Content marketing is hot! Content marketing is the new SEO. Content marketing has killed SEO. Content marketing is the buzzword for 2013.
These are some of the headlines I saw as I was blog hopping my way round the internet on my blog commenting exercise to drive traffic to my blog for both the Quick Start Challenge and Turn $100 into $2,000 in 60 Days Challenge
What the heck is content marketing?
I found some really long and complicated explanations about it but the simplest one I found that sums it up nicely was this:
“Content Marketing is the creation and sharing of content for the purpose of promoting a product or service.”
In other words, it is content that you put on your website and promote. It can be text, video, infographics, images, whatever you put on your site.
The word is out that Google is favoring content marketing.
One of the main reasons why people use the internet is to find information right?
Although many bloggers and website owners are complaining that they have been hit by Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithmic improvements they have ensured that users can find better content.
Content is the perfect way for us bloggers to provide it to our target audience and boost traffic.
Creating and publishing great content on your blog is one thing but if people can’t find it and don’t see it, what good is your content?
This is where marketing comes in. Content marketing is used by big businesses to promote their brand but bloggers can use it improve their SEO and to boost traffic.
Here are 5 content marketing tips
#1. Promote Your Content
No matter how great your content if you don’t promote it then you are selling yourself short. When you publish any content make sure you put in as much effort into spreading the word as you did in creating it in the first place.
- Share your content with your email subscriber list.
- Announce it on your social media accounts. Post an image to Facebook related to your blog post.
- Make sure you have social sharing buttons displayed at the top and bottom of your blog posts and ask your readers to share it.
- Ask friends to promote it.
#2. Repurpose Your Content
If you have been blogging for some time you have probably created a ton of content so why not use it again?
- You can bundle articles together into special pdf reports which you can give away. Upload them to free ebook sharing sites like www.free-ebooks.net/ www.e-booksdirectory.com/ or share on LoyaltePays
- Share a condensed version of your blog posts with your email subscribers and include a link to the full article on your blog.
- Include a snippet of your best content and link to that content in your standard email signature line.
- Turn your articles into short videos. One way of doing this easily is with Article Video Robot
- Infographics are extremely popular now so why not turn some of your blog posts into infographics? According to Neil Patel infographics were crucial for growing KISSmetrics from 0 to 350,000 readers a month.
- Turn them into a presentation using a tool like SlideShare or Brainshark.
- Use the main ideas of several of your articles and turn them into a guest post. Guest posts are the way to go to get earned backlinks in 2013. That is what Google is looking for.
#3. Share Other People’s Content.
You might be asking yourself why on earth you would want to share other bloggers’ content. It seems more natural to focus on your own content. You’ve worked hard at creating it and it was designed to promote your own business but there are some benefits to promoting others content.
By sharing other content with your readers you can set yourself up as a valuble resource for great content.
You are also creating relationships with fellow bloggers. They are more likely to return the favor and share your content.
Try it and see what happens.
#4.Understand Your Target Audience
Do you know what makes your target audience tick? Having a clear understanding of your target audience is the key to sucessful content marketing.
Ways to do this can include:
- Do frequent keyword research to keep on top of what people in your chosen niche are searching for. You can use good old Google Adwords free keyword tool for this.
- One quick and easy way to see what people are searching for is to start typing your keyword into the query box in any search engine like Google or Bing and see what other terms pop up. Create your content round these keywords.
- Take notice of blog and social media comments. Facebook’s new graph search Graph can give you some insight into what your audiences likes.
- Internet forums are a great place for you to learn about what your target audience wants to know.
- Ask your readers what they want to know.
- Quora allows you to follow your niche topic and keep track of a wide range of complex questions and answers
#5. Quality Over Quantity
While it’s true that more content gives you more oportunity to be seen focusing on quality means that your content will go further.
Matt Cutts says that the goal is to create unique pages and a unique visitor experience.
If you produce short, thin or barely helpful posts for the sake of publishing something because you’ve read that you should blog regularly any readers you do get will not be back for more.
Taking time to produce more detailed content and making it more visualy appealing will encourage readers to recommend your content.
Kiss Metrics says that in a world where we are overloaded with poor content long, high quality detailed Blog Posts will be the future of content marketing.
According to the Content Marketing Institute
“Thought leaders and marketing experts from around the world, including the likes of Seth Godin and hundreds of the leading thinkers in marketing have concluded that content marketing isn’t just the future, it’s the present.”
So, to sum up content marketing may be hot but it is not the new SEO. Search engine optimization is more than quality content. You need to promote the heck out of your blog posts as well to boost traffic.
How are you promoting yours? Let me know by leaving a comment and don’t forget to share this post! Thanks 🙂
Hi Sandy,
Great post! I really like the content marketing strategies you share here. I just launched my site, and I will definitely look into growing my blog with some of the strategies you outline in this post, thanks 🙂
Keep up the good work!
Navid
Hi Navid,
Good luck with your site. I’m glad that you find my post useful. It can be hard work getting a new site off the ground but visiting other blogs and commenting is one tactic that can bring traffic providing you have some good content.
It looks as though you are doing that successfully already.
You certainly look to be a busy guy. I don’t know where you find the time to blog as well!
Sandy
Hi Sandy,
What an EXCELLENT post! There are some fantastic points in #2 that I hadn’t considered and some resources that I wasn’t even aware of. These have given me another way of looking at my existing content.
I think that points #1 and #3 largely cover what SEO alone used to do (or that we hoped it would) but has the potential to work much faster. While traditional SEO still has its place the beauty of the social element is that real people are a factor each step of the way. I’ve recently been getting involved with Triberr and after only a few days I’ve already seen my blog posts start to be shared.
With regards to #4 I think that we can sometimes make this harder than it need be. As you mentioned, there are lots of ways that we can tap in to what our audience needs and they’re all very actionable. What I have been doing is making sure that I note down the patterns that I find so that now I have a nice list of subjects to work from.
#5 is so, so important. I see some marketers leaving their blogs for months on end and I think that this can be just as harmful as posting shallow content just for the sake of posting often. But if you can get a nice balance of posting great, useful content but often enough so as to not lose your regular visitors, then you’re on to a winner.
All in all, if you put all five strategies into practice you’re sure to see reap the benefits.
Glenn 🙂
Hi Glenn,
Glad that you have found my post useful. There is so much we can do do promote our content that it’s mind boggling. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and just do the things we know over and over again. Trying something different can bring results that we never dreamed of.
Interesting that you mention Triberr. It’s certainly been on my radar but I have not had time to investigate it fully. It’s probably about time I did. It’s going to the top of my list now since you jogged my memory. Good to hear that your post are getting shared. That’s what it’s all about.
Have a great weekend
Sandy
Hi Sandy,
Don’t know whether to laugh or Cry!
I’m reading along, absorbing the info and come to Transform your content into
Infographics.
Infographics? How, why and what does it end up looking like?
Did my favorite trick and went to Wiki and read….Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infographic
Of course to illustrate this learned discourse they had one of those Spaghetti Mind Maps that I abhor….
things going in every direction with colored lines and arrows and miniscule unreadable text sprouting everywhere.
Ah well, just me!
A great summation of what future article writing will become….if not in place already. It is almost becoming necessary to create a product or a program with just one article…What is going to left to sell, if everything is served on the blog?
Something that I have been remiss about doing is to link content on my site.
In other words if I mention copy writing in a post and have another article that explains more on copy writing…I think it is considered a plus if you do some internal linking of content as it expands the article???
Since I’ve just recently realized Google doesn’t rank sites..GET THIS it ranks pages….So when we see something come up on page 1 #2…it isn’t the site, it is the Page..PR that counts….plus all those backlinks etc. etc….
Have fun with your new theme on your Health site and let me know how it comes out!
That post I chose has a really neat chart…have a pdf of it somewhere if you are interested! Brad Callen did say to share…
Cararta
Content marketing really isn’t new–it’s what the best bloggers have been doing for years. It has gone “mainstream” now evidenced by the fact that seemingly everybody’s talking about it.
All that said–you give GREAT suggestions on how to *do* content marketing. I especially like the part about sharing–of your content and others. Become the go-to source for your little slice of the online world. That stuff works!
Bill, you are absolutely right. After all WordPress is known as a content management system. The term has been used for years by the big brand companies but it’s now filtering through to bloggers.
There are many parts to the content marketing puzzle but once you put them all together the results can be amazing.
No doubt we will soon see products being released about the topic of content marketing.
Sandy
Hi Robdog,
I’m not quite sure what you are asking me about the plugins. I use quite a few plugins on my blog. Did you want to know about specific ones?
There’s a lot you can do with your content when you put your mind to it. There are many pieces to the puzzle of content marketing but when you put them together the results ca be amazing.
Sandy
I have no doubts that you’re right on that one! I’ve seen a few already, most notably Scribe from the Copy Blogger team. Looks pretty interesting.
Hi Sandy,
This is an excellent article on content marketing. So well explained. I am all for sharing other people’s content too. I do a lot of research for some of the article and it would be unfair to claim that everything I publish are my own ideas.
Most people know that many of the great articles offline, be it science, engineering and other contain a list of references at the end of the article. Those are links to the articles that helped the researchers.
When we share content, even from our competitors, are acknowledging them and their work. In science, it often happens that if I will reference, once you may reference me. It is like you are “honoring” me now, and I know, I will “honor” you one day too.
Hope you got my drift.
Take care,
Dita
Hi Dita,
Sure, I got your drift. It can pay to share other people’s posts as they do often return the favor.
Good point about references that are given in offline publications. We can learn a lot from what goes on offline as well. I know of several internet marketers who make a point of sutudying offline direct marketing techniques and manage to incorporate them into their oline businesses.
Have a great week ahead.
Sandy
Hello Sandy,
What a nice tip to boost traffic to our blog. Like you said in your tips 3; putting just your blog post on your fan page like; twitter, facebook E.T.C… will eventually bored your loyalist, that’s why it is best to always share valuable posts from other valuable reads. Nice post on marketing strategies. do have a nice weekend
Hi Babanature,
Glad you liked my tips. It pays dividends to share other people’s good posts on Facebook as you can be seen as a person who posts good stuff even if it’s not your own. It’s a good way to get others to take click your name to find out more about you and find your blog.
Sandy
Good one Sandy. As I’ve heard the saying before that CONTENT is KING. The more quality stuff you put out that actually helps and improves the lives of your readers the better. Just posting for the sake of posting is never a great idea. If that’s the case, it’s just a matter of time before you no longer have people looking you up.
It’s like a hungry “homeless” dog who just happens to end up at your house. If you decide to feed him, he’ll be back once he makes his rounds. The reason being is that he knows that if he comes to your house (i.e. site) you’re going to fulfill a need in his life. We’ve got to always remember to put our visitors over our own personal agendas. Thanks for the post my friend.
Hey Gerry,
Great analogy. The dog does not have to be homeless either! My mother manaaged to “adopt” a number of cats by feeding them if they appeared in her garden. I’m sure they weren’t all strays but maybe her “food” was better than they were used to getting!
Sandy
Great and in-depth post Sandy.
I discovered your challenge yesterday. Good luck.