from your site.
StumbleUpon Plug-in. You can add this to your Google Chrome or Firefox browser to share your content quickly. Just click the little thumbs-up button and you are good to go. If you see that it is already green, that is a great sign! It means it has already been shared on StumbleUpon. That would be an appropriate moment to do a little happy dance.
Badges. Yes, badges. Badges are cool. Using a StumbleUpon badge is a great way to get your content shared. The more people who like your content via the StumbleUpon badge, the more other people will see your site. This will assuredly lead to going viral. (Remember, that is what you want!)
Payment. The above listed items are the free ways to get your content noticed, but you can also pay StumbleUpon to share your content. This is another excellent way to get your content noticed, but you should keep in mind that it will show as a sponsored post on StumbleUpon, meaning some folks might ignore it.
We can personally attest to StumbleUpon being worthwhile. We have found that certain blogs and infographics are shared quickly. It has really helped to bring in more readers. In fact, our infographic The Era of the Content Beast received 91 shares on StumbleUpon! Pretty nifty, huh?
5. HackerNews. HackerNews is a great way to get your information out there if you are just starting up and you are in the techie and entrepreneurial world. Before you start thinking this is yet another social media platform, it is actually a news source for all in the technological and entrepreneurial realm. If you make it onto the home news feed, you will find your content receives thousands and more visits to your site. It is a great community that is dedicated to a niche topic.
6. Reddit. Following in the same vein as HackerNews is Reddit. It has the potential for a wider variety of topics, so it does not just have to be for tech related companies. Mashable discusses the various ways in which marketers can use Reddit in their upcoming campaigns and points out that this simplified format also gives consumers and readers the ability to discuss the elements they like or dislike. It is a great format to receive client feedback, as many will be able to stay anonymous and will feel freer letting the company know how they feel about certain aspects of the business.
7. HootSuite. You will start to feel really overwhelmed with all of these social media platforms and keeping them up-to-date, but never fear! There is a great app to help you keep all of those social media platforms together in one central location and make sure everything is adequately updated. This is an app called HootSuite. It allows you to add up to five social media accounts for free so that you can monitor them all and update them, as you need to. You can schedule an automatic RSS push to go out from HootSuite to all of your social networks, effectively covering all of the bases. It is a great way to make sure you do not forget about one of the social networks you are using, which is highly possible the more you increase your social media presence.
Be Sure to Use DIY Marketing With Paid and Earned Promotions!
These DIY marketing tips will be very helpful because they will save you a lot of money. They are also perfect ways to interact with your clients on a personal level and make them feel involved with your company. People who feel involved are more likely to share your content with others. However, according to Marketing Land, you need to use your own marketing in connection with paid and earned promotions. In the marketing world, you cannot rely specifically on one form of marketing, because you will miss reaching a lot of different viewers and potential customers.
Let’s take a look at paid and earned promotions and how they will help in connection with your own form of marketing:
Paid Promotions. This strategy is a good way for your content to be seen by a wider audience. You can do paid promotions by paying for sponsored tweets or Facebook posts that will show up in people’s news feeds. While some people might skip over the promotions, you will find that many people will start coming your way due to this sponsored item.
Earned Promotions. These are simply when you go viral; hence having the title “earned” promotions. Viral content means you have a lot of viewers and readers, it also means that your viewer and readership will grow with each new share. You can also obtain earned promotions by having a visually appealing website, as well as having an easy to navigate website, by writing for your audience and not the search engines, and by making your content easy to share on social platforms.
By combining your own marketing, paid promotions and earned promotions you will see that your content is being viewed more and that your company is beginning to be a tremendous success. Marketing is vital to getting your company running and keeping it going like the Energizer bunny!
In the End…
You cannot forego marketing, no matter what others might be saying and no matter whether you feel awkward or silly marketing for yourself. Self-promotion does feel strange to many people and you may feel like you are constantly trying to make yourself look good, and that is what you want! That is what marketers do already, why not do it for yourself? Go on and begin that self-marketing journey and you will see a significant amount of success for your company in 2014!
Have you read a bunch of fancy articles about how to setup your 2014 content marketing campaign and expertly implemented the lessons you have learned? Now, your problem could be that things seem to be going your way, but it also seems your competitors have read the same posts! Warning bells and flashing lights start going off in your head. If they read the same posts, that means they’ll be just as successful if not more than you.
Let the Content Marketing Games Begin
Let’s put the brakes on and address this problem! It’s time to get ahead and make some changes to spirit clients away from your competitor—and back to you. Here are four terrific ways you can beat any competitor at the intense game of content marketing.
1. Tell them a Story
Humanity has always loved stories. We love to take basic war stories and turn them into fantasy tales, we love making stories out of everything. It may seem like our culture has slowly walked away from storytelling, but Neil Gaiman has proven that wrong by hosting well-attended and popular ghost story nights. Stories are what bind our society together, inspire us, break our hearts, mend those broken hearts, and tell us we are not alone, and we love it. Ryan Hanely says this is the most important way to win with your content marketing. Use this to your advantage. While your competitors have glitzy banners and trendy new webpages, bring it down a notch and connect with your clients on a more personal level. The fact that you are telling them stories will set you apart from everyone else and you will find more and more people becoming clients.
2. Reach those Millennials
If you do not make a content marketing strategy that caters to the Millennials, you will lose to your competitors now and in the future. By creating a strategy for this generation, you are also preparing your business for the inevitability of marketing to the generation that is coming up after Millennials. Remember, this generation has only known a world with social media, iDevices, and other amazing forms of technology. According to WishPond’s top 10 content marketing predictions, in order to reach generations that will bring in more money for your business, set up mobile platforms for your site, use more visual marketing and create content in smaller quantities.
3. Create Consistent, Quality Content
Search Engine Journal says that you need to have consistent quality content when it comes to content marketing. You already know by now (we hope!) that you need to have quality content in order to rank in search engines and to keep or gain customers. Excellence will help you win and lack of it will make you lose customers; it is as simple as that. Quality comes in the form of great titles, engaging topics, proper internal and external linking, and originality. Get these elements right, and you’ll find more people checking out your site.
Now, what about consistency? What do we mean by this? You need to update your site regularly. Don’t update once a week and then suddenly change to updating once a month and then back to once a week. People will lose interest in your site, also those pesky bots will “feel” your site is flimsy and won’t help rank it in searches. Consistency in updates means better ranking in searches.
4. Don’t Be A Slacker and Pay Attention!
You still might be thinking that content marketing is not important, but it is vital to every business in 2014. If you want to make it big, you have to have a content campaign, plain and simple. Don’t slack off and create content that is wimpy, don’t ignore the content for glitz and glam, this will only hurt your business and will eventually cause it to become extinct. Take a lesson from the dinosaurs; we are pretty sure they did not appreciate the whole extinction process. Content marketing is immensely popular in campaigns, seize this opportunity to generate more business and become a huge 2014 success. In fact, over 50 percent of marketers have said this is number one priority in 2014 as it brings in more revenue for their company. If you are feeling stuck in the quagmire of content marketing, focus on one aspect and work to perfect it. You’ll find yourself growing in the area of quality content and will soon be able to create an even wider variety. Growing in the area of content marketing will set you apart from you competitors and get you leagues ahead!
In Closing
We hope you have learned a little more about content marketing and how to stay ahead of your competitors. Using these quick tips will help you beat the competition and gain more leads for your business. You will find that 2014 will be a great year of success for your company and you will be ahead of the game!
