Sarah Shade is a Content Specialist at Express Writers.
Regardless of niche, vision, profit margins and aspirations, you and all business owners have one thing in common.
You give your best on different fronts to stand out from the crowd.
Quite often, you might engage your efforts in a battle with competitors, and also with your own limitations. During this process, you might rely on premium content to highlight your uniqueness, make your products more desirable and form solid communities around your brands.
However, achieving consistency in content creation is more difficult than you may think, especially when you are faced with multiple work-related challenges on a daily basis.
Truth be told, every once in a while, we all get distracted.
Sometimes, we are overwhelmed by all the tasks that require our full attention and prompt intervention.
We run out of fresh, creative ideas and we lose our motivation for a second or two.
Nonetheless, we shouldn’t let these temporary impediments stand in the way of our success.
Why Does Your Business Require a Steady Content Flow?
Nowadays, content is still a powerful game-changer that could represent the perfect liaison between businesses and their clients.
Robust, consistent, unique content is an invaluable asset that can separate you from your main competitors, boost your revenues, maximize your online visibility, tighten your bond with prospects and existing customers and give you hope for the future.
According to Brad Friedman from Social Media Today, by posting content regularly and keeping your website updated you could improve your search engine rankings and implement more effective link building strategies. After all, it’s always easier to find and use links that are relevant to your pages when you’re running a blog that counts hundreds of quality posts reflecting your grand vision, mission and purpose in business.
8 Ways to Stay Consistent with Your Web Content at All Times
A steady content flow can help you make a name for yourself in any field of activity, while managing to impress both human visitors and search engines with your commitment and consistency.
But churning out dozens of first-hand articles and blog posts is no easy task, especially when you’re writing with your audience in mind. A stream of unforgettable content requires a mix of inspiration, creativity, talent, motivation and hours of research.
If you want to be able to take pride in a flawless, uninterrupted content flow in the long term, here are a few key steps that you should follow to achieve your goal.
1. Stick to an Editorial Calendar That Makes Sense to You
We will let you in on a well-kept secret: even the most experienced bloggers, journalists and business owners count on an editorial calendar to control content publication across a great variety of channels, such as newspapers, blogs, social media platforms and email newsletters. An article published by CrazyEgg reveals that a good editorial calendar adapted to your goals can improve your current content strategy. Using this handy little helper you can manage and schedule social media posts, gather new ideas for inspiring articles and posts, track events that could become your most generous sources of inspiration, and schedule your own blog posts, as well as the ones signed by guest authors. Now you can make the most of three great editor calendar plugins for WordPress (CoSchedule, Editorial Calendar and EditFlow) to plan your every move in advance and make sure that deadlines will no longer catch you by surprise.
2. Explore Key Themes That Could Never Get Boring
Instead of creating dull, perishable content that essentially puts your products and services into the spotlight and praises the uniqueness of your brand, opt for a different approach. Tackle the real-world problems and concerns expressed by your audience. Humanize and personalize your brand. Be helpful. Be engaging. For once, put your skills, expert insight and experience to good use to explore a series of interesting themes and convey information-rich messages that will raise the interest of your audience.
3. Create, Publish and Distribute Evergreen Content
No matter how active you are in your field of activity, you may get hit by a serious case of writer’s block at some point. Does this mean that you should lay down your weapons, while praying for the return of your inspiration? Of course not! Instead of opting for a passive approach towards content creation, you should explore a series of evergreen content ideas that are long-lasting and sustainable and can continue to stay relevant long after their materialization. How-to tutorials, videos, list posts and product reviews match this description and can help you satisfy your readers’ hunger for premium content even when you don’t really have anything new and groundbreaking to write about. Choose high-interest evergreen topics (romance, pet care, weight loss, finance, parenting and so on) that are fully compatible with your business and find the most creative methods to add new meanings to old stories.
4. When Your Content Ideas Are Drying Up, Improvise!
At some point, you may get tired of crafting list posts and how-to articles. While these types of content will always return the desirable results as long as you keep your quality standards high, simply because they stress out the problems experienced by your readers and promise miraculously effective solutions to these issues, it is always recommended to play the diversity card to keep your readers engaged. By improvising every once in a while you could break the monotony and avoid dull topics that you may be tempted to use as a last resort. Here’s an idea worth exploring: talk to influent people in your industry and turn your dialogue into the essence of your new article or blog posts. Make a list of interview subjects and unleash your creativity. If everything goes according to plan, consider turning interviews into a prominent, regular feature of your content flow.
5. Unleash the Power of Multimedia Content
Your content shouldn’t be limited to chunks of text, especially today, when multimedia elements are more appreciated than ever. Podcasts, videos, infographics and quality images can enhance the appeal of your writing and stimulate other players in your industry to share your material and give you credit for it. Most importantly, you can use all these essentials as the food for thought that you may need to come up with new content ideas. For instance, you can build your new article or blog post around a clever, visually appealing infographic shared by a reputable source or a video that has gone viral on YouTube.
6. Make the Most of User-Generated Content
UGC (user-generated content) is a real gold mine for those who are desperately trying to avoid too generic, overdone topics that have no effect whatsoever on savvy readers. The opinions and suggestions that you could find on discussion forums can fuel your content creation efforts; and the same goes for blog comments, client testimonials and any other form of feedback provided by the members of your audience.
7. Hire Expert Writers
Sometimes, you may feel the need to upgrade your team by adding a few new talents who are familiar with your industry, brand and products. In this case, you need more than a good writer; you actually require the services of an experienced content creator who knows your niche, competitors and audience and has what it takes to tailor your messages based on these three key elements. You can use various types of user-generated content (such as photos posted by your satisfied customers on Instagram) to cultivate and provoke online conversations, build trust and credibility, reflect a sense of authenticity and ultimately, create and maintain an uninterrupted content flow with just a little bit of help from your prospects and existing clients.
8. Use Online Tools That Will Help You Stay Organized
Content creation can be a complex, laborious assignment. This is why you shouldn’t hesitate to simplify your workflow by counting on a generous selection of online tools designed to support your progress. For example, Google Hangouts and Skype can help you organize productive brainstorming sessions with clients and colleagues anytime, anywhere. Evernote enables you to track topics and pull out new inspiring ideas from your personal archive, while Trello gives you the chance to create boards for your buyer personas, work closely with your staff members, attach documents, create and assign new tasks, add due dates to help your team meet deadlines and vote on various content ideas. Identify, select and use the free online tools that could perfect your content flow to stay on top of your game without having to work extra to reach your target.
Maintaining a Balanced Flow of New Content Doesn’t Have to Be a Challenge
As a dedicated business owner, you know your products and your prospects better than anyone else; and still you’re having a hard time expressing your most creative content ideas.
Or maybe you’re just too busy juggling different work-related responsibilities on a daily basis and can’t find the time and energy to research new topics, identify and analyze new market trends or build a deeper bond with your audience.
In this case, rest assured knowing that a team of professional writers can help you maintain a high quality content flow.
Rely on quality web content writing services to stay relevant on your niche, impress readers and search engines and improve brand awareness, and let a team of creative minds pave the way for your success.
As little as two years ago, some of us said the infographic got hammered and it just wasn’t worthwhile anymore when it came to content marketing strategies. Is this true? Are infographics on the down and out, incapable of spicing up and improving our content marketing plans? Is it possible to still create quality infographics, or should we forget about them entirely and try something else?
According to a recent article by CopyBlogger (and we’re talking end of September kind of recent), research suggests that publishers who leverage infographics tend to grow in traffic by about 12 percent more than those who don’t. In fact, they went so far as to present the information in…can you guess it? That’s right! An infographic:
Photo credit CopyBlogger
Wow! It makes you think twice about infographics, now doesn’t it? Maybe these little visual packets aren’t so bad after all?
The What’s What of Infographics
According to Wikipedia, infographics are information graphics. They have a pretty rich history, dating back as far as 1626 when Christoph Scheiner published the Rosa Ursina sive Sol. The very first infographic debuted in this publication and illustrated the Sun’s rotation patterns so that non-scientific minds could easily grasp the concept.
Today, infographics are still visual representations of data or information. They’re a prime means of turning complex information into something almost anyone can quickly understand. Unlike 1626, today they are social media friendly. It’s not uncommon for these tidy pieces of content to go viral. They appeal to our visual senses, which often make them initially more powerful than our standard text based content.
Yet, these handy marketing tools have flaws. You’d think that a content type dating back to the 1600s would be perfected by now! Then again, how many of us saw the Internet coming? And in all honesty, how many of us can accurately predict just how Google will react to the content types we choose?
The Downfall of Infographics
The biggest downfall to information graphics is the fact that Google can’t index the content contained within them. The same issue applies to any image we choose to use. Crawlers are not (yet) sophisticated enough to capture the words on images and index them.
As is the case with every type of content out there, it’s entirely possible to produce low quality. If you’re not careful, you can create awful infographics. According to CopyBlogger, Google’s Matt Cutts had some pointed observations about bad infographics:
When it comes to topics, they can get off topic.
It’s not uncommon for the facts contained within them to be of poor quality.
The link (or links) associated with infographics often go to sites that are completely unrelated.
The link (or links) embedded in the infographics are sometimes undetectable by viewers.
Cutts wrapped up his observations by concluding that in the future, infographic-type links just might be discounted or devalued by Google. So, the point is you have two outcomes when it comes to infographics:
Nail it! Produce a high quality, well researched, gorgeously presented, relevantly linked information graphic. It won’t be indexed by crawlers, but it will be a one hit wonder that can be repeated with new products that increase traffic and boom your business.
Fail It. Produce low quality infographics void of confirmed facts and relevant links that are eye catching but otherwise worthless. They won’t be indexed by crawlers, but they won’t be one hit wonders either. Low quality = get hammered (no, not with alcohol) and you’ll be in danger of infographic type links getting devalued.
But there’s something else to think about, too. Are you infecting the Web with an unwanted virus?
Second-Degree Duplication
Do you have a case of second-degree duplicate content? It’s a plague that just doesn’t seem to let up, as discussed by Eric Enge and Matt Cutts. What are we talking about? Second-degree duplicate content is when a user goes to pages that all contain the same information. Even though they aren’t identical and thus identified as duplicates, they’re so similar that the user frowns and clicks the back button because the information they’re after just isn’t there.
The problem with this scenario is that no additional value is being brought to the reader. No, the content isn’t duplicated, but it’s not bringing anything new to the table either! How does this relate to our discussion of infographics? Well, if you’re not careful, your infographics will simply rehash information and cause second-degree duplication, the kind that isn’t technically duplicated, but doesn’t offer anything of value either.
Repurposing Content Doesn’t Mean Rehash the Same Old Same Old
Infographics have taken off in the content industry as a means of repurposing older content into a new form of media capable of drawing a diverse (and fresh) audience. We’ve talked about turning long-winded copy into a handy infographic as a tactic for making your content go viral. But there’s an element that you have to consider if you expect infographics to be a worthwhile content marketing investment: Fresh perspective.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with repurposing content via an infographic, but you must offer somethingof value. This means you must offer something new. Otherwise, your repurposed content will be little more than a fancy case of second-degree duplication, and it could very well fail.
Infographics as an Asset
At the start of 2014, we ran a series of blogs tagged 2014 Success, and success number five was all about why you should create infographics. We even provided a brief how to that handed our readers 10 popular ways of using infographics. The truth is this content type is a worthwhile investment IF you do it right. So without further ado, here’s your short guide to creating assets in infographics:
Focus on Relevancy: It’s the key to every type of content. If it’s not relevant, don’t use it. It’s really that simple! Google is not a fan of irrelevant links or content. Period. (I want to add in an exclamation point because this point just cannot be over emphasized!) It doesn’t matter what we’re talking about content wise. If a link is irrelevant or a stretch, it’s just not going to do good things for your content or your website, and in the end, it contributes to low quality. So don’t go linking to irrelevant websites just for link value. You’re aiming a gun at your foot, and it’s only a matter of time before it goes off.
Fact Quality Matters: You can present facts within a layout that is to die for, but it will be for nothing if those facts are flimsy. Audiences know what infographics are, and they know that these content mediums are supposed to contain facts. If they realize the facts you’ve chosen are unverified and ultimately inaccurate, you’ll lose readership instantly. And what’s worse, you’ll lose credibility, authority, and trust. Ultimately, you will risk alienating your audience, which includes paying customers. Customer loyalty could quickly become a thing of the past. Fact quality really does matter, even when the text isn’t crawled and indexed.
Hunt for Sources: It’s easy to get so carried away with the visual aspect of an infographic that we forget to pay attention to our fact quality, but the same applies to hunting for sources. Before you even begin creating an infographic, you should be hunting for sources to reference or link to, and they must be relevant. If you’re repurposing content, it’s not a bad idea to build in a link to that original piece of copy. It’s also helpful to build links to sources that back up the claims your graphic is making. And don’t forget to make those links visible. If your audience doesn’t see them, they’ll never know to click.
Repurpose That High Value Content: So, it’s not going to happen overnight. Let’s just state that up front. Infographics are one of the most amazing ways of repurposing your high value content into an audience frenzy that contains a little something new. But you’re not going to create 10 of these overnight. They’re going to take time, just like that high value content takes time to create.
Infographics are an asset, but they’re also a workhorse. They have few limitations outside of staying away from thin or poorly prepared content. We thought the value of these assets was degrading, but the truth is it was a dip in quality that sent us reeling. Is it really surprising? Bad quality causes bad things! High quality causes good things.
Dedicate yourself to awesome quality. It’s the key to everything. I know, it almost sounds too good to be true, but don’t let this simple statement fool you. Awesome quality isn’t easy. You can’t snap your fingers and make it magically appear. It’s going to take work, hard work. But you can do it. And as a result, you’ll find that infographics are truly a worthwhile investment for content marketing.
Where were you on June 25th? Nigeria, Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran, Honduras, Switzerland, Ecuador, and France were all battling it out at the World Cup. The chatter around the office was filled with score updates and talk about how the US was fairing. And there I was, glued to my computer screen, reading news about the world cup creating a global exposure opportunity.
Italy’s Mario Balotelli had made a request as his team entered a key World Cup match last Friday: he wanted a kiss from Queen Elizabeth II in the event that Italy beat Costa Rica, thereby keeping England’s chances for advancement alive. But this wasn’t really the breaking news. Balotelli had over 170,000 people retweet his message and managed to generate even more chatter for a game that bred 3.2 million tweets.
The Birth of a Global Opportunity
Preparing your brand for big sporting events is a no-brainer. Every year the Super Bowl rolls around and the world of copywriting goes crazy with new content creation. And it all happens for one simple reason: businesses see an opportunity for mass exposure.
It’s no surprise that the World Cup, one of the largest global events on the planet, has become the biggest-ever global event for social media. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook saw over 141 million users post over 459 million interactions during the first week of the event. Twitter recorded:
12.2 million tweets during Brazil’s win against Croatia on June 12th
8 million tweets during the U.S. versus Portugal match
6.1 million tweets when Brazil faced down Cameroon
The World Cup is an outstanding example of exposure opportunity, grossing more social activity than the Super Bowl, Oscars, and Sochi Winter Olympics combined! There is no better time to jump in on a conversation and get your business or brand involved. We’re talking about engaging people on a global level because the entire world is watching this event. Is your copy up to the task?
Why Quality Copy Matters
It’s June. We’re half way through 2014. We’ve heard it all, from Google pushing the need for quality content to the latest trends in search engine optimization methods. We know the technical jargon behind the latest Panda 4.0 and Payday Loan 2.0 updates. We get it, already! So, was your copy up to par for global exposure?
We were all expecting the World Cup to make a social media impact. I mean, it only makes sense; it is the World Cup, right? The truth is any international or global event that you jump into on social media has the potential to gain extra exposure. A pithy comment on Twitter or Facebook could suddenly trigger publicity as curious spectators click to your profile and then to your website. And that, my dear reader, is why high quality copy matters. Forget Google. Forget SEO. At that very moment, the quality of your copy will determine:
Whether a potential client decides to stay on your website. It’s been known to happen. Your profile comes up on a trending Twitter topic, and suddenly you have your first international customer. You’re staring down the barrel at a fresh, untapped, and potentially HUGE audience. If your copy isn’t quality, chances are they’ll never contact you. Ouch!
Whether or not you gain a new follower. There’s power in community. A new follower is a new audience member. If the copy you publish, from your blogs to PRs, is packed with value and quality, they’ll share. Before you know it, that one new follower turns into a trend of newbies from…Australia? England? France? Germany? It is the World Cup after all!
Whether or not you gain a new contact. As a business owner, you know the power of a network, especially a strong network of colleagues. If the visitor perusing your website happens to be a colleague, high quality copy will go a long ways toward their reaching out to connect. Suddenly, you have a contact with an international perspective!
The truth is we hear about the need to prepare and craft quality copy so much that we often forget just how useful sheer quality can be. The explosion of social media activity since the start of the World Cup has been a fine example of how the simplest bit of participation, the pithiest tweet, or the most lighthearted Facebook comment can lead to an unprecedented exposure opportunity.
So, is your copy ready to go global? Is it up to the task of making the perfect on the spot impression? It’s time to take a little inventory, do a little tweaking, and call in some expert help if you’re unsure. After all, you never know who is watching or, more importantly, who is reading.
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!
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