So, people are coming to your website, and that’s great. But how many of them are actually buying something from you? Chances are it’s less than 1% of your visitor base. But don’t worry! You can actually influence your visitors to make a purchase. How? you may ask. Well, I’ve created an infographic that will show you what influences purchasing decisions and how you can leverage that data: Click on the image below to see a larger view: Click here to view an enlarged version of this infographic. ConclusionOne of the easiest things you can influence is customer reviews. By encouraging your existing customers to leave them and by showcasing them on your website, you can increase your conversion rates. And don’t forget customer service. If you can go above and beyond for people, you’ll notice that word-of-mouth recommendations, which greatly influence purchasing decisions, will go up. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/how-to-influence-purchasing-decisions/
0 Comments
Viral content is inherently unpredictable. You could have two similar pieces of content—with one receiving thousands upon thousands of shares and the other languishing in obscurity. In that regard, there’s no magic formula that will enable you to create viral content on command. It’s not like you can just flip a switch and get mass exposure. It doesn’t work like that. But there are several things you can do to increase the chances of your content going viral. That’s what I want to talk about in this post. More specifically, I’m going to explain how you can use social listening to your advantage. Social listening, defined as “the process of monitoring digital conversations to understand what customers are saying about a brand and industry online,” is most commonly used for evaluating customer feedback and identifying their pain points. But I’ve also found it to be absolutely perfect for predicting what my audience is craving and what’s most likely to go viral. The way I see it, social listening is perhaps the best way to predict virality. Here is how you can utilize it to your advantage. Effectively analyzing contentThere’s a popular expression:
Although this can be debatable, depending on the context in which it’s used, you’ll want to follow this line of thinking in this instance. Like I said earlier, you can never say with 100% certainty that a particular piece of content will go viral. But what you can do is see what’s resonating the most with your audience at the moment. If you notice that a particular topic, angle, theme, etc. is completely killing it, there’s a good chance you’ll see favorable results if you cover it as well. But how do you know what’s popular and what’s resonating with your audience? That’s where social listening comes in. The key to effective social listening is knowing which tools to use. I’m going to cover a few of my favorites you can use to discover trends and identify topics that have the potential to go viral. Google TrendsLet’s start from the top. I use Google Trends quite frequently for market research and for gauging people’s interest in various topics. But I find it can also be helpful for identifying the hottest topics at any given moment. For starters, you can simply go to the Google Trends homepage. Start scrolling down to see the top trending stories: Sometimes, this can give you some potential ideas to work with. Of course, the trending stories aren’t narrowed down by niche or topic, so you’re dealing with a wide variety of subject matter. But sometimes that’s all it takes. If you see something that interests you, click on it: You’ll then get some of the most relevant articles, which should provide further clarification on what’s popular at the moment: In this case, a lot of people are talking about Snapchat’s new “Snap Map” feature. Therefore, this could be something I would want to investigate further and a potential topic I could cover. Using Top ChartsAnother useful feature is called “Top Charts.” From the Google Trends homepage, click here: Then click on “Top Charts:” Here’s what you’ll see: Scroll down to look at all the different categories. Or you can search for a relevant category by clicking on “All Categories” and choosing the one you’re looking for: Once you’ve found your category, you can click on “More” for more detailed information: The logic here is that you can use up-to-date data from Google to see what people are most interested in at the moment in your industry/niche. Google Trends is by no means a be-all and end-all social listening tool, but it can serve as a nice starting point. Inbound.orgThis is only applicable to digital marketers like myself. But if this is your area of focus, it can be a potential gold mine. Here’s what you want to do. Once you’re at the Inbound.org homepage, scroll all the way down to the bottom. You’ll see this: Click on whatever sub-category you’re interested in. I’ll go with SEO: Here’s what I get: Scroll through the list, looking for ideas. Inbound.org does most of the heavy lifting for you by curating the top stories. Many have received a high volume of shares, so you know the interest it there. Also note once you sign up, you can create your own feed to streamline the process even more. This way the stories come right to you. BuzzSumoNow, let’s bring out the big guns. BuzzSumo is a beast when it comes to finding out how much engagement content receives. And since engagement (shares in particular) is the ultimate indicator of virality, this is one of the best ways to capitalize on trends and increase your odds of creating viral content. Here’s what you want to do. Type in a keyword you’re looking to base your content on in the search box of your dashboard. I’ll use “SEO” as an example: Now, set your filter date to a time that sounds right to you. Because we want to capitalize on current trends, I recommend going back no further than six months. However, the past month or week is ideal. You can even set it to the last 24 hours, but you’ll usually have limited data. I’ll set mine to the past week: Once you do that, BuzzSumo will populate your screen with the top content according to total shares. Here are the top results I got: Now all I have to do is browse through the content and look for two things:
This post from Search Engine Land about testing accelerated mobile pages (AMP) for WordPress caught my attention: Not only did it get 1.5k shares in the past week, it also got 41 backlinks. This lets me know that my audience is obviously interested in this topic. And if I created an article that was bigger, better and more epic, it would have a reasonable likelihood of going viral. This is the formula you want to use with BuzzSumo. It doesn’t matter what topic you’re covering. Following these steps will let you know what people are responding to and give you very specific data to base your decisions on. Let me say that the Pro version is ideal because it gives you a lot more data. That’s what I used for this example. However, you can do a limited search with the free version, which can still be useful. Other toolsSo far I’ve provided you with three different resources for social listening. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are several other tools you can experiment with, many of which are free. Check out this list of the top 15 free social media monitoring tools from Brandwatch for info on other tools. Taking what you’ve learned and running with itAt this point, you should have a pretty good idea of which topics are popular at the moment and what your audience is responding to. That means you’re not basing your content on a hunch. You’re basing it on tangible data. Your job now is to create the best content possible around that topic. Now, I’m not saying you should blatantly rip someone off. What you want to do is put your own spin on things. Look for a way to expand on it. And, of course, it needs to be awesome. It needs to be epic. Just think skyscraper technique. Hitting the mark in terms of quality and value is absolutely essential if you expect for your content to go viral. I’ve already covered this extensively in the past, so there’s no need to talk about it here. But let me point you to a couple of articles I’ve written that should be helpful. There’s this one from NeilPatel.com. It’s a guide for writing epic content that will go viral. And there’s this one from Quick Sprout, which is about the anatomy of virality. ConclusionSocial listening is useful for many different aspects of marketing. Using it to gauge your audience’s collective reaction to various topics will give you a good idea of what type of subject matter is most likely to go viral. This gives you valuable knowledge to guide your content creation. In turn, you can “scratch your audience’s itch” and give them what they’re looking for. And just think of the competitive advantage this gives you over other brands that simply slap up content at random without giving it any real thought. While there are never any guarantees that something will go viral, following this formula increases the chances significantly. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/how-to-use-social-listening-to-create-viral-content/ The term “content marketing” is a wide umbrella. It encompasses a plethora of different strategies and techniques. But at the end of the day, one of your primary goals is to create content that ranks as highly as possible on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is important because organic traffic is the number one means of generating traffic for many companies. A study from The Bright Edge even “found that organic search drives 51 percent of all visitors to B2B and B2C websites trumping all other non-organic channels.” This means one thing. You need to figure out the relationship between content marketing strategies and keyword rankings. This is instrumental in fine-tuning your content marketing campaign and finding the right areas to focus on. In this post, I analyze data from multiple studies and draw on my own knowledge and experience to give you a clear idea of the content strategies demanding the most attention. So, let’s see which strategies have the biggest impact on keyword rankings. Rich contentI won’t waste your time telling you about the importance of creating quality content. You already know that. But I’d like to share with you this statistic from an infographic on Quick Sprout: That’s a lot of links! And I’m sure you know the integral role links play in SEO. This graph from Moz illustrates the importance of links and their influence on Google’s algorithm: Let’s put this information together. When you create rich content, it gets you more links. These links improve your overall SEO, which improves your rankings. So, being diligent about achieving and maintaining rigorous quality standards should be of the utmost concern. Long-form contentHere’s the deal with long-form content. It’s hot right now. Scorching hot. I remember a few years ago when your average blog post was only somewhere around 500 words. But if you look at the vast majority of content that ranks on page one of Google SERPs today, it’s rare that you’ll find anything under 1,000 words. To prove just how important long-form has become, I would like to show you a couple of graphs. The first is from a fairly old (September 2012) article I wrote on Quick Sprout. I got the data from research performed by SerpIQ: As you can see, every single piece of content that ranked on the first page had at least 2,000 words. More specifically,
Newer research (September 2016) from Brian Dean of Backlinko shows a similar pattern: According to his research,
That’s over 500 words fewer than the original research from SerpIQ indicated back in 2012…526 to be exact. But it still shows us long-form content is a key element in achieving solid rankings. Why is this so? The way I look at it, there are two main reasons for this phenomenon. First, people have a tendency to scan through content these days. Few actually sit down and read a 2,000-word piece word for word in its entirety. Instead, they scan through and look at the sub-headers that grab their attention and may read little snippets of text from there. Long-form content facilitates this new method of reading. Second, a longer word count tends to translate into more links. And this makes sense. The more content you provide, the more opportunities for it to be linked to. Put all this together, and you can see that long-form content means higher rankings. Who knows, the whole “long-form content bubble” may pop in a few years. But it’s stronger than ever at the moment. However, it appears that the ideal word count has been reduced considerably, and you should aim for just south of 2,000 words. How do you create 2,000-word content?
You should never stuff your articles with words just for the sake of hitting a word count. But you should strive for detail, depth, clarity, and mastery of a subject matter. Here’s what I’ve discovered about long-form content. When you truly make an effort to provide value in your content, it expands in length. That’s not to say that you can’t provide value with a 400-word article. But the level of value created in a 2,000-word article is usually much greater. Content with “topical relevance”But the plot thickens. The same Backlinko article also points out that
Topical relevance basically combines my first two points of creating rich content and long-form content. It simply means that Google values content that’s comprehensive and that thoroughly covers a topic. This means it’s best to focus on a single topic for each piece of content you create. Rather than bouncing around from subject to subject, you’re better off going all in on a single topic and leaving no stone unturned. Does this mean you can’t discuss other topics? No. In fact, you should touch on as many relevant topics as possible! But your focus should be on a single topic. If you feel you need to cover a topic you weren’t able to get around to in the post, create a separate piece of content and cover it in-depth as well. Using long-tail keywordsThis strategy has been in existence seemingly since the dawn of SEO—back when SEO was in its primordial soup stage. One of the main ways small-scale marketers have been competing with the big dogs is by using long-tail keywords. And why wouldn’t they? It freaking works. In fact, I’ve been using this strategy for years. I even used it to grow my search traffic by 51% in just three months! And guess what? It still works brilliantly. An infographic from Adept states that “pages optimized for long-tail keywords move up 11 positions on average, compared to just 5 positions for head keywords.” It’s really not rocket science. Using long-tail keywords means less competition, which means a greater likelihood of achieving a favorable ranking. The awesome thing is that long-tail searches account for roughly 70 percent of searches: This means there’s plenty of opportunity out there. Of course, you won’t get the same volume of traffic that you would for a head keyword or broad keyword, but you can still generate some sizable traffic if you do your keyword research and choose a phrase that receives a reasonable number of searches. Check out this post from NeilPatel.com for a step-by-step walkthrough of integrating long-tail keywords into your blog posts. The process is fairly straightforward:
Image-rich contentIf you haven’t heard, people respond positively to images. It’s true. And although I think the whole visual-centric discussion has been done to death, I would like to reference one more point from the Backlinko article I mentioned earlier. According to Brian Dean,
But here’s the interesting thing. Using at least one image is much better than not using any images at all. However, they couldn’t find a correlation between the total number of images and rankings. That means there’s no proof that using a lot of images will improve your rankings any further. In other words, using just one image would in theory have the same effect as using 10 or more images. The key takeaway is this:
When it comes to my posts, this information isn’t going to stop me from sprinkling plenty of images throughout my content. In fact, you probably know that many of my posts are jam-packed with images. I think my audience enjoys the “eye candy,” and graphs in particular are excellent for explaining fairly complex concepts. But keep this in mind when creating your next piece of content: going nuts with images probably isn’t necessary. Direct answersIf you’re not sure what I mean by “direct answers,” it’s simple. Google is now starting to show direct answers when you use a “how to,” “what is,” “who is,” etc. type of search. Here’s an example: The first thing that pops up at the top of the page is a clip from the top ranking site. It’s a way to streamline the process and offer searchers direct information without them having to actually click on the link. Of course, oftentimes they’ll still click on the link to find more in-depth information. I know I often do. So, here’s the deal. Providing a direct answer can be beneficial and a viable strategy for killing it on SERPs. If you can provide a quick, logical, and direct answer, especially for a long-tail keyword phrase, there’s a good chance you can get your content featured at the top. Just be sure your direct answer transitions smoothly into the rest of your content. Here’s how I typically use this strategy:
When I follow this three-step process, the articles I write on those topics usually rank on page one for the associated keyword within five days or less. This is the primary technique I’m currently using on NeilPatel.com, and it’s earned me over 800,000 unique monthly visitors. ConclusionI value objectivity when determining the approach of my content marketing strategy. I find that examining the cold hard facts clears most biases and preconceived notions I might have. This is important because this gives me the clearest path to achieving my goals. While there are countless factors that contribute to keyword rankings, the ones I listed here appear to have the biggest impact pound-for-pound. Putting your attention on these key areas should ensure that your content marketing is heading in the right direction while giving you the best chance of climbing in the SERPs. via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2019/03/27/which-content-marketing-strategies-have-the-biggest-impact-on-keyword-rankings/ Those of you who have been reading my blogs for a while know I’m a huge advocate of using visual elements to enhance my blog posts. In addition to being visually appealing, images can actually improve the performance of your articles. That’s because blogs with pictures receive 94% more views than posts without them. According to a recent study from the Content Marketing Institute, 73% of marketers say their top priority is to create more engaging content. And 55% of these content creators are prioritizing visual content. If you haven’t been using images to enhance your content, you should consider starting with some infographics. Even if you have included pictures in some of your old content, you can take this strategy to the next level by building custom infographics. That’s because infographics are a combination of text and images. Research shows people follow directions 323% better if the directions include both text and illustrations. On social media platforms, infographics get liked and shared at three times the rate of all other content. Once you start building infographics, you will drive more traffic to your website. That’s because other people will use your custom images to enhance their own content. As a result, you will consistently build backlinks, which will improve your SEO. Now that you understand why you need to create infographics, it’s time for me to show you how. There are tons of tools available, but not all of them are created equal. I’ve narrowed down the top 12 tools for building infographics. 1. Easel.lyIf you want to create an infographic fast and efficiently, Easel.ly is a great place to start. Above is a sampling of some of their top infographic templates. All you need to do is select the template you want and plug in your information. They’ve got a template for everything. Some are designed to fit more text on the page, while others prioritize numbers from any research you may have conducted. It’s free to use Easel.ly, but if you want premium templates, you can access over 500 of them for a fee. I recommend starting off with the free ones to see whether you’re happy with the platform before upgrading your membership. Another cool feature of this platform is that they have community infographics built by others. You can plug your information into those as well. The Easel.ly website features an easy to follow guide on how to create content on their platform. They also offer a live customer service chat option in case you have questions or run into any problems with the platform. 2. PitkochartPitkochart is another top option for beginners. The platform makes it easy to create custom infographics without any design experience. In addition to infographics, they have other design templates as well. You can build things such as:
Some of my favorite types of infographics on Pitkochart are the graphs. It’s a great way for you to display your numbers in a custom chart. Pitkochart also has a map feature. You can customize the color options on these maps to show how different states, regions, or countries have varying results for your discussion. Speaking of color options, Pitkochart has many. You can select colors for each portion of your infographic, or you can choose preset color schemes. It’s an important feature because different color schemes can impact sales on your website. They have a library of more than 1,000 icons. You can use these without having to pay licensing fees or give an attribution to the creator. This definitely makes things less complicated, which allows you to spend your time and effort on building the infographics. Once you build your infographic on Pitkochart, they help you name your image so that it’s optimized for SEO. Then, you can share it directly from the platform. They have sharing options for email, ebooks, and social media. You can get an embedd link for your website, share it with your team, or download a high-resolution version of your infographic. 3. VenngageAre you a student? If so, Venngage will let you use their software free. But everyone else will have to pay for the platform. Their monthly rate is $19 for individuals and $49 for businesses. It may seem pricey, but the business membership comes with premium features such as:
If you know you want to take advantage of these features for the entire year, you can pay upfront annually and receive a 20% discount off your membership. Venngage is great because their infographic templates are seemingly endless. With so many options, it’s less likely you’ll have similar to other infographics templates already published on the Internet. This can make your brand stand out from the crowd. They also group their infographics based on several categories. You can build the right image for whatever you’re trying to illustrate. Some of the top categories include:
They even have “fun data” templates to help you display your unique research in a way that’s easy to comprehend. 4. Visme.coA list of visual design tools wouldn’t be complete without Visme.co. The platform specializes in all kinds of visual content, including infographics. If you need to make an infographic that compares multiple variables, Visme.co has more than 20 charts and tables to choose from. There are a couple of different ways you can input data into these visuals. Your first option is to type the numbers in manually. But if you have lots of information, you may prefer to import your data. Another cool feature of these charts is the ability to connect with live data. All of the templates have customizable fonts. You can change the color, size, and style of your text. Don’t see a font you like? No problem. Visme.co lets you upload your own fonts as well. This software can help you take your infographics to the next level by making them more engaging. You can add video and audio files. They also give you the option to embed polls, surveys, and maps. You can even add motion features, like popups, to your infographic. Once your infographic is published, you can track how well it’s performing. The analytics tools tell you how many people saw your infographic, what type of device they used, their location, and level of engagement. 5. InfogramInfogram is another one of my favorites. The platform allows you to fully customize every element of each infographic you create. In addition to infographics, you can also use this software to create:
Infogram also helps you build images specially designed for your social media channels. Their platform has more than one million icons and images, all royalty-free. What I like most about Infogram is their editing tool. You can drag, drop, and move every element on the screen to fully customize your design. If you have data that needs to be imported, it’s easy for you to upload spreadsheets from Excel, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. You can even use a cloud service or their API to set up live data integration. They have interactive charts and maps at your disposal as well. Ultimately, if you need a one-stop shop for all your infographic needs, you can’t go wrong with Infogram. 6. CanvaEven if you don’t plan on making a ton of infographics, Canva has plenty of other design tools for you to take advantage of. Those of you who are a little bit more advanced will enjoy the graphic design features offered on this platform. One of my favorite elements of the Canva platform is the versatility it offers. You can use it on the Internet as well as your iPhone or iPad. They specialize in photo editor, color palette, and font combinations. But their infographic building tools are just as good, if not better. You don’t need to have a design background to figure it out. Unlike some of the other Canva tools, the infographic builder is free to use. All you have to do is create a Canva account before you get to work. Their library has more than one million photos, illustrations, and graphics for you to choose from. If you’re not happy with their selection, you can also upload your own images. Once your image is uploaded, you can select a font from over 130 options. They make it easy for you to change the background and color scheme too. After you’re satisfied with your custom layout, you can save these unique templates to your account. This makes it easy for you to repurpose the same layouts for your future infographics. It’s one of my favorite time-saving marketing tools. If you’re not satisfied with all the elements in the free Canva library, they have premium elements available for purchase. But unlike some of the more expensive infographic tools we’ve seen, the Canva premium purchases cost only $1 at most. It’s an extremely cost-effective way to enhance your infographics. 7. iChartsIf you want something a little bit different from the tools on our list so far, iCharts definitely fits the description. This platform is cloud-based. It’s a visual analytics tool allowing you to organize complicated business information. You can use iCharts to simplify data from extensive research studies. Since it’s a cloud-based platform, you can access it from wherever you are. Nothing needs to be installed on a device. They have a feature letting you implement real-time data integration. This option isn’t a typical infographic builder. But you can still export the charts and graphs to enhance your content with custom images. 8. SkitchSimilar to our last tool, Skitch doesn’t necessarily build custom infographics either. But I use Skitch every day to help enhance my visual content. Some of you may not be interested in building all your infographics from scratch. That’s OK. If you’ve got a Mac, you can use Skitch to help you customize infographics from other sources. Here’s how you do it. Once you download Skitch on your Apple device, which is free by the way, you can use it to take screenshots of infographics. Then you can markup specific sections with arrows, boxes, and text to make it your own. Regular readers of my blog posts might recognize the pink arrows and annotations from Skitch. That’s what I use to mark up the images on my blog. If you use this tool to help you build infographics, make sure you give proper credit to your image sources. 9. CreatelyCreately is a platform specializing in creating unique diagrams for your business. Although they aren’t exactly the same, diagrams and infographics are very similar, which is why I thought it was worth adding this tool to my list. I recommend Creately for businesses that have multiple designers producing content at the same time. With this software, you can collaborate with up to 20 team members on the same project with real-time updates, edits, and changes to your design. They have over 1,000 diagrams for you to choose from. Even if you don’t want to publish your diagrams, you can use the tool for in-house projects such as building a customer journey map. 10. Google ChartsWhen in doubt, it’s always a good idea to use tools you’re familiar with. As a business owner, you’ve likely used Google Analytics to help you with your marketing solutions. Well, Google Charts is another great option offered with your Google account. Once you determine which types of data sets you want to include, you can customize your design fully. You get to select which type of chart you want to use from Google’s extensive gallery. It’s easy to add these infographics to your website, email messages, and social media channels. Their dynamic data feature allows you to connect your data source so the charts updated with real-time information. Google really stands apart from the crowd when it comes to customer service. There are thorough guides to help you with the tool. Every section has step-by-step, easy-to-follow instructions. 11. GliffyIf you’re looking for another tool for creating custom diagrams, Gliffy is a great choice to consider. The software is extremely easy to use. You won’t need any type of design skills to build your infographics. Everything is done with an HTML5 editor, so you don’t need to download anything to your devices in order to use this tool. If you want to get your project done as fast as possible without building your own template, it’s no problem. Gliffy has ready-made templates. All you need to do is plug in your information. Share your infographic with an embed link, or upload it directly to your social media profiles. You can also use Gliffy to collaborate with your team members. Grant access to people whom you trust making edits to your design. 12. WordleNot every infographic needs to be a complicated set of data. Sometimes, it’s effective to have only one statistic or sentence displayed to stand out from the rest of your content. If that’s the case, Wordle is one of your best options. This platform is made for creating word clouds. You can use customized fonts and templates to create these unique images. You can even use Wordle to reinforce a point you made within the text of one of your blog posts. ConclusionImages and visual elements are more powerful than words alone. That’s why you need to be using infographics to enhance your content. But if you don’t want to search for infographics online, the tools I’ve outlined above allow you to create your own. Don’t get me wrong: there are dozens of other infographic building tools available on the Internet. But from my experience, these ones are the best places for you to get started. There’s something on this list for everyone—it just depends on what you’re looking for. Some of these tools are free, while others charge a fee. Certain tools are better for charts and datasets, while others specialize in custom images and animations. Refer to this guide for all your infographic creation needs. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/how-to-enhance-your-content-by-building-infographics-with-these-tools/ How to Get Your Boss to Invest More Money in Content Marketing This YearContent marketing has come a long way over the last 10 years. More and more companies have come to realize the tremendous return and savings from investing in inbound marketing like blogs, white papers, and video. Still, there’s a surprising number of businesses that either don’t leverage content marketing at all or have fairly slim content budgets. While some 88% of marketers are using content marketing to reach their audiences, only about 30% see their campaigns as effective. That can create a problem when it’s time to try new things, launch new campaigns, and venture into new content formats. Getting management to invest in more content is a difficult, especially if the company struggles to create engaging content and produce effective campaigns. If the value of or return on the content isn’t readily apparent, you’ve got a challenge to win over your leadership when it comes to content marketing. To get them to buy in, you need to be well prepared with a smart plan that makes them see additional content marketing as a worthwhile investment they can’t live without. Here’s how to do it. Build a case for content marketingIf content marketing is already a part of your strategy, you’re halfway there. I run into countless marketers who try to sell leadership on content after visiting a workshop, only to be shot down. Thankfully, you don’t have to get that initial commitment as your boss is already behind content marketing to some degree. I hope at this point you’ve got some data to prove that content marketing is working in your specific business and industry to back up your claim that a greater investment is needed. Regardless of the size of the investment or how lofty your goals are, you need to put together a solid pitch and presentation. It shouldn’t be a casual or passive ask. Keep these points in mind when you’re preparing your pitch: Education is still importantJust because your boss understands content marketing doesn’t mean they understand it to the extent you do. They may see the value in blogging but may feel video is costly with minimal return because they don’t understand it. Basic education on the formats and channels you propose to expand into should be a large part of your pitch. You can’t expect leadership to invest more in something they don’t understand. Focus on the valueMake sure you’re expressing the value of the investment, just like you do when highlighting the value proposition when selling something to your consumer audience. This way you’re not stuck on the technical aspects of content marketing expansion. Focus on things like education, relationship building, teaching, and entertainment—things that make for stronger relationships and greater return. It’s also a good time to show how your content strategy aligns with company goals. For instance, give examples of how to use content to boost relationships, resulting in a greater customer LTV and revenue lift. Back it up with dataIt’s not always easy to show the ROI or effectiveness of content marketing, but pull the data, and find a way to present it. This could include content metrics such as:
Leverage the content marketing metrics and data you have to show that your current efforts are moving the needle. You can also use data from outside sources. This can come from case studies as well as research, trends, and benchmark reports in the industry that support the type of content marketing you plan to expand into. That data shows that it’s not just you who is planning to expand—it’s a direction the industry is headed. Showcase a competitive analysisA smart way to sell an expanded content strategy to leadership is to show what the competition is doing (and what they’re not) with an analysis of your competitor’s content marketing efforts. Part of selling the value of your proposed campaigns is detailing how it will put the company ahead of major competitors to grab more market share.
Rather than copying their efforts, show—while speaking to company goals—that what you’re doing (and what you plan to do) will help outpace competition. Align with company goalsDemonstrate why content marketing makes sense for your business and how the company (and customers) will benefit. This can include goals such as:
Alignment between marketing and company goals is critical. Be prepared to make your case and provide research to back up your claims that your proposed strategy and the tactics you’ll use will help the company meet current goals. This is a good opportunity to circle back to the competitive analysis and present case studies in which other brands have used similar tactics to accomplish their own objectives and engage their audiences. Be ready for objectionsYou’re likely to come across objections when making your case for a greater investment in content marketing. With an existing investment in content, you’re not likely to get a hard no, but you should still be prepared for some pushback and the need to negotiate. For leadership, everything comes down to the bottom line. If you want the dollars you’re asking for in your budget, you need to be prepared to counter the objections that may arise. Here are some of the most common:
For cost and resource related issuesMake sure you clearly lay out how to get around resource limitations. If you don’t need to hire anyone or the costs can be minimized with strategic outsourcing, showcase that in the proposal. Don’t just discuss how much the expansion of your content marketing will cost. Be sure to include details of how much they can save. Circle back to your existing data that highlights things like:
All of it equates to savings, providing a greater return on the initial investment. The “We’re Not Interesting Enough” argumentIt doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, your prospective and current customers will have questions. They face issues every day in their businesses. Every issue, question, and concern is a content opportunity that can turn your business into a hero, solving problems while asking for nothing in return. Counter this argument by presenting common questions and concerns from your customers and showing how your company can create content to solve their problems. The “Move Resources” argumentSometimes management might suggest turning off other campaigns in order to test new ones. When you want to fill a container faster, you don’t turn off one tap to turn on another. You turn on multiple faucets to let more water in. Use your data from previous campaigns to show that virtually every campaign has some ramp-up time, necessary to gain traction to see a return. Shutting down or limiting existing campaigns to move resources would actually cost more when you factor in revenue and leads lost in the interim. The “Giving Too Much Away” argumentThis is the point of content marketing: give away vast amounts of value-rich information in order to create a winning experience for your audience. It’s the only way to build your brand as a trusted, reliable thought leader. All of that content has a tremendous influence over purchasing decisions. When customers feel you have their best interests at heart, they are more likely to buy from you. Even if you share the bulk of your knowledge, your customers won’t go to great lengths to learn how to do it all on their own. They’ll still need you. This is where you make the case that limiting the amount of information you share only provides competitors with an opportunity to be the better resource. ConclusionWhen you make your presentation, you should have a strategy to showcase your vision, including the expected results. Have a plan ready that shows how serious you are about the expansion of your content marketing. Even if you are presenting a pilot program, detail its implementation, ownership, ways content is created, cost allocation, distribution, promotion, and the measurement of its success against company goals. From there, all that’s left for you to do is to make your case and ask for the investment. With a detailed pitch outlining a solid content marketing plan, you should be able to overcome any objections your leadership may have and get them to buy into growing your marketing efforts. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/how-to-get-your-boss-to-invest-more-money-in-content-marketing-this-year/ Your content is great. You’ve been applying new strategies and learning how to master the art of storytelling to make your content more engaging. But now what? This is useless if you’re unable to distribute it to your audience. I see this problem all the time when I’m consulting businesses. They have excellent writers who know how to write great blog posts, but nobody is reading their work. The key here is learning how to distribute your content so it can reach the widest audience possible. If you’re using only one distribution channel, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Some of you may be thinking, “If it’s on my website, someone will eventually see it.” That’s not true. You can’t rely on your website alone for content distribution. That’s because people consume information in a wide variety of ways. For example, if you have a B2B company, you should be aware that majority of your content is being viewed on desktop computers. B2C companies, on the other hand, need to put more emphasis on optimizing their mobile websites for Google searches. But effective content distribution goes way beyond the types of devices your audience is using. Using multiple methods of distribution gives more people a chance to see your content. Use this guide as a reference for how to successfully deliver content to your target audience. Here’s what you need to know. Establish an active presence on all your channelsYour distribution won’t be effective if you’re adding content to each channel only once per month. If you want more views and engagement, the first thing you need to do is make sure all your platforms are active. This is the best way to make sure that as many people as possible have regular access to your brand. Start simple. How many social media profiles do you have? Create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube if you haven’t already. You’ve been adding new subscribers to your email list, but how often do you send them messages? People subscribed to your emails because they wanted to hear from you. They follow you on social media because they are interested in your products and services. Don’t let them down by going silent. While you should post often, make sure you don’t get too carried away. Otherwise, this strategy could backfire and you could be perceived as annoying. We know that 57.5% of social media users unfollowed a brand on social media because they thought the brand posted too many promotions. Find that middle ground. Post content daily, but do this without blowing up your followers’ timelines. Understand your audienceAs I said earlier, not everyone consumes content the same way. Conduct research to clearly identify your target market. Once you know whom you’re trying to reach, it will be easier to figure out how to target them based on their consumption habits. First of all, think about the platform you’re distributing on. This will tell you how your audience wants to consume. For example, take a look at your Instagram followers. If you’re debating what you should post on your Instagram profile, stick to pictures and videos. It wouldn’t be effective to write short blogs in the caption of a photo. Instead, focus your website on more text-heavy content, such as blogs. Send newsletters to your email subscribers. Keep your Twitter audience updated with short newsworthy headlines. Does this make sense? Make sure the content is tailored to each channel based on what your audience consumes. But you also need to realize not everyone has the same social media preferences. Take a look at some of the differences in the way Millennials and Baby Boomers consume content: If you’re targeting Baby Boomers, you’ll be better off using Facebook as a primary distribution method. Don’t use hashtags. Give them written content. But if your brand is targeting Millennials, you’ll need to focus more on Instagram, hashtags, and photos to have an effective marketing strategy. Timing is everythingSo, you just wrote a new blog post. Now what? Do you instantly share it on all your distribution channels at once? Not necessarily. You can add it to Facebook on one day and Twitter the next. Add a promotion to your Instagram story a few days later to drive traffic to your blog post. Here’s the thing. There is going to be some overlap between your followers on different distribution channels. You don’t want to bombard them all at once with the same marketing pitch. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. They open Facebook and see a link to your new blog post. Then they log into Twitter and see the same headline. Later that day, they’re reading through their emails and see you emailed them a link to that blog post as well. This is overkill. Plus, it can annoy your audience. They want to hear from you, but not that often. You also need to consider the actual day and time when you’re posting new content. The optimal time will vary based on the distribution channel: Use this as a guide to make sure as many people as possible see your posts. But this will depend on what you’re talking about. For example, let’s say your brand is releasing some type of breaking news that’s time-sensitive. Obviously, you shouldn’t wait until the next optimal time to tell your audience. You’ll want to get this information out on all of your channels right away. But if it’s just a general discussion topic that’s not time-sensitive, it can wait. Make sure your content is relevantThe best content is always on topic and relevant to your brand. Yes, I know that earlier I talked about breaking news as an example of time-sensitive content that should be shared right away. However, that doesn’t mean you should be sharing every news story you hear. For example, let’s say your company manufactures home furniture. There’s no reason for you to be sending your customers weather alerts unless, of course, this weather is somehow impacting your business, such as a delay in shipping. Also, earlier I said you should distribute content on different channels based on a specific time or day of the week. But that doesn’t work if you’re promoting an advertisement or offer that expires soon, such as a flash sale. Take advantage of automation toolsAs I said earlier, you’ll need to stay active on all your distribution channels. But I realize this can be a challenge. You’re busy. I get it. I’m sure you’ve got dozens of tasks you think are more important than posting new content. If this sounds like your situation, you’ll definitely want to try some of my favorite time-saving social media marketing tools. Automated tools can make your life much easier. For example, take a look at Hootsuite: The platform allows you to schedule your social media posts automatically. This can save you a ton of time. Now, you can write a new blog post and then schedule the post on the day and time that will get the most engagement depending on the platform. It’s easier to do this all at once instead of manually posting each time. You can dedicate just one or two days a week to schedule your posts and let the automation tools take care of the rest. Plus, seeing everything in a calendar view on the platform will help you make sure the distribution is even. Repurpose old contentThis piggybacks on our last point. You’ve got to work smarter, not harder. If you have some marketing materials or documents written a couple of years ago that are still relevant, you can reuse them. You may have written a very informative blog post with lots of data and facts to back up your claims. But at the time, you didn’t have the marketing skills to get it distributed to a wide audience. The views and engagement on that page were really low. But that doesn’t mean you can’t bring that post back to life. You’ve got a couple of options here. First, you can write a new article on the same topic, changing the title. Use your old post as a reference to make the writing process go faster. Or you could republish an old post with updated statistics. Here’s an example of how HubSpot uses this strategy with its blog posts: Statistics change over time. This is especially true when it comes to marketing data. That’s why I always try to use the most recent sources to back up my data. HubSpot recognized that the research they conducted in 2012 was outdated. So, they updated the statistics and republished an old post. Your content must be shareableDid you notice anything else in the HubSpot’s example above? The post is plastered with sharing icons. Readers can distribute this content to others with just a click of a button through channels such as:
Including these icons makes it much more likely that readers will share your content. Otherwise, you’d have to rely on them manually copying your link, opening a new tab or window, and then sharing it with their friends. It’s too many steps to be an effective strategy that you can rely on. There are other ways to approach this strategy as well. When you share posts on social media, you can try to encourage user-generated content as a distribution strategy. Run a contest or promotion that requires a retweet, post, or share as an entry. This will get your content in the hands of as many people as possible. Leverage your relationships with influencersAs you can see, you don’t have to distribute content alone. In addition to your followers, you should form relationships with social influencers. These people already have an active audience engaged with their posts. When a social influencer shares something, their followers will be likely to follow up to find out more information. Don’t think you need to pay big bucks to work with a celebrity. In fact, you may have better luck working with micro influencers: This strategy is valid on all your distribution channels. Nearly 40% of Twitter users have made a purchase based on an influencer’s tweet. Further, 70% of teenagers say they are influenced more by YouTube personalities than traditional celebrities, and 40% of Millennials say they can relate to their favorite YouTube stars even more than they can relate to their friends. Make sure you find an influencer who speaks to your target market. It’s a highly effective way to distribute your content. Track your resultsWhen running any marketing campaign, you’ve got to use analytics tools to see how effective your distribution strategy is. Most of your platforms will have these tools built-in. You can track engagement with your email marketing software as well as your social media networks. If you’re using third-party tools to distribute content, they will provide accurate analytics. This is a great opportunity for you to evaluate your methods and make adjustments. Stick with strategies that are working well. Fix the areas that need improvement. ConclusionYour content is useless if nobody sees it. That’s why you need to figure out how to get it in the hands of the widest audience possible. The most effective way to do this is by leveraging multiple distribution channels. First, you need to make sure all your channels are active. Understand your audience and give them content they want based on their preferences and platforms. Focus on timing and relevance. To save time, take advantage of automation tools and bring old content back to life. Make sure all your content is shareable. Use social influencers to help with your distribution strategy. Always track your results so you can determine if your methods are successful. If you follow these tips, you’ll have higher engagement and conversion rates from all your distribution channels. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/how-to-distribute-content-effectively-across-multiple-channels/ Content marketing growth isn’t always explosive, but should it be slow? No, it shouldn’t. You should have steady, measurable growth on a monthly basis in most cases. That’s why it pains me to see so many marketers create content and be satisfied when barely anyone sees it. You don’t need tens of thousands of views for a new piece of content to make a difference, but you should be aiming for at least a thousand, even when you’re just starting off. If you’re not getting many views on your content, something is wrong. It could be one of many things:
In this post, I want to dive deeper into one of these elements: the content aspect. There are things you can do to instantly expose your content to a larger audience. In fact, I’m going to show you 5 of them in this post. If you’re looking to get hundreds or thousands of extra views on your content, this is a post you’ll want to read closely. 1. Influencers can help you in many waysIn order to grow your site’s traffic and readership, you need to put in a ton of consistent hard work. However, there are ways accelerate the growth. They involve getting a few big influencers in your niche on your side. Imagine that someone sent an email to thousands of their subscribers, linked to you in a blog post seen by tens of thousands, or shared your content on social media. Depending on how much of an influencer that person is, it could lead to you gaining dozens of subscribers immediately. If you could just find 5-10 influencers who wouldn’t mind helping you promote your content once in a while, you would grow your blog several times faster than you currently are. It’s a simple plan, and it works. However, it’s not so easy to actually get influencers to share your content. Influencers don’t share mediocre content, and getting them to take the time to look at your content in the first place is difficult as well. Again, though, there are ways that you can increase your chances of getting a positive reply and action from an influencer. You can’t ever guarantee that a particular influencer will help you promote your content, but you can greatly increase the chances with these four tactics. Option #1 – Get them to contribute to the article: Why should someone help share your article? There are a few main reasons someone might want to:
The first one is nice, but completely unreliable. Influencers often get several (hundreds for some) share and link requests each day. Even the nicest guy can’t say yes to all of them. That leaves us with two reasons. Option #1 focuses mostly on the second main reason. The idea is to ask them to contribute a small bit of content to the post, whether it’s a short story, quote, or piece of advice. If they contribute to something, they’ve essentially given it their “stamp of approval.” Through confirmation bias, they are more likely to overvalue the quality of your content. And since they think that it’s great, it follows that their readers would as well, which makes them more likely to help promote it. If they do agree to contribute, you don’t need to ask them to promote it. Just thank them for helping you out, and send them a link an hour or so before you publish the post. Most influencers understand that you would also appreciate any mentions to their audience, but asking for it can put them off. The hard part, therefore, is getting them to contribute in the first place. Here’s a sample email you could send:
You wouldn’t want to go any longer than that. The key part is your question has to be specific. If they don’t think they can answer it in under 200 words, most aren’t going to bother. For example, ask them a question like:
But obviously tailor it to your topic. Option #2 – Giving input always makes someone care more: If someone came up to you and started complaining about not being able to find a job, you might sympathize, but you probably wouldn’t care very much. But how would you feel if they asked for your advice on finding a job? All of a sudden, you’ve taken on the role of a mentor/teacher. In this role, you have a natural inclination to care about your student’s success. If they actually listen to you and apply your advice, how likely are you to help them more? Very likely. You’d probably try to set up interviews and introduce them to any relevant people you know to help them network. Content promotion is pretty similar. If you can get an influencer to offer advice on your content—and you actually apply that advice—most will be happy to share the content when it’s ready. They will want to see it succeed. How do you get an influencer to offer you advice? That’s the hard part. There are two keys to getting a decent response rate:
The first key is self-explanatory. If it seems that you just want them to share your content and you don’t really care what they think, they’ll delete the email immediately. The second key is something most marketers don’t stop to consider. If you send me yet another “guide to SEO,” I don’t care how good it is, it’s not interesting. Besides my own guide to SEO, there are hundreds of others. You need to have a unique and interesting take on a topic (or an entirely new topic altogether). Let me show you an example of a great email to help illustrate my point. Groove HQ launched their content marketing strategy just under 3 years ago, but they launched it with a bang. Their first post got them over 1,000 new subscribers. Seriously. Some blogs take months or years to reach that number. And they did it using this one tactic. First, they identified several key influencers who might be interested in their content marketing project. Then, they sent them this email: The key part is that long second paragraph, the main paragraph, where Alex explains the project. The idea he presented was for Groove to reveal everything about growing their software startup. At the time, this was completely unique, and, of course, many influencers found it intriguing. They offered to give real feedback on the post. After Alex took action on that feedback, he produced an article that immediately got comments from plenty of huge influencers like Gary Vaynerchuk. Option #3 – Give them a great reason to care: The final reason why an influencer might care enough about your content to help promote it is because it makes them look great. In simple terms, you feature them in a good light. This has worked for years, but like most tactics in content marketing, it’s evolved. You used to be able to simply link to someone’s site and then email them to let them know about it. When you told them you loved their content so much you had to link to it in your post, a decent percentage were happy to share your post. That doesn’t work so well anymore because many marketers adopted that strategy. Influencers now get many similar emails, and the content doesn’t even make them look good (it’s just a link buried somewhere in the article). But you have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve again. With this final option, I recommend not only linking to an influencer but giving them a few surrounding paragraphs where you paint them in a positive light. Here’s an example from one of my past Quick Sprout articles: I used Brian Dean’s content as a “great example” of a concept I was trying to explain. By doing this, not only did I include a useful example for my readers, but I made Brian look really good. Imagine if I sent him an email after and included the content in the above picture in it? Automatically, I’d stand out from dozens of other similar emails he gets. Another way you can show someone that you want to make them look good is to interview them. Many bloggers successfully start podcasts just to build relationships with the influencers they interview. For anyone, an influencer or not, being able to grab someone’s attention for 20-40 minutes during a podcast is an amazing opportunity. Why wouldn’t I promote an interview of mine if I felt like my audience would enjoy it? Tools to help you find influencers: One of the most important steps for all of these different options is to target the right influencers. If they aren’t a good fit for the content you’re proposing, why would they contribute? If you email me for advice on how to bake a pie, it’s going straight to the trash (the email, not the pie). If you’re familiar with your niche, you might already know all the big influencers and can simply list people you’d like to connect with. However, if you’re somewhat new or aren’t confident that you know all the influencers, you can find them in a few different ways. The first is a simple Google search for “top bloggers (your niche),” which is a great starting point. Most of the time, you’ll be able to find 50-100 fairly popular blogs, and you can then figure out who the people behind the blogs are. Next, head over to BuzzSumo. Type in a few main keywords that describe your niche into the influencer search function: You will get thousands of results. The first few hundred are usually pretty good. 2. Optimize your images for maximum shareabilityIt’s no secret that images are crucial for good readability. They attract attention; readers love them; and they break up content. But many marketers don’t make the connection between images on their sites and shares on social networks. If you do understand this connection, you have an opportunity to increase the social shares you get on an average article by a substantial number. Size comes first: One of the most common mistakes I see is creating an attractive image to include in a blog post but making it an awkward size for social networks. Even if a reader shares it, it will end up distorted or cut off, so it won’t get much attention. If you don’t know which social networks to optimize for, head over to BuzzSumo again, and type in a niche keyword. Typically, one or two results will dominate the search: Even better, if you have a fairly high traffic blog, you should be able to check the number of shares past posts have had on each network by plugging them into a social share checker. Once you know which network most of your readers use, either search on the social media site for image guidelines, or refer to Buffer’s ultimate guide to social media image sizes. From there, just make sure all your blog images fit within the optimal size range. Once you know the right size for an image, you need to figure out which types of images to include. There are a few types of images that attract more shares than others. Type #1 – Informational images: An image that includes actual practical information will get more attention than a plain photo. An infographic would belong to this group, but so would other images like short tutorial pictures: You can see how the above picture would naturally attract more shares and likes than a picture of just a makeup brush. Type #2 – Quote images: Another type of image that absolutely kills it on social media in most niches is a quote image. Such images consist of a simple patterned background with a meaningful quote laid over top. This is a type of picture that gets shared a lot but can become boring if used too much. I recommend including no more than one of these per article. Type #3 – Plain beautiful pictures: I often get asked how I get such great pictures to use for the featured images on Quick Sprout posts. The truth is my designer creates them or finds amazing pictures that others have created. Yes, they cost more than most stock photos, but they not only attract more reader attention but also result in more social shares. Add image sharing buttons to your images: This small tweak will immediately produce a significant increase in shares. You can do this by using a plugin such as SumoMe Image Sharer. Once you enable the plugin, all of your pictures will have buttons like the ones shown above. You can configure it to show only specific networks. Tools to make image creation simple: There’s no point in spending money on simple pictures like quote images unless you have a very comfortable budget. Instead, spend 10-20 minutes learning how to create your own custom images. There are a few tools I recommend using. They are easy to use even if you stink at designing:
In this case, I’d recommend using Pablo when possible—an image creation tool created by Buffer. It’s specifically designed to create images that are optimized for social media, which saves you a lot of time. You don’t need an account to get started, and it’s completely free. Start by picking the image size on the right sidebar (it shows you which one is best for each network): Your canvas in the middle will adjust to that size. Then, you can pick a background from the left sidebar: Finally, you can click in the textbox and edit the text as you’d like. You can also drag the text around if you think it’ll look better in a different location. 3. Feature something other than an influencerWe know that people are more likely to share something if they are featured in it, especially in a positive way. That’s why featuring influencers can produce some pretty impressive results. But influencers aren’t extremely likely to share your content even if you do feature them. Sure, a decent percentage will, but not as many as you’d like. But what if you could feature a typical reader who isn’t an influencer? They’d be really excited and be very likely to share it with everyone they know. The problem here is that they have a small number of people they could send it to. If only there was a way we could feature hundreds or thousands of typical readers at the same time. Do you see where I’m going with this? You can feature people not just by including their names but by featuring groups they are a part of. And this is really powerful. When people are heavily invested in a forum or a community site like a subreddit, they identify with that group. If you feature that group, they’ll want to talk about it and share it because it makes the group as a whole look good (and therefore themselves). To do this, pick any active community in your niche, and feature it in a post. You can simply use the group as a good example for something, just like I did when I talked about influencers earlier, or you can make the whole article about them. Even better, compare two or more of the leading communities together, and it could start a discussion within each community about which one is actually better: 4. Create content specifically for a communityThis tactic piggybacks on the last one, so make sure you understand that one first. The idea here is to recognize a common problem within a community and then solve it. This is content marketing 101. The best example of this happened on Reddit years ago. At the time, most image hosting services sucked because they would constantly crash, load slowly, or be filled with ads. One Reddit user took this opportunity to create their own minimalistic image hosting service called Imgur. It is now one of the top 50 sites in the world. The interesting part is that all the promotion that was needed was a few posts by the creator within the community (Reddit). From there, the community was the one that spread it. They excitedly mentioned it at all opportunities, and power users flocked to it. Even today, many years later, Imgur is still thought of as the Reddit image host even though it’s a completely separate business. Get as specific as possible: I’m not suggesting that you need to create the next Imgur to use this tactic. It’s unlikely that you’ll see a huge problem within a big community and be the one to solve it (although possible). But what you can do is find a problem on a small, niche community site and solve that. For example, a forum member on a popular poker tournament forum noticed that many other members were struggling with staying focused and energetic during long tournaments. So, he put together a really interesting and practical post for the members of the community, calling it his “gift to MTTC” (the community). It’s gotten over 400 replies and tens of thousands of views. I’m sure it gets linked to all the time from other parts of the site. Ideally, your gift would be a tool or some content on your own site. However, even if your content was posted just on a website of that community, it would still instantly elevate you to the status of a highly respected member. You could then use that standing to promote your future content with a lot more support from the community. 5. Pick topics with the potential to go viralYou want any piece of content you create to spread as fast and as wide as possible. In other words, you want it to go viral. But content marketers often don’t understand that they can’t just add words like “surprising” to the headline and hope the article will go viral. Certain topics are doomed from the start. A review guide about lamps is never going to go viral. While you can never guarantee that an article will go viral, you can at least give yourself a chance if you understand the three factors behind viral spread. Factor #1 – Positive feelings: Fractl conducted an in-person research study to analyze how people felt when shown a variety of different viral images. They found that there were three significant factors behind the popularity of those images, and one of them was positive feelings. By positive feelings, they mean any of the following:
The study found that when shown a selection of viral images, most participants felt a positive emotion. This suggests that positive emotions spread more easily than negative ones. It doesn’t mean that posts that evoke negative emotions can’t go viral; they can—just much less likely. For you, this means that you should create content that makes your readers feel good. Factor #2 – Emotional complexity: If you see an image and smirk, you probably won’t be in a hurry to share it. However, if it has you smiling from ear to ear, you’d want to share it so that others can feel that positive emotion too. The second main finding from the study was that the viral images were associated with a wider range of emotions in the subjects (extreme emotions), while non-viral images had a narrow range of emotions (mild emotions). Not only did the subjects feel strong positive or negative emotions, but when shown the most viral pieces of content, they felt both! This is a good thing for you because it means that even if you’re creating content around a negative topic, it can still go viral. Just make sure to end it on a positive note. Here’s an example of a video that starts negatively but ends positively. It went viral and now has over 3 million views on YouTube alone: It starts with a heartbreaking story about a dog who was chained to a spot and left in poor conditions for 10 years. However, it ends with the dog being rescued, taken into a caring family, and doing much better. Neither of these two parts of the story would get too much attention by themselves, but when you combine extreme emotions on opposite ends of the spectrum, you drastically increase the story’s chance to go viral. If there’s an issue in your industry that’s really sad, create content around the way you fixed that issue (even on a small scale). Factor #3 – The element of surprise: While surprise can be categorized as a positive emotion, it can also be a negative emotion. The study found that surprise is the most important emotion of all when it comes to a piece of content going viral. Viral images, both positive and negative, were very likely to trigger a feeling of surprise in the study’s participants. So, it turns out that adding “surprising” to the headline might not be so silly afterall. The really important part is making sure that the meat of your content really shocks your readers. This is something that sites such as Upworthy have down to a science. Just about every article they post has some element of surprise: First, you’ll need to get your reader to become curious about the topic. Then, you need to show them something that they never expected, which gets them to feel the emotions we’ve looked at. All of this isn’t easy, but you give your content a much better chance of spreading when you focus on these three emotional factors behind viral sharing. ConclusionContent can help you achieve a positive return on your investment only if it’s reaching an audience. The bigger the audience it reaches, the better the results. If you’re having trouble reaching a large enough audience with your content, start by trying out one or two of these content creation tactics. They will help you expose your content to new readers, and if the content is good enough, they will stick around for more or help you share it. Some of these tactics are fairly difficult, so don’t expect to get them perfectly on the first try. As long as you see a positive result (better reach than usual), continue refining your use of the tactic, and I think you’ll be surprised with the results. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/content-creation-tactics-that-will-amplify-your-contents-reach/ How many articles have you read about creating great content? Quite a few, hopefully… Creating valuable to your readers content is one of the key components of effective content marketing. But here’s the problem: How do you combine the lessons from all those articles? They all teach you something valuable, but consolidating all those useful techniques and tactics isn’t always easy. For example, you might read an article about simple but effective copywriting techniques. You get excited, and then you focus on practicing those in the next few articles you publish. But writing a few articles isn’t enough to establish a habit. Even if you truly understand how to apply the things you learned, you might not remember to do them in the future. That is, unless, you have a way that forces you to remember them. A list of them. Every time you write an article, you should make sure that you apply as many of the items on the list as possible. You should make your own list. However, I thought I’d create this post to get you a solid start. I’ve put together a list of 11 points that your content should meet if you want it to be effective. It doesn’t matter if your content is text, audio, or video—most of these points will still apply. It also doesn’t matter what the content will be used for. Great content is necessary not only for your blog and any guest posts you make but also for other channels such as social media. Finally, before we get started, I know that checklists aren’t really fun, but they’re effective and efficient. Create the list once (or take mine), and it will raise the quality of your content for years to come. Since 70% of marketers create more content each year, small improvements based on a checklist in a single article can result in a big difference overall. 1. The headline hooks my target readerThink about where you spread your content after you publish it. Social media is probably one of the first stops. You also probably email your list. Then forums, groups, and other communities. All of those have one major thing in common: Success depends on your headline. Your headline isn’t the only factor, but it’s usually one of the main things that causes people to click or not click through to your post: We already know that most social shares come from people who don’t even read past the headline. Even if you have a great article, it won’t matter if no one sees it in the first place. It starts with the headline. Obviously, it doesn’t end with the headline. If your content sucks, no one’s going to share it after they click through. Back to the headline… Writing a great headline isn’t easy. It takes knowledge and practice. I’ve written many posts about how you can write great headlines for different situations:
But remember what we’re doing here. This isn’t the time to come up with a headline—you should have done that already. This is a point in a checklist. It’s asking you to evaluate a headline, which is much easier. I can tell you if a painting is good or not (for the most part), but I sure as heck can’t paint a great one myself. Judging is almost always easier than doing. Here, you want to consider two main factors… Factor #1 is always relevance: The first question you should ask yourself when judging a headline is: “Is this relevant from my audience’s point of view?” Basically, this means that your headline should contain keywords related to your niche. And not just any keywords, but one’s that your actual target audience will recognize and probably care about. Obviously, I write a lot about marketing on Quick Sprout. If you look at my headlines, you’ll see a lot of the following words:
These are common keywords contained in keyword phrases that I might target with my content. But they are also widely used terms that almost all of my readers recognize. So, when they see one of my headlines, they see at least one of the concepts they are interested in, which gets them to read the entire headline. A common mistake: It’s easy to forget the perspective of your readers. Just because you might know an advanced term for something doesn’t mean your readers will. If they see a headline but are not sure if it relates to their interests, most will pass on it. Factor #2 is curiosity: Once they see a keyword that is related to their interests, most readers will take a look at the whole headline. Afterwards, they decide if it’s worth reading or not. Basically, it comes down to this question: “Does it look interesting?” If the reader is curious enough, they have no choice but to click through. That’s when you know you have a good headline. Here’s an exercise you can do… Go to a major news site or blog in your niche. In my case, for the sake of an example, I went to Search Engine Land, a major SEO news site. Ideally, you want to find a list of their current most popular content or at least their most recent content somewhere on the homepage. Next, you’ll replace one of the titles with the title of your content. To do this, right-click on one of the titles while in Chrome, and choose “inspect element.” This will create a little pop-up. In the left side of the pop-up, double click the title text (among the HTML code), and type in your headline instead: When you’re done, press enter and close the pop-up. The change that you made (to the highlighted part in the picture above) will now show up on your screen: Now, do your best to get in the mindset of the reader you’re trying to attract. Ask yourself in which order you would click on these titles (if at all). If you choose your own article last, you have a big problem. If you choose it first, you likely have a great title. Obviously, it’s hard to be unbiased. If possible, get a second opinion from a friend or any of your fans who’d be willing to help you in this way. 2. Introductions have one main purpose…Can you guess it? The purpose of an introduction? This is actually from copywriting. To get to the purpose of your introduction, let’s start with your headline. A headline has one goal: to get someone to read the first sentence. The first sentence is to get them to read the second sentence, and so on. The introduction, as a whole, has one main purpose:
So, how do you do this? Again, there are many ways, but here we’re just judging what you already have. The key factor is whether your introduction is easy to read. Readers should be able to feel like they are flying through it, understanding it, and moving down the page. It helps them feel like they are making progress. Imagine reading a dense introduction that takes you five minutes to understand. Then, you look at the rest of the article and see that it’s 2,000 words long. Chances are you won’t read the rest. That’s why you want yours to be simple: to give the reader some momentum and to help them commit to reading the rest of the article. You can look at the introductions written by any of your favorite bloggers to see this in action. For example, here’s one from Brian Dean: I can read those seven lines in about 10 seconds and move down to the first section. Brian writes in short sentences and paragraphs and uses simple words. You should do the same. Open your article again and time how long it takes you to read and understand the introduction (from your target reader’s point of view). It shouldn’t be longer than 1-2 seconds per line. If it is, that means your introduction contains too much complex information and/or is formatted poorly. 3. Content is optimized for “skimmers”Your most loyal readers read your every post. They examine every sentence and every word because they love what you produce. This makes up about a whopping 1-5% of your readers. Be thankful for them; they are amazing. But what about the other 95-99%? They’re still important, but they either don’t have time or interest to read every post and every part of that post. The average reader of a post only reads 20-28% of it. In other words, they skim it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We all have a limited amount of time in a day to learn, and everyone needs to prioritize their own time. I’d rather have someone skim my posts than not read them at all. Element #1 – Clear and intriguing subheadlines: There’re a few things that skimmers look for as they skim a post. Think about why they’re skimming in the first place. It’s to save time. They’re not sure if reading the entire post is worth their time. If you’re producing longer content, like I obviously do, then this is even more of an issue. A typical reader, as you can probably imagine, looks to see whether any of your sections contain useful to them information. It makes sense. Say, I published a post “8 Content Marketing Tactics to Do X.” If someone already knows quite a bit about content marketing, not all of those eight tactics will be new to them. So, what do they look at? Subheadlines. First, ask yourself, “Are my subheadlines easy to find while skimming?” Just skim your post, and see which parts jump out at you. If your formatting is good, your subheadings will stand out: At the same time, remember that the first point in this entire checklist was about your main title. Similarly, you should ask yourself whether each subheadline is clear (as far as the topic goes) but also whether it creates enough curiosity for the readers to want to read the section it introduces. That’s why I don’t use simple 1-3 word subheadlines very often, unless it’s for a specific reason. (Advanced) Element #2 – Format backgrounds to indicate new sections: If you’re willing to invest a bit of extra time and resources, you can make your content even better for skimmers (and all readers). If you’ve ever read one of my Quick Sprout advanced guides (in the sidebar), you’d notice that each section has a different background color. Instead of having to scan for a subheadline, which can be missed, skimmers can easily find a new section based on the background color. You will have to learn some basic CSS to do this. However, after you apply it once, you can use it over and over again without spending much time on it. (Advanced) Element #3 – Custom CSS boxes for important parts: Another advanced formatting element you can take advantage of is a box around any particularly important or impressive content. Like this: Imagine scrolling down a page and seeing a bright green box jump out at you. You’ll probably pay some attention to it. If there’s something new or insightful in that box, you might go back up and read from the start of that section. I’d recommend putting expert quotes or impressive results (e.g., “ranked #1 in 5 weeks using X technique”) in them. Again, you’ll need to learn some CSS. I walk you through a simple procedure in this post about advanced formatting. 4. Content is balanced between text and non-textThere are very few people who can read a long post that consists of nothing but text. Unless you’re an amazingly entertaining writer, no one’s going to read your post if you don’t include good formatting principles. We’ve talked about a few of them, but by far the most important is to include non-text elements such as images, lists, and quotes. Can you go overboard with this? Of course. In most cases, you need plain text to get your main points across. The images and other non-text elements simply support those points. One analysis concluded that the ideal ratio is at least one picture for every 350 words. I wouldn’t go below that. It depends on the topic and your niche, but you probably wouldn’t want to go above one image for every 100 words in almost any case. So stick to somewhere in-between. You can group lists, quotes, and anything else that breaks up the text for the reader in this ratio. If your post in question meets this criteria, check this item off the list. 5. It’s better than anything else out there (by far)I mentioned that there are a few principles of content marketing that can’t be ignored if you want to see great results. One of them is that your content needs to add something to the giant piles of content already out there. It needs to be better in at least one way, by a significant amount, than all the other most popular pieces of content on the topic you are writing about. If possible, improve it in multiple areas. That makes it even more obvious that it is something special that should be paid attention to. To check this, follow this 2-step process. Step #1 – Research the competition: Before you started writing your post, you probably identified one or two main keyword phrases that describe what you’re writing about. If not, do it now. Search each of those phrases in Google, and take a look at the top 5-10 results: Click on each to see what they are. Make notes on the strengths and weaknesses of each. A great post will fix any weaknesses found in those posts and build on their strengths. For example, my top result above was this post: Right away, I notice that it has a link to a podcast, which breaks down the post. This is a strength and a very nice feature. I’m not so sure that it’s a huge benefit for this particular post (lists are typically better in text), but it still gives the reader the option. But what I see from the rest of the post is that it’s almost all text. On top of that, all the explanations are very short, with few examples or suggestions on how to fix any weak parts of a post. I’d categorize that as a weak part. I can improve the post by simply adding detailed examples as well as resources to help my readers. Step #2 – Answer these four questions: Once you understand what the competition has to offer, simply compare your content to them. Here are some good questions that you should be able to answer:
If you answered yes to all of these questions, you’re good to move on. 6. Take it seriously: preview before you publishThis is an expected element of good content. Your content should show up correctly, no matter which device or browser you’re using. It should also have proper spelling and grammar. Granted, a few mistakes here and there are expected, but overall, your writing should be error-free. So, this step is very easy. Just complete the following check:
Once everything checks out, you can move on to the next point. 7. Fluff has been eliminatedFluff is the enemy of all good content. It refers to those parts of the content that do not add any value. Every sentence should either add new information or serve to clarify previously stated information. If you ever want to see a perfect example of a non-fluff post, check out any of Seth Godin’s writing. Here’s an example of one of his typical posts: Yes, that’s the full post. His brevity has to do with the types of things he writes about but also with his desire not to waste any words. Most of us have some fluff in our posts, and that’s okay. Your goal is to eliminate as much fluff as possible. A big help – the Hemingway App: If you’re new to cutting out fluff, it’s not necessarily easy. It takes time and practice to recognize what does and doesn’t add value. Luckily, there’s an awesome free tool called Hemingway App that will spot most “bad” instances of fluff. It looks at common patterns of “fluffy” writing to identify poorly written and wordy sentences. Let me show you an example. I put a small part of one of my guides into the tool, and this is what I saw: You can see that many sentences are a bit hard to read, and they could be written more concisely. This is what it looked like when I fixed those errors: Right away, you can see that the readability level went down from grade 8 to 7. This means my content is now easier to read. You can also see that the number of words went down from 189 to 171, which is about 90% of the original length. In other terms, 10% of the original text was fluff. Apply that to a long post, and that’s hundreds of words you can do without. Making those edits isn’t easy at first, but here’s a great resource on editing tactics to get you started. If you’ve gone through your content and removed as much fluff as possible, check this off the list. 8. Great content flows…Have you ever noticed that sometimes you just get sucked into an article? You start reading, and before you know it, you’re at the end. As the content creator, you should always aim to create this experience for your readers. For that, your article needs to be cohesive. It needs to flow from one section to another. One mistake many content marketers make is trying to create a post that is as epic as possible and then including irrelevant (although interesting) parts. If the reader has to stop reading and ask, “How does this fit with what I just read?”, you’ve ruined their immersion. Here’s the basic way to check if your writing flows well. Start by looking at all the subheadings of your article. As an example, let’s use my Guide to Creating a Social Media Strategy. The subheadings of the article are:
The following is the test you can use for each pair of subheadings. Can you fill out this sentence?
And you go through each subheading like that, in pairs. For example, do your readers need to know how to understand what’s in their readers’ minds (subheading 1) in order to understand how to pick their most effective channels (subheading 2)? Yes, they do. If they don’t understand their audience’s demographics and psychographics (from that first section), they might start on the wrong channel. Next up, do they need to pick a channel in order to build a content bank? Again, yes they do. Each channel needs a different type of content. Get it? For your content, create a list of all your subheadings. Then, go through that process for each section. If they all naturally flow from one to the next, you’re good to go. 9. Have you answered all of your readers’ questions?Before you write a post, you should know which of your readers’ problems you’re trying to solve. Then, you should brainstorm a list of questions they might have about it. For example, if you were writing a post about installing a simple WordPress site for a small business, readers might have the following questions:
You can also come up with this list after you write your post. You might uncover a few hidden questions while writing. You don’t need to have a Q&A section in your content, but you should address all the questions somewhere. It could be a section dedicated to it. It could be a link to more information on a related topic (such as SEO optimization in our example). Or it could be a brief explanation mixed into another section. Go down your list, and once you’re sure that everything has been answered, check this item off the list. 10. Have you provided the best resources?Unless you’re creating an ultimate, 10,000+word guide on a narrow topic, you can’t cover everything there is to know about that topic. But you can link to additional resources. You’ll notice that I link often in my posts whenever I mention something that I think a reader might be interested in. For example, when I cite a research study or analysis, I link to the results. If the reader wants more information about it, they can follow the link to get it. Considering only a small portion of readers will want to know more, a simple link is better than a detailed explanation in my article. Another type of useful link is to related topics. For example, if I’m writing about some aspect of SEO, I might be able to link to my posts (or someone else’s) about conversion rate optimization or content marketing: While not all readers will be interested in those related topics, a healthy portion will be. The point here is to always give readers the resources to learn more about any particular part of your content. Go through your content, and pretend like you’re a typical reader (as well as you can). Read every sentence, and ask yourself if there is anything related to that sentence you might like to read more about. If there is, and you haven’t included that resource, add one. Once you feel like you’ve provided a great user experience with links, check this off the list. 11. What should the reader get out of this? Is it clear?I think that just about every piece of content should have a conclusion at the end (maybe not necessarily with that title). You can look at any of my posts for an example. In this final section, you should sum up the main things that a reader should have gotten from the post and suggest where they should go from here. For example, at the end of this post on writing a good welcome email, the author tells the reader how to use the information in the article: In this case, he tells the reader to start with just one tactic and then combine it with one or two more to get even better results. I do the same in many of my conclusions. If you feel that you’ve summed up your content well, check this final item off the list. ConclusionCreating great content isn’t easy. Creating it every single time is even more difficult. But if you take care to include all the key elements of great content every time you write, you’ll be consistent. The 11 points I talked about in great detail here form the basis of a list of requirements that all your content should meet. From here, make your own list, including as many of those 11 points as you’d like (maybe all of them). Then, if you think I missed any, add those to your list too. Get in the habit of going through this list after creating each piece of content. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/produce-great-content-every-time-a-useful-11-point-framework/ Content marketing is amazing for attracting your target audience and building a relationship with it. There is just one problem, though… How do you do it? I share a lot of content marketing tips in my posts, but those posts usually assume you’re already doing content marketing, at least to some degree. But if you haven’t started yet, or are very new to it, you won’t get as much out of those posts as those with some experience. So, if you’ve felt that my past posts about content marketing have been too advanced for you, this one will help. I’m going to give you a step-by-step process to follow to create a successful content marketing plan. I’m talking about a plan that is simple to understand and execute but that can be used to drive thousands of qualified visitors to your website every month (in less than a year). Why content marketing?There are several dozen types of marketing. They can all produce good results when applied in the right situation. But I think we’re in a special time for content marketing. Businesses and marketers are recognizing how effective it is in the modern consumer climate. People have always liked to buy from businesses and people with whom they have relationships and whom they trust. Until the Internet, it was hard for businesses to build those relationships. But now, it’s easier than ever to deliver content to an audience. This is important whether you’re selling straight to the consumer or to a business. A recent survey found that 67% of B2B buyers base their buying decisions on content. And they don’t become just buyers—a large percentage of them also frequently share that content (most often in the form of a blog post – 40%). Most marketers have just started recognizing all this. Currently, 80% of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy. However, 48% (overall) do not have a written plan. In 99% of cases, this means that they really have no clue what they’re doing. That’s good news for you. Why? Because just by putting in some effort to go through this post and writing a few things down, you’ll be ahead of over 50% of online marketers. I’ll let you in on a secret: Most businesses suck at content marketing. Seriously, look at the blogs for most businesses—they’re a joke. But still, 30% of marketers find content marketing “effective”, and another 44% get some results from it. Don’t be in those bottom three groups… There’s no reason why you can’t find content marketing very effective for generating traffic and, most importantly, qualified leads for your business. Follow the six steps I cover in the rest of this post, and write down your notes as you go. In the end, you’ll have a short, clear, and effective content marketing plan to base your future work on. Step 1: Why are you doing this?Before you can start producing content of any kind, it pays to do a bit of planning. If you just produce content for a general audience, chances are you won’t get much in the way of results. To really see great results, you need to:
When you create general content, it will never resonate with anyone, which is why it isn’t effective. But it’s not enough to just target a specific audience. You need to understand their beliefs, problems, and desires so that your content matches them. Part #1 – Who are they? Create a section in a blank document for Step 1. At the top of this section, you need to define who your target audience is. For example, if you sell running gear, your audience may be “runners.” But do you see the problem with that? While “runners” is technically an audience, it’s not a well defined one. There are many different kinds of runners:
…and so on. Do you think you could create content that would speak to both a professional marathoner and a random guy that’s just trying to lose his beer gut? Not a chance. Get as specific as you can. You want to identify an audience who would agree with your label. A professional marathoner would say:
I’m not a running expert, so six times might be too many, but you get the point… Once you have the name of your audience, write it down. Now you can start to build a reader persona. Give your average audience member a fictional name before moving on to part #2. This allows you to write to one person, which is an old copywriting trick for writing in a more conversational tone that is more likely to resonate with your readers. Part #2 – What are they struggling with? Here’s where serious research comes into play. You need to start profiling your reader. In this part, you’ll identify as many problems your target audience faces as possible. If you can, classify them by severity. Let’s continue with the running example. How do you find out what problems marathoners have? The best way to gather that information is to simply talk to them. I know it’s not the most comfortable thing in the world to do for some people, but if you can, chat with a few for 10-20 minutes. Ask them about their biggest problems and obstacles. If that fails, head to online forums and community sites specifically set up for your target audience. You want to find a place where they talk to each other about their problems. If you have no clue where to start, start with Reddit. You can find a subreddit (basically a categorized community) for just about any topic. In this case, a simple search on Google reveals a couple of “marathon” subreddits: Spend at least 20-30 minutes looking through the threads you find. Record any problems you see people talk about as well as how often they come up and how serious they seem to be. On the first few results, I already see two problems:
Ideally, get a list of over 100 problems. It sounds like a lot, but it’s doable, and you’ll be set for content ideas for a while. Alternatively, do a search for forums on Google. In this case, these results are probably better. They are geared towards experienced marathoners, whereas that first subreddit was focused on beginners (although it will have some experienced runners too). You do the exact same thing here—look for problems. Again, I see a few problems right off the bat:
Write down your list of problems (in your document or in a separate spreadsheet) before moving on. Part #3 – Where do they look for solutions? In order to provide your audience with solutions to their problems, you need to find a way to get those solutions in front of them. Most of these places are online, so that’s what you should focus on. You need to compile a list of websites they visit. That starts with the forums and communities you just found in part 2. Other than those, you’ll just have to search around. I would recommend starting with:
You should be able to compile at least 20-30 “popular” sites they visit. If it looks like a site only has a few dozen readers, don’t bother recording it. Record these sites as we’ll be coming back to them later. Part #4 – How will you solve their problems better than anyone else? No matter what your topic is, there are already at least a few popular sites that cover it. Readers need very good reasons to either add your site to the ones they already follow or replace one of them with yours. And the way you convince them to do that is by giving more value. If your content is clearly better than that of your competitors’, you will draw readers away from them. Start by going to the most popular sites in your niche. Look through their content, and note any weaknesses in it. For example, I picked the first popular marathon site I found, which was a blog on a major running site. The content is written by a true expert, but it’s quite basic, and it’s very anecdotal. I would note under weaknesses:
Then, I would move on to the next blog. After 5-10, you’ll start to see the same things pop up every time. These are your opportunities. Go back to your document. Your goal here is to create a concise description of how your content will be more valuable to your target audience. For example:
Having that description to guide you in the future will ensure that you focus on the right things. Step 2: Here’s how you figure out the best type of content to produceThe “content” in content marketing can mean a lot of different things. Pretty much anything that can possibly contain a message is considered content. That includes:
and much more. If you produce certain types of content for your audience, you’ll get better results than you would with other types. To figure out what the best type is, you have to consider two factors. What are your audience’s preferences? Some audiences prefer certain types of content over others. For example, home decorators are mainly looking for visual content. Pictures and videos are the primary form of content in the home decorating niche. On the other hand, a niche like nutrition mainly will have your standard text content with pictures mixed in. The tough part is figuring out what is best for your niche. To do this, we’re going to look at a few different indicators. Start by heading to Buzzsumo. Create a free account if you don’t have one yet, and then search for your niche (you can choose a broader niche here). What you’ll likely see is that one of the main social networks is much more popular than the others. If Pinterest or Facebook are the most popular, image-based content is going to be crucial. Pinterest is a purely image-based network, while images are by far the most shared type of content on Facebook. But that’s not a perfect overview of the whole situation. What about things like podcasts? That’s where you need to search individually. The two other forms of content you need to check for are podcasts and videos. With podcasts, you can use two methods. First, you can look at Stitcher’s top 100 podcasts in a relevant category. In our example, I picked “sports” since that’s what running would fall under. I looked through the top 100 and couldn’t find a single podcast about running. That tells me there isn’t a lot of interest: Ideally, you’d like to see at least a few different podcasts about your niche as an indicator of some interest. If you see 3-4 in the top 10, that tells you that audio content is huge in your niche and you should definitely incorporate it into your content strategy if you can. Anther way you can check for podcasts is to simply Google “top (niche) podcasts”. I found a few, run by some popular websites. Then, I looked them up on Stitcher and found that they had barely any reviews. This means they aren’t very popular. In this case, audio content is out. Finally, what about video content? Well, that’s pretty easy to check for. Go to YouTube, and search for your niche. You can also try a few suggestions from the search bar. This actually surprised me. There were many marathon-running videos with several thousand views. I didn’t expect this, which is exactly why you need to check. Look at the number of views on each video. You’ll have to decide what you’d consider a significant number, but I’d be looking for at least 10 videos to have at least 20,000 views to indicate serious interest. If there’s only one video with a ton of views, it’s likely a one-off viral fluke and should be discounted. What are your strengths and/or budget? The second main factor depends on your skillset. If you’re not a good writer, you probably want to lean towards a different type of content. Often, you’ll find that multiple forms of content are equally popular in your niche. That gives you a lot of flexibility. You can use any combination of them. But what if only one type of content is popular? Well, then you have no choice. If you aren’t comfortable creating that content, you have a decision to make:
If you have a healthy budget for content marketing, hiring is always a good option. If not, you’ll need to develop those skills on your own. Now, combine the two: Now you’re looking for the intersection of these two areas: the type of content desired by your target audience and the type of content you can actually produce. The type(s) of content that falls into both areas is the one(s) you should produce for your target audience. Step 3: The key step to content marketing successLet’s slow down for a second. You now know your audience. You also know the type of content you’ll produce. So, now we can start looking at actually creating and publishing content. But there’s one thing, one key concept, that you need to understand if you want to be successful:
Content marketing will not produce results overnight. It takes months of creating quality content for it to start getting any real traction. Many businesses start off on the right track, but when they don’t see huge results in the first few months, which is expected, they get discouraged. Then, when they face their first big obstacle, they end up ditching content marketing. Maybe their budget is tight, or they have a lot of other work to do. Content marketing gets cut first. If you’re going to do this, commit a certain amount of time that you know you can commit to content marketing for at least a year. How often should you publish? There’s no magic number on the frequency of content publishing. But as a general rule, the more content you publish, the faster you will get results (and bigger results). This assumes that the quality of the content stays the same regardless of frequency. One survey found that 91% of top bloggers blog once a week or more. But that’s more of a correlation than causation. There are plenty of outliers, e.g., Brian Dean at Backlinko who publishes once or twice a month at the most. He’s done incredibly well for himself in a short amount of time with this strategy. What it comes down to is not quantity, but quality. Always try to produce the highest quality content you can even if that means cutting back on how much you publish. So the answer to how often you should publish is:
However, remember that you need to be consistent. Don’t pick a frequency that you can’t sustain over a long period of time. I can do three long posts a week on Quick Sprout without much of an issue because I’ve practiced over the years. If you don’t have the skills or resources to do that yet, be less ambitious to start. How long will it take to produce content? Another question that is highly related to the last one is: how long do you expect it will take you to produce the content? Depending on the type of content you’re creating, a single piece of it could take anywhere from 2-20 hours to create. Obviously, you can’t post more than once or twice a month if it takes you 20 hours to create something. You also have to factor in promotional time (which I’ll cover in Step 6). You should spend at least as much time promoting content as you do creating it. This means that if you have 20 hours of time available for content marketing a week and a post takes 5 hours to create, you can only post twice a week maximum. You might even want to stay on the safe side for now and choose one piece of content a week. Step 4: How will you manage your content?You’re committed to being consistent, right? I hope you’re nodding your head right now. In order to be consistent, you need to plan. If you don’t plan ahead, it’s too easy to forget to write, publish, or promote your content when you get busy. The key to planning ahead is having a schedule, typically called a “content calendar.” How will you create a content calendar? Although the term might sound fancy to some, it’s really simple. All you need is some sort of a calendar that allows you to assign post ideas to specific days. There are many tools that will help you do this, but I’ll go over three solid options. The first one is Trello--a project management tool. You can create lists for each week in a month (or the whole month) and then add “cards” for each piece of content you want to schedule: One of the great things about Trello is that you can give each piece of content a due date. You can customize your settings to get reminders about a piece of content that’s due in the next couple of days or that’s overdue. The second option is to use this WordPress editorial calendar plugin. It adds a calendar tab to your site’s dashboard, and you can see what you have scheduled in a typical calendar format at any time: The plugin ties into your posts, so you can do things like change their scheduled time and date as well as edit post titles from the calendar itself. And the final option you should be aware of is just a simple spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets. All you need is a spreadsheet with a column for publishing dates and a column for post titles: The biggest benefit of this option, aside from how simple it is, is that you can customize it easily. You can add columns for due dates (to ensure you finish the post ahead of time), categories, or metrics like traffic and social shares. It doesn’t matter which option you pick. Just choose something that’s simple for you and will help you keep your content creation schedule straight. Step 5: Where will you distribute your content?Another huge mistake that many beginner content marketers make is starting to blog with no audience. If no one is seeing your content, it doesn’t matter how good it is—your blog won’t grow. There are basically two different ways you can address this problem in the beginning:
You should be doing both of these things. As you grow your audience, you can publish solely on your own site if you wish. I’ve covered how to promote your content several times in the past. Here are a few resources to get you started:
The most important part to understand at this point is the first one. Remember those sites you identified before? The ones where your target audience gets their solutions? Now, you’ll identify how you can get traffic from those sites to yours. Important: Don’t just send visitors to your blog. Send them to a landing page on your site. Offer them a lead magnet for their email addresses. This way, you can drive these readers to your future posts. Category #1 – Blogs: These will be the blogs on your list. In order to get your solutions in front of a blog’s audience, you need to guest-post on a relevant blog. Obviously, not all blogs allow guest posts. To check, just Google: “(site name) guest post”, and see if anything comes up. Ideally, you’ll find some guest-posting guidelines or previously published guest posts. If a blog doesn’t accept guest posts, take it off your list. If it does, follow the steps I’ve laid out in my guide on guest posting to maximize your chances of success. Category #2 – Search engines: Did you know that search engines can drive traffic to your site? They should call it SEO or something—just kidding… SEO is a great way to get your content in front of your target audience. However, it’ll likely take at least 4-6 months of solid work before you start getting any real traffic. Focus on getting traffic from other sources first and SEO last. Here are some of my best resources on SEO although there’s obviously a ton to cover:
Category #3 – Social media: Another great source of traffic is social media. Almost every audience is active on one social media platform or another. In addition, most social networks offer an easy way to funnel visitors to your website. Remember that Buzzsumo search we did earlier? That tells you where you should be posting your content: Typically, you’ll only be posting excerpts of your content, but you can do that to grow your following and drive traffic to your content. You should combine this content posting strategy with a social media promotional strategy. Category #4 – Forums/communities: Finally, you can post your content on forums and other online communities. You can create content on your own website, but then reformat it for a forum. Leave a link somewhere before or after the content back to your own site (a landing page, hopefully): Publish your content anywhere a significant portion of your target audience can see it. While you will need a detailed strategy for this (using the resources I’ve linked to throughout this section), for now, write down the main places you want to publish your content on in your content marketing plan. Step 6: The other side of the coinFinally, no good content marketing plan is complete without content promotion, which is the other side of the coin of your content marketing. Publishing content on other sites is one option, but there are other promotional tactics you can use. Here are two main options you’ll want to consider. Choose one or both, and record it on your document as your method(s) of content promotion. Option #1 – Email outreach: Email remains the most effective way to build relationships with people online. In particular, you want to use email outreach to get your content in front of influencers in your niche and related niches. After you publish a piece of content, you’ll want to create a list of at least 100 bloggers, writers, and other type of influencers who care about that specific topic. Then, you’ll email them to let them know about the content. Your end goal is to get links or social shares from them, which will drive traffic and contribute to your overall SEO efforts. Here are some great posts on email outreach:
Option #2 – Advertising: This second option takes a lot less time than manual email outreach, but, of course, it costs more. It’s traditional advertising: you pay to get people to visit your content. There are three main areas where you can advertise:
You don’t need to use paid advertising to be successful. However, it can accelerate your growth, which makes it a good option if you have leftover funds in your budget. ConclusionBeing a successful content marketer isn’t complex, but it takes a lot of knowledge and effort. You’ll need to learn more about the areas I touched on briefly here. In addition, you’ll need to practice. As you start producing content, you will learn a lot through trial and error. That being said, if you follow the six steps in this post, you should have a clear content marketing plan that you can use to shape your content marketing in the months to come. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/6-steps-to-your-first-content-marketing-plan/ We’ve all been there… You create the perfect piece of content; you hit the Publish button; and you just sit back and wait for the traffic to start rolling in, right? The only issue is the traffic never “rolls in”. As you already know, getting people to read, share and talk about your content is the hardest part about content marketing. This is one of the main reasons most blogs fail. In essence, it’s the “marketing” part of content marketing that you struggle with. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are 30 ways you can get your content read, shared and talked about at parties: How to get your content readJust imagine yourself browsing through a magazine. How do you decide whether to read an article or not? Is it the pictures, the headline, the length of the article or the writer? It’s the headline that pulls you in. No matter how good your content is, if your headline sucks, no one will read it. Here are 10 ways you can ensure your headline is magnetic:
Hopefully these tips will help you create a headline that encourages people to read your content. If you still find yourself struggling to come up with a good headline, you can check out this headline formula template or you can use this tool. Now that you know how to get your content read, let’s focus on getting it shared. How to get your content sharedWhether you love or hate social sites like Twitter and Facebook, you have no choice but to use them. They are some of the most popular destinations on the web, and if you aren’t leveraging them, you are missing out on thousands of visitors a month. Here are 10 ways you can get your content shared on the social web:
Now that you know how to get your content shared, let’s discuss how you can make it go viral. How to get your content talked about at partiesIf people are talking about your content at parties, you’ve mastered virality. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it is possible. Do you know what makes most things go viral? It’s not the marketing strategy… it’s actually the content. By creating content that is exceptionally good, you will increase your chances of people talking about it. Here are 10 ways you can create exceptionally good content:
It won’t be easy to have your content talked about at parties, but it is possible. With some hard work and continual tweaking, you should be able to maximize your web traffic. ConclusionEven if you follow all of the tactics above, chances are you won’t get thousands of visitors rushing to your site all at once. But over a course of three months, you should see a drastic increase in traffic. Content marketing isn’t a short-term investment. It really starts paying offer after six months to a year. You just have to be willing to put the time and energy into it. via Quick Sprout http://www.quicksprout.com/tips-for-creating-content-that-gets-read-shared-and-talked-about-at-parties/ |
Sean BrianWhile radishes deter certain insects naturally, they require similar growing conditions as carrots. Although the crops both have roots, radishes grow and germinate quicker, allowing carrots to continue growing in the soil space available when the radishes are harvested, Archives
April 2023
Categories |