Content Marketing Fundamentals
Content Marketing: Content Marketing Fundamentals
Title: Content Marketing: Content Marketing Fundamentals
Course material - knowledge required - for certification
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1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 11
Content marketing statistics .................................................................................................... 12
2. Basics of Content Marketing ............................................................................ 16
What is content? ...................................................................................................................... 16
What is content marketing?..................................................................................................... 17
What you need to think about when creating content? ......................................................... 18
Audience ........................................................................................................................................ 18
Niche .............................................................................................................................................. 19
Resources ....................................................................................................................................... 19
Competitors ................................................................................................................................... 19
SEO ................................................................................................................................................. 19
How to start with content marketing? .................................................................................... 19
3. Types of Content .............................................................................................. 23
Written content ....................................................................................................................... 23
Website content ............................................................................................................................ 25
Blog content ................................................................................................................................... 25
Ebook ............................................................................................................................................. 26
Visual content .......................................................................................................................... 27
Images ............................................................................................................................................ 27
Graphics ......................................................................................................................................... 28
Infographic ..................................................................................................................................... 29
Audio and video content .......................................................................................................... 30
Podcast........................................................................................................................................... 30
Video .............................................................................................................................................. 32
Live chat ......................................................................................................................................... 33
Which type of content to choose? ........................................................................................... 33
Types of blog posts................................................................................................................... 34
News post ...................................................................................................................................... 34
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How-to post ................................................................................................................................... 34
Informative post ............................................................................................................................ 35
Review............................................................................................................................................ 35
Resources/Links ............................................................................................................................. 35
List .................................................................................................................................................. 35
Podcast/Video notes ...................................................................................................................... 36
Interview ........................................................................................................................................ 36
Case studies ................................................................................................................................... 36
Guest post ...................................................................................................................................... 36
4. Content Creation.............................................................................................. 39
Think about the goals............................................................................................................... 39
Choose a topic .......................................................................................................................... 41
Brainstorm the ideas ................................................................................................................ 41
Content presentation ............................................................................................................... 42
Writing process .............................................................................................................................. 42
Visual and audio/video content ..................................................................................................... 44
Publishing ................................................................................................................................. 46
5. Content Optimization....................................................................................... 49
What is SEO? ............................................................................................................................ 49
Content optimization ............................................................................................................... 50
Keywords........................................................................................................................................ 50
Keyword density ............................................................................................................................ 51
Headings ........................................................................................................................................ 51
Bold and Italic ................................................................................................................................ 52
Image/Video optimization ....................................................................................................... 53
Image optimization ........................................................................................................................ 53
Video optimization......................................................................................................................... 56
Practices to avoid when optimizing content............................................................................ 58
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Over-optimization .......................................................................................................................... 58
Keyword stuffing ............................................................................................................................ 58
Cloaking.......................................................................................................................................... 59
Website comments ........................................................................................................................ 59
6. Content Management ...................................................................................... 62
What is content management? ............................................................................................... 62
Phases of content management .............................................................................................. 62
Creation.......................................................................................................................................... 62
Editing ............................................................................................................................................ 62
Publishing ....................................................................................................................................... 62
Administration ............................................................................................................................... 63
What is CMS? ........................................................................................................................... 63
Basic things about CMS ............................................................................................................ 66
Adding/Modifying/Removing content ........................................................................................... 66
SEO friendly URLs ........................................................................................................................... 67
Extensions and plugins ................................................................................................................... 68
User and group functionality ......................................................................................................... 69
Customizable layout....................................................................................................................... 69
7. Content Distribution ........................................................................................ 72
What is content distribution? .................................................................................................. 72
Channels for content distribution ............................................................................................ 72
Email............................................................................................................................................... 72
Social networks .............................................................................................................................. 73
Social bookmarking websites ......................................................................................................... 75
Online communities and forums ................................................................................................... 76
Influencers ..................................................................................................................................... 77
Paid advertising.............................................................................................................................. 77
Content distribution strategies ................................................................................................ 78
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Content syndication ................................................................................................................. 78
Guest blogging ......................................................................................................................... 80
Writing a guest blog post ............................................................................................................... 80
Get guest bloggers to write for you ............................................................................................... 82
Repurposing content ................................................................................................................ 82
How to repurpose .......................................................................................................................... 83
Republish (Medium, LinkedIn Pulse)........................................................................................ 84
Avoid the risk of duplicate content .......................................................................................... 86
The importance of content distribution .................................................................................. 87
8. Content Marketing Metrics to Monitor ............................................................ 89
Relevant metrics to evaluate content performance ................................................................ 89
Visits ............................................................................................................................................... 89
Conversions .................................................................................................................................... 93
How to monitor the metrics? ................................................................................................... 94
Audience overview......................................................................................................................... 94
Goals .............................................................................................................................................. 95
Advanced segments ....................................................................................................................... 98
Campaign URL builder .................................................................................................................. 100
Shortening services ...................................................................................................................... 101
9. Content Marketing Strategy ........................................................................... 103
Determine goals ..................................................................................................................... 103
Choose the types of content .................................................................................................. 103
Define your target group ....................................................................................................... 103
Start with content creation .................................................................................................... 104
Content tactics ....................................................................................................................... 104
Attention grabbers ....................................................................................................................... 104
Questions ..................................................................................................................................... 105
Storytelling ................................................................................................................................... 105
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CTA ............................................................................................................................................... 106
Plan content distribution ....................................................................................................... 108
Distribution channels ................................................................................................................... 108
Defined approach ........................................................................................................................ 108
Schedule ....................................................................................................................................... 108
Promotions (Optional) ................................................................................................................. 109
Analyze the metrics................................................................................................................ 109
10. Top Challenges of Implementing Content Marketing Strategy ..................... 111
Producing engaging content .................................................................................................. 111
Measuring content ROI .......................................................................................................... 111
Producing content consistently ............................................................................................. 112
Gaining visibility ..................................................................................................................... 113
Paid promotion ...................................................................................................................... 113
11. Content Marketing and Online Marketing ................................................... 116
Content marketing and SEO ................................................................................................... 116
Content marketing and SEM .................................................................................................. 116
Content marketing and social media marketing.................................................................... 117
Content marketing and email marketing ............................................................................... 117
Content marketing and lead generation ................................................................................ 118
Benefits of content marketing ............................................................................................... 119
Gaining attention ......................................................................................................................... 119
Gaining reputation ....................................................................................................................... 119
Lead generation ........................................................................................................................... 119
Lead nurturing .............................................................................................................................. 119
Sales ............................................................................................................................................. 120
12. Content Marketing and Influencer Marketing .............................................. 122
What is influencer marketing? ............................................................................................... 122
How to start with influencer marketing?............................................................................... 122
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Identify the influencers ................................................................................................................ 123
Rank the influencers .................................................................................................................... 123
Determine the goal of the campaign ........................................................................................... 124
Think about content..................................................................................................................... 124
Get in touch with the influencer .................................................................................................. 125
Major benefits of influencer marketing ................................................................................. 126
Expanding reach........................................................................................................................... 126
Targeted campaign ...................................................................................................................... 126
Boosting sales .............................................................................................................................. 126
Increasing the influence............................................................................................................... 126
13. Tools and Apps to Help You with Content Marketing ................................... 129
Content creation tools and apps ............................................................................................ 129
Writing ......................................................................................................................................... 129
Designing...................................................................................................................................... 130
Audio/Video ................................................................................................................................. 132
Content optimization tools and apps ..................................................................................... 133
Content management tools and apps.................................................................................... 134
Content distribution tools and apps ...................................................................................... 135
Tools to find influencers......................................................................................................... 136
How to choose the right tools? .............................................................................................. 136
14. Content Marketing Glossary ........................................................................ 139
15. Questionnaire .............................................................................................. 146
Questions ............................................................................................................................... 146
Answers .................................................................................................................................. 157
16. Conclusion ................................................................................................... 159
Content requires customization and personalization............................................................ 159
Quality is the norm................................................................................................................. 159
Understanding management and optimization ..................................................................... 160
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Using content distribution to advantage ............................................................................... 160
Analyze the data..................................................................................................................... 160
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1
Introduction
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1. Introduction
At this point, when we are all witnessing the overall presence of digital marketing, we can no
longer neglect the importance content marketing has. It has become a fundamental part of any
digital marketing strategy. It is a pillar supporting all your efforts and attempts to position your
brand on the market and achieve your business goals. No longer can a business be successful
and establish a relationship with the target group without some type of content involved.
It all started back in the 1990s. The internet was just kicking off, there were fewer people
online. In fact, it has been estimated that there were 100,000 websites in total in January of
1996, as opposed to 1.1 billion websites we have today (Source). This was the time when even
Google was still an idea and it was not even possible to imagine writing a status update or
chatting with your social media followers.
Image: http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/
In his essay “Content is the King”, back in 1996, Bill Gates explains the role of content in the
modern world, and how the internet is changing the way we create, publish, distribute, and
consume content. He predicts that the internet as a medium, which was then something new
and different, will revolutionize the way people get information and the way they
communicate.
This was only an introduction to what was to happen in the subsequent years. As the internet
spread all over the planet, so did the content as one of the ways to reach online users, to
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interact, attract, and sell. It started with websites presenting their business with a couple of
web pages. This sort of static web presentation was then outdated, and the need to be more
dynamic in communicating with the target group emerged. In the past, you could create a
website and sit back, waiting for people to contact you. However, this approach is so obsolete
nowadays, that in fact, it would produce zero results.
Today, it is expected from website owners to be active, to keep posting fresh information and
to keep introducing new content. This is why a lot of websites have a blog. A blog is now a way
to keep this dynamic approach, to be active and to make sure that new content is published
regularly through this type of platform. Benefits of this approach are numerous, starting from
gaining traffic, positioning for specific keywords to expanding reach through social media shares
and obtaining new leads.
There is no doubt that the role of content has evolved over the years, but so have the content
types and production processes. Written content has evolved with new styles taking over, but
the usage of visual content is also gaining importance, especially in the last few years. The
concept of storytelling was also introduced as a more elaborate content strategy.
The more content there is, the more important it is for the content to be extraordinary. It is as
simple as that. There are so many websites online and so much content published each day,
that it has become very difficult to make content that really stands out. To be successful at
content marketing, you need to go beyond content creation and think about management and
optimization as well. With sophisticated search engine and social media algorithms, as well as
email spam filters, content distribution is also facing some challenges.
As the content has found its application in all parts of online marketing, developing a content
marketing strategy has become an essential task and it is something that needs to be
conducted very carefully with right goals in mind.
Content marketing statistics
The role of content has changed in recent years, so to understand this growing trend and how
content affects online businesses in terms of decision making and strategy planning, take a look
at the following content marketing statistics:
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2 million blog posts are written every day. (MarketingProfs)
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60% of marketers say blog content creation is their top inbound marketing priority.
(HubSpot)
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37% of marketers said visual marketing was the most important form of content for
their business, second only to blogging (38%). (Social Media Examiner)
Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than
companies that published 0-4 monthly posts. (HubSpot)
The length of the average blog post is up 19%...about 1050 words. Shorties are on
the decline: the percentage of posts that are 500 words or less is half what is was
two years ago. Big posts are on the rise: the percentage of posts that are 2000+
words long has doubled every year. (Orbit Media)
41% of B2B marketers say their organization is clear on what content marketing
success or effectiveness looks like; 59% are unclear or unsure. (Content Marketing
Institute)
Most marketers attribute increase in success to content creation which includes
higher quality and more efficient content creation. (Content Marketing Institute)
Email, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are top 4 channels used by B2B business for
content marketing distribution. (Content Marketing Institute)
83% of B2B marketers use email newsletters for content marketing. – Content
Marketing Institute
Lead generation and brand awareness, in that order, are the two most important
content marketing goals of most B2B marketers. (Content Marketing Institute)
B2B marketers cite website traffic, sales lead quality, and sales as the top 3 most
important metrics. (Content Marketing Institute)
Most B2B marketers state producing engaging content is the biggest challenge they
face (60%), followed by measuring content effectiveness (57%) and producing
content consistently (57%). (Content Marketing Institute)
72% of marketers say creating more engaging content is top priority for them.
(Content Marketing Institute)
Marketers plan to increase their use of videos (73%), visuals (71%), blogging (66%),
live video (39%), and podcasting (26%), in that order. (Social Media Examiner)
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We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three
days later you'll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65%.
(BrainRules)
76% of people use their Facebook feed to find interesting content. (HubSpot)
615 million devices now use adblock. (PageFair)
These statistics should provide a picture of how marketers see content and how relevant it is in
their business strategies. The main conclusions we can draw from these statistics are the
following:
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Companies that use content marketing have better results
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Lead generation is the most important content marketing goal
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Visual aspect boosts the performance of content
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Video and visual content will gain even more importance
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Email and social networks are the most important channels for content distribution
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Longer posts usually perform better
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Producing engaging content and producing content consistently are some of the
most common challenges for marketers. Yet, these are the top priorities for most
marketers because this is the road that brings success with content marketing
strategy.
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Basics of Content
Marketing
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2. Basics of Content Marketing
What is content?
Content is the information, the idea or the experience you publish online. It is anything that you
produce and publish for the purpose of offering it to your audience. The format of the content
is most commonly text, but it can also be visual, audio, or video.
Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/4m66VBr8zns
In the realm of the digital world, content should be:
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Useful
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Easy to consume
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Shareable
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Original
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Relevant
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Compelling
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Timely
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Personalized
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Authentic
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Engaging
Educational
Entertaining
Insightful
Conveying a story
Contextual
In terms of business promotion, content is used as a way to directly connect with the target
group. Each of these attributes is supposed to increase the quality of the content you present
to your potential customers, and the main purpose is to encourage their interest in your
business through this content.
Since the content is created with a specific purpose in mind, it has to be well-planned and
carefully designed. As much as content creation involves creativity and skillfulness with
transferring your thoughts and opinions, using content in content marketing is done with
specific goals, and thus it is something you should think through.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a type of marketing focused on creation and distribution of online
materials that directly or indirectly promote a brand. Direct promotion refers to the creation of
promotional materials and content used for advertising purposes. This type of content is usually
used in paid ads (SEM) or affiliate links (affiliate marketing). On the other hand, content
marketing is frequently void of any direct promotion. The purpose of this kind of content is
simply to increase interest in your products or services. This way, content marketing indirectly
attracts and acquires leads and customers.
Looking at online marketing in general, it can be concluded that content marketing is a type
that correlates with all other types of marketing because it essentially creates a base for them.
In terms of SEO, content helps with keyword placement and website optimization. For email
marketing and social media marketing, content is used to encourage interest through these two
channels. The same can be said for paid advertising (SEM).
Supporting the overall importance of content marketing is the fact that most marketers will be
focused on which is why they will work on producing even more content. Nonetheless, quantity
does not take precedence of quality.
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In terms of content marketing, quality is considered to be essential. There is so much stuff
online. So much, that it is impossible for people to take in all of that content without feeling
overwhelmed. This is why quality started to become more and more important. People are now
quite selective of what blogs they follow, which post they are going to share on social media,
which links they will click on in the email. Producing quality content is essentially going to help
with achieving your business goals.
Although producing quality content is one of the things most marketers see as an obstacle,
mainly because it requires more assets, both money and time invested into research and
production, it has been constantly highlighted that the potential of such content is huge.
Companies that use content marketing strategy have consistently been showing better results
in achieving their goals. When you implement quality standards into this strategy and make
sure the content truly matches those standards, the results are going to be even better. The
potential for achieving goals increases with high-quality content which is why this is an
important part of a business strategy. Quality is what counts nowadays, and if you want to be
really successful in content marketing and see the benefits it can bring to your business, think
about creating content that stands out for its quality.
What you need to think about when creating content?
In business, content is not created randomly. It is not about writing the content you love,
personally enjoy or about a viral video everyone is talking about. It is not about writing anything
that comes to your mind.
Content creation includes so much more than having an idea about a certain topic. It is a
planned strategy that is supposed to bring your business certain results, which means that you
should think about all the aspects that could help you create content that brings you to that
goal. Starting from the target audience, to search engine optimization, here are the things you
need to consider.
Audience
The importance of user experience has been highlighted over and over again, and in terms of
content, this means that you have to have your audience in mind when creating content. After
all, you are creating content for the users primarily. Regardless the type of content, regardless
the methods used for content distribution, the content you create has to resonate with your
target group. This means that you have to think about the following aspects:
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Determine your target group
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Think about their possible questions, problems, dilemmas, etc.
Be able to predict what kind of information can help in these situations
Publish content that is relevant to your target group
Use the language your target group can identify with
Niche
Niche in marketing refers to determining a concentrated topic that corresponds to the interests
of your target group, as well as to the products you are selling. It is a subject you want to focus
on with the intention to specialize in that particular subject and become a sort of an expert. By
choosing your niche, you choose to focus on one narrow topic, which helps you define the road
for your content marketing strategy.
Resources
The next step is determining the resources you have. The resources are needed for content
marketing strategy, and they have to be planned and assigned to content creation like any
other strategy.
Competitors
There is no doubt that uniqueness is an essential part of content creation, but it never hurts to
check out what your competitors are going. This way you can keep up with the industry trends
and standards.
SEO
In terms of SEO, content is essential. One of the major tasks of search engine optimization is
particularly optimization of content. The main purpose of content optimization is to attract
search engine crawlers and get the content indexed. This increases the visibility of the content
and helps with increasing website ranking in the search engine results.
How to start with content marketing?
To start with content marketing, you will need a plan. Simply starting a blog and publishing
content is not enough. Instead, think of content marketing as a tool to help you achieve your
goals, regardless if that is increasing sales, generating new leads, etc. These goals are important
because they affect the type of content you are going to create, as well as the ways you will
distribute content.
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Think about your target group and what kind of content they would like to read. It has to be
something interesting, helpful, engaging, and relatable. It has to be a content of high quality.
Start by brainstorming some ideas that first come to your mind, and then choose the ones that
are most likely to bring a lot of visits, i.e. a lot of potential conversions. When using external
resources, you should always use credible ones and make sure you provide a reference in a
form of a link.
There are many types of content, and different types of content have different purposes. For
example, “About us” page should be informative and provide details about you and your
company. On the other hand, a “how-to” type of post will feature instructional text, preferably
with images or videos.
What you need to have in mind all the time, regardless the type of content you decide to
create, is the fact that each piece is a segment of overall content marketing strategy. Therefore,
it needs to be in accordance with global goals, and it has to follow the approach your company
is taking.
In terms of content marketing, branding is another aspect you should think about. Branding
represents the process of creating a unique name and image for a product. This is mainly used
in advertising campaigns, to create a sort of differentiated presence on the market and to make
a product stand out from its competitors. When it comes to content marketing, content enables
you to develop a branding strategy. It allows you to tell a story about your brand and create
influence through high-quality content.
Finally, after successful content creation comes content distribution as a way to spread the
influence of that content and eventually enable it to achieve its purpose, regardless if that is
gaining conversions, leads, visits, etc. There are many different ways to distribute content,
which will be explained in a separate chapter, but what is essential to think about in relation to
content distribution is the following:
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Data from the previous campaigns
Take a look at the data from the previous campaigns to find out which distribution channels
provided the best results. When it comes to the best results, make sure you analyze the
performance and how each channel affected your business. For example, if you notice a large
number of visits from Facebook, but hardly any conversion, maybe this social network is not the
way to go in your case. On the other hand, if you notice that email campaigns produced great
results in the past, make sure you include this channel when planning content distribution for
the future campaigns.
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Current trends
Everyone interested in promoting their business online has to keep up with current trends.
Things on the internet change all the time. Some social networks are growing in popularity,
some are introducing new features, search engine algorithms are updated, etc. Since all of
these, and many other factors affect content distribution, you need to keep up with the current
situation and keep an eye on trends that are being introduced because these trends can affect
your content marketing strategy.
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Types of Content
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3. Types of Content
It is possible to differentiate between three types of content, and each of those has specific
characteristics that make it suitable for different strategies and distribution channels.
Written content
The type of content you will see the most online is the written content. It is information shared
in a written form, most commonly in a form of articles or blog posts. The major advantage
written content has over the other types of content is that is can be “seen” by the search
engines. This means that the search engines can read and understand the text, which allows
them to index such content and show it in the search results. Since every website has a goal to
be positioned high in the search engine results pages, it is only natural to use written content to
do so.
Having in mind the role of search engine crawlers, you use content to present your website in
such a way that it becomes associated with relevant search terms, leading to relevant visits.
When you design content, you have to think about it in SEO terms, but you also have to
consider your audience. These are the two aspects that affect content creation the most.
Content optimization for search engines is important, but not at the cost of disrupting the user
experience.
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Image: http://marketingland.com/library/channel/seo
There are some general guidelines you need to have in mind when it comes to writing content:
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Write for the people
The content you are writing should primarily be written for the people who are going to read
that content. With this in mind, make sure the text is relevant, consistent, and readable. Avoid
any interruptions, digressions, or repeated statements. Use formatting options to visually
present the text in a more coherent way.
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Write for the search engines
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Written content is generally written for the readers, but you have to think about search engines
as well. This particularly refers to the website and blog content, where you essentially expect
search engines to crawl your website and index the content. You will find more about writing
for SEO in the chapter on content optimization.
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Stay focused
Each piece of content should have a specific topic and once you choose it, stay focused on it.
Your website and blog should have its own niche, a topic you deal with primarily, but each post
is a separate unit which should be all about the specific topic, which is actually a highly focused
segment within that broad topic we call niche.
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Word count should not be set in stone
Even though the statistics show that there is a trend for articles to be 1000 word long or more,
there is no magical number you should aim for. Just because some statistics show a higher level
of engagement on average when it comes to 1000+ words articles, this is not a general rule. The
message is the most important. If the message is short and concise, there is no point in trying to
make it longer using unnecessary words just to fit the norm.
Having explained the concept of written content, it is possible to differentiate between several
types of written content. Each has its own characteristics and they are used in different
situations.
Website content
The first content you will be writing when setting up a website is the entire website content,
not including a blog. This content is divided into several pages or sections, each focused on one
particular segment such as the homepage, about us page, pricing, contact page, product
description page, etc. The main characteristic of this type of content is the fact that it is
informative. Through this content, you provide information about who you are and what kind
of products or services you offer. You also need practical information such as contact data.
Blog content
A blog is a place where you publish regular updates, news, and articles related to your niche. It
is helpful in terms of SEO, and it also helps with increasing traffic and engagement. Content
formatting is especially important with blogging because it highlights different parts of the text,
it makes it reader friendly, as well as SEO friendly. A blog post may or may not have visual
elements, such as images or videos, added.
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Image: https://yoast.com/seo-blog/
Ebook
To a certain extent, an ebook is similar to a blog post. It has a topic that relates to your visitors,
it is supposed to increase engagement and visits, and formatting is also a necessary part of a
good ebook. Unlike a blog post, an ebook is usually not published on your blog, but instead, it is
a file that can be downloaded from your website or blog. As such, an ebook has a different
layout and design. When it comes to word count, again, there are no specific guidelines. Your
ebook can be as short or as long as you want and need it to be. Its main purpose is to provide
useful information to the readers and inspire interest in your company. Ebooks are also a great
material for lead generation.
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Visual content
According to the statistics, visual content has better performance than any other type of
content. Visual content attracts the visitors’ attention more quickly, and the information
presented in such a way is likely to linger more in people’s minds than when presented in a
form of a text. Not only that, but the visual content is also more likely to be shared on social
media, thus increasing both engagement and traffic to the website or blog.
Having in mind the better performance of the visual content, it is obvious why different types of
this content are constantly being used when creating content. In fact, visuals are often used
together with the text. This way they serve as attention grabbers, plus they illustrate the main
idea which is presented in the article.
Several types of visual content are commonly used:
Images
Images are most commonly used pieces of visual content. Content creators can use their own
photos, they can purchase or download free images, or they can use screenshots of other
websites or applications.
When using images, you should make sure:
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You have the permission to use the image
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Link to the external image source if necessary
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The image is related to the content on the page
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The image is appropriate for your audience
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You add your own logo/company name if the image is yours (Optional)
When choosing an image or several images for the content, think about the effect the image
will create. How will the readers feel when seeing the article for the first time? Will they be
intrigued by the image? Will they like it and thus continue reading the text? Understanding your
audience in such a way helps you choose the most effective images.
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Website homepage with images and graphics: https://www.emarketinginstitute.org/
Graphics
Graphics are image designs which usually feature pictorial representation of information, in a
form of charts, text, symbols, etc. They sometimes combine all these forms. In content
marketing, graphics are usually created to be functional, which means they have sections and
data presented deliberately in such a way to highlight certain aspects. When creating a graphic,
there is a clear goal in mind, something you want to achieve with it. You could make a poster to
announce an event, where you will include the date and place of the event. You might want to
present the data from your latest research, in which case a chart or a pie chart would be an
element included in the graphic.
When designing a graphic, think about:
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The goal you want to achieve
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The main information you want to include
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The way you will present the concept
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Adding elements such as a photo, a text, or illustrations
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Adding your own logo/company name (Optional)
Infographic
Infographic, or information graphic, is a visual representation of data. This makes it a bit similar
to graphics, but the main distinction is that an infographic represents a collection of data. Its
main purpose is to present the data or the information in a clear, easy-to-spot way. This way
you basically summarize information that would otherwise be presented in a form of a text but
would receive far less engagement than when using graphic elements.
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Image: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/visual-history-content-marketing-
infographic
Infographics visualize information, statistics, maps, time frames, hierarchies, etc. They engage
the readers with the visual representation and make a bundle of data and numbers seem more
coherent and easy to compare with one another. Things to have in mind when creating an
infographic:
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Choose colors, fonts, and illustrations that are clear and easily visible
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You could add a title at the top of the infographic
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If you have data that could be divided into segments, make sure you divide the
infographic in such a way
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If you use the data provided by external resources, add the list of resources used at
the bottom of the infographic
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Add your own logo/company name
Infographics demand the most time to create in comparison to other types of visual content,
but, as the statistics suggest, they are more likely to lead to the greatest level of engagement
and shares, which is why it is worth it to think about using them in content marketing.
Audio and video content
Audio and video content is often considered to be the most difficult type of content to make.
Besides the fact that it demands time to think about the concept and the ways to present it, it
also requires skill and time for recording and editing. This usually means that you will also need
software for editing sound or video, as well as the know-how to use it. This is the main reason
why many companies and businesses are skeptical about using this type of content, and
frequently avoid it.
However, you should have in mind that this type of content is very popular on the internet,
especially on the social networks. It is frequently shared and it generates a lot of clicks and
likes. We will highlight three types of audio and video content you could consider in your
content marketing strategy.
Podcast
A podcast is a form of an audio broadcast which is published online. Podcasts are much like
radio shows, but instead of music, they feature some sort of narrative content.
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Image: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-marie-forleo-podcast/id1199977889?mt=2
The content featured in a podcast can be:
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A narrative about a certain topic
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Question and answer session
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A chat between experts in a certain field or industry leaders
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Review of a product
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An interview
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A course or a lesson
Regardless the topic, podcasts are a perfect way to distribute information online in a form
other than written text. This form is somewhat easier for people to focus on because they can
access it on the go, without the need to read and scroll through the text on the mobile devices.
Instead, they put on their headphones, hit that play button and they are in.
Online users subscribe to the podcasts the same way they subscribe to a blog, which means
they will get notified when a new podcast is live. Podcast recordings are available all the time,
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which is perfect for people who want to listen to them when they have enough time, rather
than aiming for a specific time.
Video
Just like images, videos are great for visual presentation of content, great for social media
engagement, as well as for video ads. They often feature music or audio narrative along the
visual content, making this type of content quite catchy and interesting to watch. Different
types of videos, including short clips, vlogs, commercial videos, tutorials, and review videos,
provide a range of different options for businesses to discover and use this medium for the
purpose of promotion. The development of technology, with mobile devices featuring a
camera, and popularity of platforms for sharing videos such as YouTube, enabled this expansion
of the video content,so more and more businesses are considering using videos.
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Image: https://moz.com/blog/keyword-year-content-rankings-hack-whiteboard-friday
When it comes to the production of such content, it requires more skills and more time.
Sometimes it also requires more time for planning and preparing everything. This is why,
despite the fact that it is quite effective and successful at bringing results, a video is still one of
the least used types of content.
Live chat
This is a form of video content that has been popularized recently, as live streaming became
one of the features introduced by many social networks, including YouTube, Facebook,
Snapchat, Instagram, etc. The main distinction of this type of video is that it usually requires
less of preparation than a regular video. It is sort of chatty, improvised on-the-spot. It is also
quite flexible because you can start a live chat from anywhere at any moment. Live chat is also
a bit more interactive type of video because comments are updated in real time, meaning the
person broadcasting the video can actually see and respond to the comments from the
community.
Which type of content to choose?
The type of content you are going to choose for your website depends on a lot of things. First of
all, you will need to assess the budget. For example, recording videos demands more of an
investment, due to equipment needed and hiring someone for editing if you do not have the
skill to do it.
You also need to think about the time. You should realistically plan content creation. There is
no point in planning to publish a new article each day if you do not have the time to write it nor
do you have enough of a budget for this many articles.
Then think about your audience. Will they really benefit from one new article a day? Or perhaps
they might find a comprehensive weekly post more worthy? You should also analyze the way
your audience responds to different types of posts. If posts with images have higher
engagement level, make sure you focus on such posts. Even though videos have a great
engagement in general, perhaps it is not the case with your business. And finally, it all comes to
your business. Some types of products and services are better presented with a video, while
images are quite effective for other types.
The best way to start is going for written content first. It really is a starting point, because you
will need content when building your website anyway. You could also start with blogging before
you decide to implement other types of content in your marketing strategy. Make sure you
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always analyze the performance of each type of post and try to spot a general rule about what
works best for your business.
Types of blog posts
Since blogging is predominant in content creation, we will mention a couple of blog post types
you could publish on your blog.
Image: https://wordpress.com/learn-more/?v=blog
News post
In this post, you deal with the current news and trends, latest updates and events. It is a more
dynamic type of post, but the content is time sensitive. For example, the news about the latest
search algorithm update is certainly something helpful you would share in the news section,
but it also becomes outdated quickly, as a new update is released after a couple of weeks.
Despite this fact, news posts are very popular because they provide current information about
the topic and they enable readers to keep up with the current trends.
How-to post
This is a type of an instructional post and its main purpose is to provide information and
instruction about something, such as how to use a product, how to find a certain option in
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software, etc. With this post, you basically tell readers how to do something, thus these posts
are very useful. The language should be quite practical and easy to understand. Readers love
these posts, especially if you provide visuals to illustrate certain aspects because you basically
provide a solution to their problem. They get instructions they need. In terms of SEO, these
posts are also great because you use the keywords naturally in the text.
Informative post
This post is somewhere in-between a news post and a how-to post. In this case, you choose a
topic and provide information about it. It could be a current trend, so the post would be close
to the news type of post, or it could feature instructions along with an explanation, in which
case this would be closer to how-to post. In essence, an informative post provides more
information about the topic. When choosing the topic, make sure it is closely related to your
business and that it is something your audience will truly find useful. It is also good to include
keywords in such a post, especially in the title.
Review
Review posts are also highly-searched posts because of practical information they provide. They
are especially popular among potential buyers because they provide details about the products,
opinions, experiences, etc. Therefore, this type of post has great power on the mind of
consumers, especially if your company gets great reviews from authoritative blogs. Most
commonly, reviews are in a form of a blog post, but there is a growing trend of creating video
content for such purpose.
Resources/Links
As the name suggests it, a link post contains links to other resources. The idea with this type of
blog post is to choose a topic, one that is relevant to your target group, and then find quality
resources from which your audience will benefit. Besides a link, it is always good to provide a
comment or an explanation about why you have chosen to link to that particular resource.
List
This is a very popular type of post, mainly because it is practical and its structure is so easy to
follow and skim through. Lists are suitable for many different businesses. Sometimes they
might overlap with links post, for example, if your topic is top 5 marketing blogs. This does not
necessarily have to be the case because you can have a topic such as 5 ways to improve your
email marketing campaign, where you would share your own tips and insights on this topic.
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Podcast/Video notes
The main reason why podcast transcripts or video notes are recommended is because of SEO.
Search engine crawlers cannot index content in audio or video format, which means you should
provide a transcript for this kind of content in a form of a blog post. Occasionally, people might
also find it helpful to have a transcript available, especially when quoting you.
Interview
Interviews are a type of collaborative posts where you provide questions for a person or several
people about the topic that is relevant to your blog. While this might be seen as a type of post
for audio and video content, this is not always the case because there are lots of interviews in a
form of a written article. In this case, it is even easier to handle everything because you can
communicate through email and you do not have to organize a recording session at all. An
interview is a great opportunity to get an opinionated post from experts, industry leaders and
persons who are considered an authority by your target group. The reach of these posts also
might be greater due to the popularity of the people you are interviewing and the fact that they
will probably share the post themselves.
Case studies
If you decide to dig deeper into a particular topic and present it in great details, a case study is a
type of post you should go for. When it comes to case studies, they are likely to be conducted
by industry leaders and those who have access to some sort of data about a certain topic. In
this sense, they might seem a bit too complex for small-sized companies. The good thing about
the case studies is precisely their complexness and large scale of data which is supposed to be
used for drawing conclusions and analyzing behavior. This means that such post will naturally
earn a lot of links.
Guest post
This is another post involving collaboration. The idea is to have a guest writing for your blog.
Preferably, this guest should be familiar and respectable among your target group. It is also
helpful if the guest blogger is an expert in the particular topic because this way you get a
valuable piece of information shared on your blog. The main cause for this collaboration could
be mutual promotion or payment. In both cases, it is essential that the guest blogger and the
blog featuring the guest post have similar or even the same target group, to make this
promotional activity successful.
These are the most common and the most popular types of posts. There are other groups as
well, but what you will notice is that a lot of them overlap. For example, you will see a guest
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post which features a list, making it a list post as well. An informative post can also feature
some how-to tips, while case studies might also include a video with video notes.
It is completely natural for the posts to overlap and merge into new styles, but what we can
conclude about successful content creation is:
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Content creation demands time
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Planning is a way to ensure high-performing content
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Content needs to be up-to-date
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Content should be relevant to your target group
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It is good to combine types of content to provide diversity
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4
Content Creation
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4. Content Creation
Content creation is a process that starts with an idea and ends with a published piece of
content, regardless if that is written, visual, audio or video content. When you create content,
you have several options.
Large businesses usually have a special department, usually within marketing sector, which will
be in charge of content creation as a part of content marketing strategy. Small-sized companies
can hire a person to join the team with the main task being content marketing or one of the
existing team members can also take up creating content. Occasionally, some business owners
decide to hire content creators to work on a specific content creation project rather than being
involved in the entire process of content marketing.
Regardless if you are creating content yourself or you provide instructions for someone to do it
for you, it is essential to understand the process of content creation and how it goes from one
phase to another.
Think about the goals
Content marketing helps you with improving business. That is a sort of the ultimate goal you
will have but it is too vague. With such a goal, you will have a hard time conducting and
evaluating the strategy. To make this content marketing strategy a success you need to
determine more concrete goals.
Some of those goals can be:
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Increase sales
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Generate more leads
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Get more social media followers
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Improve the reputation
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Work on branding
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Get more visits
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Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/k0okLYIjoxo
When you determine concrete goals, try adding some sort of a quantifier, to make them
quantifiable and comparable. You can either use specific numbers (generate 1000 more leads)
or percentages (increase visits by 15%). Quantifiable goals are great for reporting and analyzing
the strategy and comparing the results with the previous campaigns. In all, this will immensely
improve your business and the way you organize not only content marketing, but the entire
online marketing.
Besides reporting and analysis, which actually comes in the end, goals are also crucial in the
beginning. They help you with defining which kind of content you will create. For example, if
you want to increase leads, an ebook would be a great choice. This way you give an ebook for
free in exchange for an email, while at the same time you grow your mailing list. On the other
hand, if you want to boost social media performance, you could benefit from images and
graphics.
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Choose a topic
The second step in the process of content creation is choosing a topic. Through planning and
thinking about goals you have probably chosen the type of content and now you need the
topic. The topic does not refer to the actual title, it is simply a subject you want to explore in
that specific piece of content, regardless if that is a video, a blog article or a graphic. In this
regard, you want to focus on three main things.
Relevance
The topic should be relevant to your business and to your website or blog. You want to attract
people who are interested in your business. It does not matter if those are new subscribers,
social media followers or website visitors. This means that you always have to consider your
target group and choose a kind of topic that will be relevant to them.
Uniqueness
With the amount of content nowadays, it seems impossible to be unique and original. Despite
that, you should have in mind that “in 2016, there were 15% of new daily search queries that
Google has never encountered before” (Source). Even if you decide to go for a topic that
someone has already posted about, you can make it unique by implementing your distinctive
style.
Necessity
The topic should be something your audience needs. Helpful content that provides a solution to
a problem and answers a question has proven as high-performing content, which performs
best. It brings most visits, it helps with positioning your website in the search engines, and it
also helps you attract the people interested in that kind of a topic.
Brainstorm the ideas
When you think about the topic, a lot of ideas come to your mind. The way your mind works, it
brings a bunch of terms and phrases related to the topic, but they are all simply cluttered
without any structure. This is a starting point. Put down all the ideas that you have. For
example, think about chapters of the ebook, or paragraphs of the article. Write the words you
associate with these concepts. Write essential phrases or terms you would want to use.
When you have everything, it is time to get organized. Try to group similar ideas and concepts.
Define sections of content and categorize them. The goal here is to make these ideas
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structured. This way you get a coherent structure to follow when you start with the content
presentation.
Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/gcsNOsPEXfs
The purpose of the brainstorming is to capture all of your best ideas. You might want to do the
process again to get even more ideas. At this point, there is no need to start with content
presentation immediately. Instead, the focus is to prepare the concept which will be a basic
structure for adding more materials and developing the topic in details.
Content presentation
Up to this, this was a phase of preparation and now it is time for the actual content creation.
This way, you present the content and this presentation depends on the type of content you
choose.
Writing process
When you have the idea and concept developed, the next part is the actual process of writing.
This process can involve one or several people, and this depends on both your business and the
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complexity of the project. Essentially, we can differentiate three types of writing roles people
can take in the writing process.
Writer
This is the person who writes the content. In a company, it can be one member of online
marketing team or it can be a contracted writer for the project in question. In small-sized
companies, sometimes the owners or other team members can write content.
Ghost writer
Another situation with the writing is hiring someone else to write the content instead of you.
The thing with the ghost writing is that the content is not attributed to the actual content
writer, as per mutual agreement. Instead, a different person can be presented as a writer (one
of the team members, for example) or the content can be posted without any author reference.
A ghost writer most commonly is not a member of the team, but a writer hired for a specific
project.
Guest writer
Guest writer is a hired writer who has his or her own blog and has gained a reputation online as
a writer. Hiring a guest writer is a great opportunity to expand your reach and work on mutual
promotion. Although additional promotion is one of the reasons for hiring a guest writer, this is
also done when you want highly targeted content and a topic covered by an expert in this field.
In this case, a guest writer is not a member of your team, but he or she is attributed as the
author of the content.
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Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/505eectW54k
Visual and audio/video content
With visual content, things are a bit more complex. The process of preparation and final editing
is similar for all types of content, including written content, with different ways of
presentations for each. There is a specific group of tasks that are involved in the process and
one or several people can be responsible for those tasks.
Writing
Some types of visual content have written content, such as the case with some types of
podcasts, for example. This kind of audio presentation should be prepared in advance in a
written form first. This task comes first, after the preparation phase but before the creation of
visual/audio content.
Designing
The next part is designing. If we talk about images and graphics, this is the main part of content
creation. Besides hiring the person who designs the content, it is necessary to use design tools
for this purpose. During this process, it is very important to have the main idea in mind, as well
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as the goals of the content creation and the company reputation. The final product should
match your company vision and the way you are planning to present your brand online through
this visual content.
Recording
With audio and video content, the next phase will be presenting the material and recording it.
The development of technology has enabled easy recording audio and video content. It is much
less complex to do it than it used to be. Pretty much any smartphone can be used for this
purpose, but for the professional content creation, it is recommended to use the adequate
equipment. During the recording, it is very important to think about the way you are presenting
the content. The engaging and interesting presentation is just as important as the quality of the
content being shared this way.
Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/b_xciWkK8Pc
Editing and proofreading
This is the last stage that precedes the publishing of the content. During this phase, the goal is
to check the content material that has been created. This part is far from redundant. On the
contrary, editing and proofreading, especially when it comes to written material may take the
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same, if not even more time than the actual content creation. Through this process of editing
and proofreading, you make sure that the material is perfectly shaped according to your vision,
without any errors in accuracy, grammar, spelling, video editing, etc.
Publishing
In the end, you get to publish the final product. Once you are perfectly happy with the way it
turned out, you are ready to present the content to the internet users. When it comes to
publishing, the platform you are going to use depends on the type of content. If it is a blog
article, you will probably publish it on your own blog or perhaps on another blog where you are
presented as a guest author. If the video is the content in question, you also have several
options. You could host it on your server, or you could use a more popular option and publish
the video on a video hosting platform such as YouTube.
Essentially, it is always best to publish on your own platform, because this way you have access
to the servers and you can make sure that the content is really there, without the risk of being
removed. However, the main benefit of hosting your video on YouTube, for example, is the fact
that you are likely to reach more people this way due to a social character of this platform.
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Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/BRBjShcA8D4
These phases make the entire process more organized and coherent, which is very important if
you want to create high-performing content. As you go through each phase, you get to focus on
the specific task while keep thinking about the goals you wish to achieve with this content.
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5
Content Optimization
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5. Content Optimization
Even if you are new to online marketing, you must have already heard about optimization. The
term itself means making something better, improving something based on certain standards.
In terms of online marketing, this word is most commonly used in the phrase search engine
optimization (SEO).
What is SEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing a website having in mind the
search engine crawlers. Crawlers are used by the search engines to find and index new content
on the internet. Unless the website content is indexed by these crawlers, it cannot be shown in
the search results, which means no one can find it this way.
Image: https://pixabay.com/en/search-engine-optimization-seo-1359432/
Optimization is divided into off-site and on-site optimization. This division is based on the place
where the search engine optimization is taking place. Off-site optimization refers to using
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external factors such as link building to improve ranking in the SERP. On-site search engine
optimization is the process of optimizing content and other elements on the actual website for
the purpose of enabling crawlers to find and index the website easily. This refers to the
improvement of many elements of the website that affect website positioning, but one of the
main things to consider is the optimization of content.
Content optimization
When it comes to content optimization, you want to focus on how to improve the performance
of the content by following suggested practices and guidelines. Through the content on the
website, you directly communicate with the search engine crawlers, “telling” them what the
content, and ultimately the website, is all about. If you optimize content properly, the crawlers
will be able to index such content and associate it with the right keywords. This way, when a
relevant term is searched in the search engine, your website will be shown as one of the
results.
Since being ranked at the top of SERP guarantees most clicks, this would be your goal, which
you will try to achieve through optimizing content on your website.
Keywords
The first element of content optimization is keywords. A keyword is a word or a group of words
you want to associate with the content on your website. The keywords should be relevant to
the topic of your website and to your business. This way, when a search is done involving this
word or this particular phrase, your website will be found relevant and thus it will appear
among the results.
Obviously, it is essential to use only those keywords that are truly relevant to you, because
otherwise, you will end up with no results. If the website is associated with wrong, irrelevant
keyword, this will attract irrelevant traffic and you will not be able to convert those visitors. This
will also result in a high bounce rate, which will indicate the search engines that the content is
irrelevant and/or of poor quality. Eventually, this will result in losing ranking in the search
engine result pages.
The keywords are used naturally as part of the content. It is also recommended to use the
synonyms and the synonymous expressions. What is not recommended is to use too many
keywords. This is where keyword density appears, as a metric to help you stay on the safe side.
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Keyword density
Keyword density is the percentage of times a certain keyword is used on a page when
compared to the total number of words on that page. Since keywords are indicators to the
search engines what the page is all about, it might seem like a good idea to use a lot of
keywords, but this is why keyword density is such an important metric. Search engines are
marking as spam the content where the keywords are used excessively. This means that using
too many keywords would actually cause you more harm than good.
There are no official guidelines on what percentage would be a recommended keyword density,
but most SEO experts agree that it should be between 1 and 3 percent.
Use the following formula to calculate keyword density:
(Number of times a keyword is used / Total number of words in the text) 100
For example, if a keyword appears 12 times in the article that has 1000 words, the percentage
would be calculated like this:
(12/1000)100
This equals to 1.2% keyword density.
Headings
When search engine crawlers find content on the internet, they need to understand what this
content is about. Besides the keywords, they also use so-called tags. Tags are the options to
highlight certain parts of the text. Content optimization includes using these options to
practically tell search engines which parts of the text are the most important ones. The most
commonly used option for this purpose is heading.
Heading or header tag is a part of the HTML code that distinguishes parts of the text. It starts
with the h1 tag as the most important one. This tag is used for the page title and the crawlers
see it as the most relevant phrase to the page content. It is recommended that the h1 tag
contains a keyword or a keyword phrase, preferably in the beginning or as far left as possible.
Next, comes h2 tag, as another highlighted piece of text, which is usually used for subheadings.
If these subheadings have additional divisions, h3 tag is used, and so on. Again, the keyword
usage is recommended, but it is always important for the text to be natural and not to disrupt
the reading experience.
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When it comes to the readers, headings are a good way to visually organize the text. They allow
people to quickly skim through the text before reading it. This way they can either swiftly find
the specific information they are looking for, or they could skim the text to determine if they
would like to read it. In both situations, your website benefits as it essentially makes finding
information and understanding the text easier.
The title tag is usually automatically marked as h1 tag. To use other tags in the text, mark the
phrase and then use the text editor options.
Bold and Italic
Apart from heading tags, which are seen as more important parts of the text, there are two
additional tags that are frequently used for highlighting the parts of the text. Those are bold
and italic. They are seen as less important than heading tag by the search engines, but they are
still considered to have some value as they differentiate from the rest of the text. Like heading
tags, bold and italic options help with improving the user experience.
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Image/Video optimization
Up until this point, it was all about the text optimization. When it comes to visual content,
things are a bit more complex. For starters, the search engine crawlers cannot see the visual
content and thus they are not able to index it properly without good optimization. This means
that when a search engine crawler finds a content that is in a form of an image or a video, the
crawler cannot understand what that image or video says. Obviously, this could signify that a
great portion of content would be left unsearchable due to inability to index it. Having in mind
the overall presence of the visual content nowadays, this had to be prevented.
In order to make images and videos visible, you have to provide some piece of text for the
search engines to understand what these visuals are about. You should always have in mind
that the search engines crawlers are unable to read the text from the image (yet), nor can they
hear the recording from the audio/video. This means that the only data the search engine
crawlers will get about these types of content are provided through the following optimization
methods.
Image optimization
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Image file name
This is a commonly neglected part of image optimization, but the file name does matter. The
image file name is the name of the uploaded image. An image filename workplace.jpg is
recommended, while IMG00045.jpg is not.
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Image file location
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Image location may affect SEO, which is why it is recommended to pay attention when creating
folders in the back-end of your website. You should not use one folder, for example, named
“Images” for all the images, but take the time to organize them in separate folders based on
different categories.
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Image size
Loading time is a very important part of SEO, and the images are precisely the element that has
a huge impact on the loading time of a website. Even if you display small image size on the
website, but the actual image file size is large, this will still have a negative influence on loading
time. You need to reduce image size while keeping the quality. You can do this with lots of
online tools and website plugins, but you can also start with Photoshop.
One way to resize the image is to go to “Image size”, click on “Resample Image” and then
choose the option “Bicubic Sharper (best for reduction)” from the drop-down menu.
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If you would like to reduce the image size without altering the image dimensions, here is
another option. Choose the option “Save for web”in Photoshop and save in .png format. It
helps with keeping the image quality.
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Image captions
This is the text displayed inside the article, visible by both readers and search engines. Captions
are usually placed above or below the image and they basically describe the image. This is not
an important element, so add captions only when appropriate for the context of the article.
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•
Alt text
Alt text or alternative text is the text that is displayed when the image cannot be loaded and
shown to the reader for some reason. This way the crucial information presented in the picture
is still shown to the readers in a form of a text. In terms of SEO, alt text helps search engine
crawlers to understand what the image is about and how to index it properly. This is especially
important if the image features the text because search engines have no way of seeing this text.
Therefore, make sure you use relevant keywords when providing alt text to describe the image.
To add the alt text, click on the image options and provide the text in the “Alternative text”
field.
Video optimization
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Video title
Video title matters a lot because it essentially tells both search engines and online visitors what
the video is about. To make sure you maximize the SEO potential of the video, use keywords in
the title.
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Video description
The same is applied to the video description. Provide a bit of context to the video and make
sure you take advantage of using the keywords in the description.
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Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrgcaRaOhEw
•
Video transcript
Video transcript is often provided when sharing the video on a blog. In case you choose to do
this, you will feature a video at the top of the article and then paste the transcript below. It is
mostly helpful with SEO because the search engines can index this text content. In terms of
online visitors, the transcript is helpful when they are unable to play the video (due to a limited
internet access, for example) and it is a great material for those interested in quoting the parts
of the text.
•
Hosting a video
Benefits of hosting a video on social sharing platforms are huge, especially on YouTube, which is
the second largest search engine. It is also owned by Google, so some marketers believe that it
may have higher relevance when it comes to Google searches. Even if you prefer to host the
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video on your own website, make sure you provide a preview or a teaser and post it on
YouTube. In this case, you would also need to link to your own website where the full video can
be found.
Practices to avoid when optimizing content
As much as content optimization is essential to make your content visible on the internet, there
still are dos and don’ts you need to have in mind. The practices mentioned above are all on the
to-do list and those are legitimate ways to ensure the highest performance of the content. Still,
you need to have in mind practices that may harm your efforts and thus are on the list of things
you should not do.
Over-optimization
In the effort to optimize the websites, webmasters have been trying to maximize their efforts
using methods that are suspicious, to say the least. Even though it might seem as optimization,
these practices are in fact perceived as over-optimization and may lead to penalties.
Here are a few examples:
•
Anchor text matches the URL text
•
Attracting traffic with non-relevant keywords
•
All links pointing to top-level pages
•
All inbound links come from blog comments or forums
•
Using several h1 tags on one page
•
Placing too many keywords in the footer
•
Placing relevant links to the footer
•
High keyword density percentage
Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a practice based on the presumption that the website will be ranked better
if it has lots of keywords on the web pages. It is a way of manipulating the search engines in an
effort to trick them that the page is related to the specific searches by using as many keywords
as possible.
The reason why this practice is persisting to this day is the fact that once, years ago, it did work.
However, the search engines have become so much more advanced since that they have ways
of detecting and penalizing such websites. The search engines are now focused on providing
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best user experience and a page with an unusually large number of repeated keywords and
phrases fails at providing good user experience. This is why keyword stuffing is a practice to
avoid when optimizing your website. You should always have a keyword density 1-3% as a sort
of a guideline.
Cloaking
Cloaking is another practice that presents a perfect example of manipulation. With this action,
you present different content or URLs to human users and search engine spiders. This can be
done by providing one content in HTML for the spiders while showing a flash file to the users,
knowing that the search engines spiders will not be able to see this kind of content due to its
format. Since this practice violates Google’s guidelines, these websites are most likely to be
penalized.
Website comments
Comments on your website or blog are a great way to build community and connect with your
target group. This also shows engagement and it is a great opportunity to get feedback from
the readers, which are all the reasons you should encourage visitors to leave their comment
and join the discussion.
However, this option is frequently abused by spammers, who post spam, advertising, and
unrelated links, that are in fact harmful to your website. Since this can have a negative impact
on the performance of your own content by lowering the reputation of your website and
providing a negative user experience, you should be very careful when enabling website
comments.
You should either follow the activity closely, to be able to remove any suspicious comment
spam, or you could turn on comment moderation option, in which case you will have to review
and approve each comment. Alternatively, you could use anti-spam tools, which are effective
against spamming scripts, but when it comes to human generated spam commenting, they do
not have a chance.
In essence, content optimization should be about improving your content while having both
users and search engines in mind. As much as high ranking is important for you, your primary
goal should be providing the best user experience.
In fact, search engine algorithms have become so advanced and intuitive that they are now
trying to access user experience by actions such as one-click visits, visit duration, the fact that
the user leaves the page and continues the search (an indicator that the content does not
answers the query completely), etc. This all means that technical aspects are important, but in
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terms of content optimization, it all starts with quality content. Quality content will naturally
attract visits, gain links and attention, and with these optimization tasks you only enhance its
existing potential.
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6
Content Management
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6. Content Management
What is content management?
Content management, often abbreviated as CM, is the administration process of handling
digital content. It includes all types of digital content. Computer technology is used to manage
digital content through which the content is stored and shared with online users. Basically, this
includes all the tasks involved in content creation, optimization and distribution. Since it
includes a lot of different tasks, it is possible to highlight several phases in the process.
Phases of content management
Four phases of content management can be identified:
Creation
The process of content management starts with content creation, which was analyzed in details
in Chapter 4. The creation refers to all types of content. In this phase, content can be created
with lots of different goals in mind, depending on the type of business, strategy, resources, etc.
Editing
The second phrase is editing, which includes reviewing and improving content. During this
phase you want to make sure that the content fulfills the standards you have established, you
want to adjust the style and review the material. This stage may also use localization,
translation and other adaptations if necessary.
At this point, the content is not publicly available to the online users and search engines
crawlers.
Publishing
Having finished with the creation process, it is time to publish the content. The process is done
through a publishing platform that can be hosted on the server you manage, or you could use
external services for publishing content. Through this process, you make content available for
everyone online.
Publishing can be done instantly, or the content publishing can be scheduled. This can be done
on the actual platform, but it is also possible to use plugins and tools to schedule the content
publishing. This option is especially popular when it comes to social media content, as lots of
tools enable social media integration and management.
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Administration
Administration is the final phase that includes the task needed after the publishing is done.
These tasks include assisting the online users, answering questions and comments, moderating
comments, etc. Administration of content is a task that extends over a period of time. While
the previous tasks are short-term ones, administration requires constant website monitoring.
This is especially important for websites with a large amount of content and active user
communities.
Content management can be handled by a single person, or a different individual can be in
charge of each content phase. It depends on the complexity of the task as well as on the
expertise of the person handling the task. It also depends on the amount of content being
managed. The division of the tasks among the team members, where a writer is in charge of
content creation, an editor for editing, reviewing and publishing and an administrator for
content and website administration does have its benefits. Each of them specializes in a certain
group of tasks which allows them to become experts in what they do. They will be more
familiar with the tasks, and they would also learn the entire process in-depth, allowing them to
work more efficiently.
What is CMS?
CMS (content management system) is an application designed to create and manage digital
content. It is software with functionalities that enable the user or multiple users to work in a
collaborative environment. Content management systems are used for content management
tasks, including publishing the content.
The most popular content management systems are free and open-source CMSs, and they
include:
•
WordPress
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•
•
Joomla
Drupal
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WordPress is the most popular CMS with over 27% websites on the internet built on this
platform (Source). The main reasons for such popularity are the facts that the platform is easy
to use and it is considered SEO friendly. Each CMS can be customized using themes, modules,
extensions and plugin which shape the website differently and unable functionalities that are
not already built into the core platform.
The main benefit which also led to a wide expansion of such systems is the fact that they enable
content creation and publishing to people with no advanced technical or coding skills. There is
no need for coding because the system has everything designed and the interface is pretty
straightforward to use.
CMS has a back end and a front end. Back end is what you see when you create and upload
content through the CMS. The application will require to log in because access to the back-end
is restricted to those who manage the website, regardless if those are content creators,
administrators or web developers. The interface offers a set of options, usually arranged into
menus for easier navigation.
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The front end is what the online users see. Once the website is published, everyone can see the
front end online, except in cases when the content is protected by a password and it requires
users to log in first. Front-end users can also add, modify and remove content with a limited
number of functionalities available for them.
An alternative to using a CMS is creating and coding a website from scratch. In this case, you
could either code individual static pages or create a custom interface for adding content.
Obviously, this solution is a more complex one, because it requires both more time and an
expert working on such coding project. This is the main reason why a great majority of websites
is built on some of the available CMS platforms.
Basic things about CMS
The first thing you will need to do is to choose the CMS platform you want to use. The choice is
based on your own preferences as most CMS platforms offer similar functionaries. The main
features all of them provide, and you will mostly need in terms of content marketing, include:
Adding/Modifying/Removing content
This is the most basic function you will need. You will see options to post content, edit the
existing content or remove content entirely.
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The CMS should support adding all types of content, as well as formatting features, such as
headings, bullets, bold, etc. You will also have options to add links to the content. All of these
and more options are available in the editor, but if you are good with coding, you can toggle to
an HTML editor and do the formatting using HTML coding tags.
SEO friendly URLs
SEO friendly URLs enable search engines to navigate your website easily, which automatically
increases chances for them successfully indexing your website. Here are good practices to
follow when creating SEO friendly URLs:
•
Make them readable
•
Shorter URLs are the better
•
Match the URL to the title
•
Cut the stop words like and, or, but, the, etc.
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•
Limit the use of characters that are considered as unsafe because they turn into
unusual symbols, series of numbers, etc. Unsafe characters include empty space,
and characters such as <, >, #, [, ], etc.
Extensions and plugins
While basic functions are already built into CMS platform, there are many extensions and
plugins that are available on the internet to enhance or install new features. The main reason
for this is to improve and boost the website performance.
From plugins to enable custom contact forms, feature related posts, to SEO plugins to optimize
your content, advanced text editors and redirection plugins, there are thousands of extensions
for you to choose and install. Make sure you choose only those that are relevant and that you
can take advantage from.
Image: https://wordpress.org/plugins/
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User and group functionality
Some websites will greatly benefit from this feature because they require registering and they
have groups of website members that login, interact and post content. Even if you do not allow
registered members’ access, you will still need to create a couple of accounts for those who
manage the website. When you have several people working on the project, you will have an
option to create different users with different access settings to enable them to work
independently, but still limit their access to the website.
Customizable layout
A theme, template or layout is the way website’s front end looks like. It is what online users will
see and this basically presents your company and your products. This is why you want to make
a presentation that really stands out. A good CMS platform should enable plenty of choices for
a website template, and it should also enable you to customize the template according to your
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needs. This way you can rearrange the fields or menus on the front page, use your own photos
or graphics, etc.
In conclusion, content management is the process that helps you make the content available to
everyone, as well as a group of tasks related to the entire process, starting from creation to
publishing.
The best way to start is by choosing the CMS platform first, which you can do based on the core
features, based on your previous experience, a possibility for customization, as well as
templates that are available to you. You should know that CMSs are constantly updated to keep
up with the current trends. This means that new features will frequently be added, and the
existing ones will be improved, which is why it is important to keep the CMS updated.
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7
Content Distribution
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7. Content Distribution
The production of digital content has slowly lead to the need to share this content, especially
with the introduction of social media. This process of sharing involves different channels,
starting from your own website to social media accounts and content sharing platforms.
Collectively, this process is known as content distribution.
What is content distribution?
Content distribution represents the delivery of content to the online users. It includes all types
of content and all channels that are available for online content sharing. When you distribute
content online, that content can be streamed, in which case it is available upon user’s request,
or it can be downloaded, when a user stores the content permanently.
Having published the content, it is natural to expect visitors and feedback, but rather than keep
waiting for those to come on their own, content distribution helps with sharing content with
the internet users. This way you speed up the reach and the attention the content gains, and
you boost traffic.
Channels for content distribution
Distribution of content is done through so-called channels for content distribution. Basically,
these are the media used to share the content and you have several of them you could use
when distributing content.
Email is the most important distribution channel you should use, because it delivers the highest
ROI. Not only is the email campaign the best way to reach those genuinely interested in your
business (which is why they have subscribed in the first place), but email marketing is a type of
marketing that has consistently been the most profitable strategy.
The success of distributing content this way is based on the quality of your mailing list, as well
as on your skillfulness of communicating through emails. Firstly, a mailing list should include
only the people who are really interested in receiving messages about your business. This
ensures the highest open and click-through rates. It also means that the bounce rate and
unsubscribe rate will be low. The second component of success is the way you communicate
with your subscribers. You have to use a personalized approach, you have to optimize each
email, to adjust the message to your target group and to constantly monitor statistics and
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feedback. All of this helps you with writing emails that perform better and running campaigns
that give results.
When it comes to using email as a distribution channel, make sure you use it for this purpose
only when you have something really valuable to share with your subscribers. Even though it
might seem tempting to use it to boost your traffic, email should be only for really great
content, which is preferably tailored to the subscriber’s preferences. What this means is that
even if you publish two or three articles a day on your blog, you do not want to send an email
about each of them to your subscribers. Instead, you could send an email once or twice a week
with the latest scoop.
Social networks
One the other hand, we have social networks, where the content distribution is done more
frequently. This means that once you publish new content, you are most likely to share it on
social media. In fact, you will probably end up sharing more than once.
Social networks have become a very dominant part of people’s lives, which is why most of the
online users are active on at least one social network. Actually, social media is one of the trends
you need to have in mind when developing your business strategy. In terms of business, this
means that you can take advantage of this trend and use social media to interact with the
users.
The most popular social networks, at this moment, include:
•
•
YouTube
•
•
•
•
The list keeps changing with new social networks being introduced and gaining popularity, but
the first four have been at the top of the list for a couple of years now.
To start using social media as a channel for distribution, you will first need to create a profile or
a page on the network. You should then optimize the profile with images, a description, links to
your website or other social profiles, etc. This way you present your business and provide
information on how to contact you, information about your product, services, current
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promotions, etc. You will then work on building the group of followers and establishing your
influence on that particular network by implementing a social media marketing strategy.
When it comes to social media content distribution, you should follow these tips:
Start with a strong message
You will need to grab attention with the social media post. A lot of people tend to simply copy
the article’s title and think they are all set. However, customized and personalized messages
bring much more engagement. Users will already be able to see the title from the preview,
there is no need to copy it in the status update as well. Instead, a post message should provide
your impression, a witty comment, an eye-catching data or intriguing statement. This will all
help with creating a post that users will want to click on.
End with a CTA
A call to action is a good strategy for encouraging social media followers to do a certain action,
such as clicking the link, signing up, downloading something, sharing or following. To achieve
these goals, you should end a post with an engaging CTA that invites the users to do the action
you see as something beneficial for your business.
Optimize the content for each network
It seems quite simple to create a single message and post it on four or five social networks,
especially when you do this with a tool that enables social media management from a single
interface. Even though this is a time-saver, it might not be a perfect way to get the most out of
your content. Social networks are different in the way they distribute messages, present visuals
or the way interaction is done, which is why you need to optimize the content for each of them.
This means creating a custom message to accompany the post and using recommended image
dimensions.
Always provide value
Your goal with social media should be to gradually build influence and gain respect from the
community, and a sure way to do so is by providing value. Your posts should be relevant to the
users, helpful, problem-solving, etc.
Discover the perfect timing
There is no universally recommended time for posting on social media. Even though some
researches have stated some guidelines in terms of posting, engagement depends on many
factors, which include the type of network, the region, and primarily, the target group. To
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discover the perfect time for your business, you should first think about your target group and
when they are most likely to spend time on social media. For example, if your target group is
stay-at-home moms, they will probably check social media late in the morning, while the kids
are at school. The second thing you need to consider is the engagement on the previous posts.
Check your profile and try to spot patterns when it comes to engagement. Is there a specific
time or day when you gained more likes, comments or shares? Finally, when you know both the
estimates and historic data, you can start experimenting to eventually find that perfect timing.
Don’t share too many posts at a time
If you distribute content to gain visibility and engagement from social media, you should never
share several pieces of content at the same time. As much as social media is time-consuming,
and you might be tempted to post your latest articles once or twice a week, this approach is not
a way to benefit from social media. Instead, focus on one post at a time. If you still need to
optimize the time spent working on social media activity, use scheduling options, so you can
distribute a couple of posts evenly throughout a certain time period.
Social bookmarking websites
Social bookmarking websites are online platforms that enable adding and sharing web pages as
a form of a bookmark. Additional options usually include tagging and organizing bookmarks in
categories. The ability to interact with other users is what gives that social character to
bookmarking websites. People use these platforms to discover content that matches their
interests, which is how this can help with distributing content. Amplifying your content through
social bookmarking websites has great potential, especially in terms of traffic gained through
these platforms.
•
Reddit - The content shared here is mostly time-sensitive and updated in real time.
Reddit stories are voted by the community.
•
Delicious - The service owned by Yahoo, has lots of users who store links in their
personal or public collections with tags to categorize everything.
•
Digg - This is a news aggregator for sharing content.
•
Pearltrees - This content curation platform is organized like a mind map.
•
StumbleUpon - With its large user base, StumbleUpon offers a great potential for
gaining traffic. The platform enables bookmarking, searching and voting for the
content you find valuable.
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•
ScoopIt - Content curation service where you create topics and share scoops related
to these topics.
These are some of the most popular social bookmarking websites, but as you browse online,
you will find many more of those. You should not aim to be active on all of them, but instead,
choose only those that could help you with content distribution. The websites mentioned
above are some of the most popular, based on the number of users and links shared through
these platforms. Most of them are either free or offer a free account with limited
functionalities, in comparison to a paid account which includes some advanced content
distribution features.
Some of these websites include do-follow links, which have a positive influence on SEO as
inbound links, while some use no-follow attribute. Either way, the true value is in the traffic
potential they provide, which goes beyond the attempt to gain backlinks. Your goal as a
business should be to leverage this potential and use social bookmarking websites to distribute
content to the communities that rely on discovery of new content.
Online communities and forums
Online communities and forums are also helpful with content distribution. However, with these
communities, you should not be focused on the direct promotion of your content, but instead,
you should try to become a member, the one who helps with useful tips, the one who solves
problems, the one who answers the question. This is what differentiates communities from
social media and social bookmarking websites.
The best way to take advantage of these websites is to join a certain community, start
interacting with other members, participate in the discussions, etc. Gradually, over time you
will get an opportunity to promote your own content and to share it with other members.
Communities are also a great place to get feedback and new ideas that can show you how to
improve your business.
Popular communities for content distribution:
•
Quora
•
Inbound
•
Triberr
•
GrowthHackers
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Influencers
Distributing content can get tough, especially if you are only starting out and your audience is
currently rather limited. You are not able to reach enough people, and your content might be
performing poorly. To counter this, there is an option to work with influencers.
Influencers are renowned individuals in a particular sector, who enjoy trust and respect from a
large community. Influencers already have a significant following, and they have the power to
influence people by sharing their opinion, impressions, feedback, etc. Working with influencers
is an amazing technique for reaching their audience and distributing content this way.
Paid advertising
Finally, content can be distributed through paid channels as well. The main advantage of this
approach is that it is fast and easy to manage. Once the content is created, all that is left to do
is to choose the method of advertising, set up the campaign, and monitor the results. This
approach is particularly helpful for blogs and websites that are only beginning to build their
presence online, and thus they are unable to use other methods for content distribution, such
as an email campaign because they still do not have enough leads they would contact. Paid
advertising can also be helpful for time-sensitive content when you need to boost its
performance in a particular period, or otherwise, the content will become outdated and
irrelevant.
The main drawback of the approach is the costs involved. The costs depend on the campaign,
and since most paid advertising programs offer auction-type of advertising, you do not have a
way to exactly predict the costs of such campaign. What you can do to plan this action is to set
up a budget and use it as a limit. When setting up the campaign, make sure you indicate your
limit, regardless if that is a daily, weekly or even monthly limit. This will help you stay within the
budget you have available for paid content distribution.
Methods that can be used for paid advertising include:
Search engine ads
Search engine marketing is a great method to reach new users and gain new leads. Google
AdWords and Bing Ads are two most frequently used advertising programs as two largest
search engines. You have the option to create a campaign through the campaign manager and
optimize it by choosing the target audience, keywords, location targeting, etc. You could also
schedule the campaign to appear on specific days or period of the day. When it comes to
Google AdWords, the option to set up and manage a YouTube campaign is also a part of the
program, because this video sharing social network is owned by Google.
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Social network advertising
Social networks also offer opportunities for advertising with sponsored posts and stories that
are shown to the social network users while they are browsing the content. The ads are usually
set up through a specific ad manager available by the network. Like with search engine ads, ads
on social networks also offer plenty of optimization and targeting features to fully customize
the campaign and maximize its performance.
Social bookmarking website advertising
Even though it is not an option as popular as the previous two, social bookmarking websites
also provide advertising. Sometimes they offer this option as sponsored stories, but some social
bookmarking websites also offer paid accounts with advanced features to promote and
distribute content.
Content distribution strategies
Besides using content distribution channels that are available to you, there are a couple of
more strategies you need to have in mind when it comes to ways you can distribute content.
Content syndication
Content syndication is the process of publishing content to third-party websites and then
republishing the same content on your own blog or website. This includes publication of any
digital type of content, a blog article, a video, a presentation, etc.
When you decide to use this content distribution strategy, make sure you think about these
things first:
•
Audience - The audience visiting the website where the content is going to be
published should be relevant to you. Therefore, the audience should be one of the
main factors influencing your decision to publish content on another website.
•
Authority - The authority of the website is also important. In terms of SEO,
publishing an article on a high-authority website with a link to your own website or
blog is very helpful. Links are seen as votes of trust, which is why a link is a good
signal to the search engine crawlers, who perceive links as a relevant metric for
ranking the websites. This reputation extends to the online users as well, because
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generally, you will earn trust and increase the following through a successful
collaboration.
Since the process of content syndication includes publishing identical content on two different
websites, it is only natural to bring the question of duplicate content. Duplicate content is the
content on different domains that completely matches or is somewhat similar. This results in
the same content appearing in the search results multiple times, a practice which disrupts the
user experience, which is why it is unpopular among search engines and can lead to a URL being
excluded from the search query.
To avoid such problems, you should follow these guidelines:
Use rel=canonical tag
This tag links back to original content. In case you publish the content on your website or blog
first, and then republish it on an authority website, make sure the publisher on that website is
using this tag to reference back to you. Using this tag is an indication to Google which content is
original, and which should appear first in the search results.
Use NoIndex tag
NoIndex tag is used to indicate to Google that you do not want a particular page to be indexed.
When you syndicate content, the authority website could use this tag. This way, their page will
not be indexed and will not appear in the search results, but the authority website will still pass
on so-called link juice to your own website or blog.
Include an attribution link
This third option is not the best but may help with solving the problem. It works like this. The
publisher should provide an attribution link inside the article linking directly to the original
article page. Search engines are often able to figure out which version is older, i.e. which
version is the original.
If none of these attribution options are available to you, sometimes you might want to
participate in the link syndication process just because the visibility benefits are so huge, that
you do not really care about search engines seeing this as duplicate content. This is particularly
the case when you have the opportunity to work with very influential websites that can help
you reach a large group of online users.
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Guest blogging
To a certain extent, guest blogging is similar to content syndication. In both cases, you
collaborate with external websites where you want your content to be published. However, the
main difference is that with content syndication you republish content on your own website or
blog, and in the case of guest blogging you do not.
Guest blogging is a process of creating content to be published on another website or blog. This
method is used by many bloggers and website owners, mainly to increase traffic. The process
can also work in a reverse way. You could have another author write a blog post for your blog
or website. In both cases, mutual promotion and visibility are the main reasons why websites
decide to use this form of content distribution.
Writing a guest blog post
Firstly, there are situations where you are looking for guest blogging opportunities hoping to
create content to be published on a certain website or blog. Through this process, you should
focus on a couple of things:
Find a guest blogging opportunity
The first thing you need to do is to find an opportunity for publishing your guest post. There are
multiple ways you can find these opportunities. Start with Google search. Make sure you type
in the keyword (a topic you are interested in) and phrases like “submit a guest post”, “guest
post guidelines”, etc. This will show you the websites featuring these terms. You could also use
social media to look for influencers in your niche or you could check your competitor’s backlink
profile, to see who links to them.
Get in touch
Once you find a website or a blog you want to work with, you will have to get in touch. Firstly,
make sure you prepare yourself. Before you get in touch, you should do the research and you
should try to:
•
Get to know a little bit about the website
•
Get to know the website owner
•
Take a look at the content they publish on the blog
•
Think about what kind of content they would be interested in
•
Think about what kind of content they would benefit from
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You should also make sure that the email you send as a pitch is personalized. The best way to
start is by addressing the blog owner by his or her name. You should also provide information
about:
•
Who you are
•
What kind of content you specialize in
•
Why this collaboration is something the blog owner should consider
You should also check out the guidelines for guest blogging if they are available because this
will help you with shaping the pitch and creating the blog post that will get accepted.
Create a guest blog post
Once you get confirmation that the collaboration is on, you are ready to start with creating
content for a blog post. In this case, you might want to consult the blog owner about any
guidelines or specific requirements that are needed. In general, when creating a guest blog
post, you are not supposed to use affiliate links or to openly advertise something. Another most
common requirement is to format the post the same way the other posts are formatted on that
blog.
Create guest biography
Now it is time to promote yourself. The purpose of the guest biography is to provide
information about the guest blogger and this usually includes a short description of who you
are and what you do. You should also provide links to the social media profiles where you
maintain an active presence and your website/blog. This way, you provide information for
readers to find you online if they like your content.
Track the results
Finally, when the article is all done and published as a guest post, you are ready to monitor the
results. The best way to do so is using Google Analytics. Filter the results based on the sources
and track the guest blogs URL to see how much traffic it brings to your own website and how
this traffic performs, whether it brings conversions, high bounce rate, etc.
This will help you analyze the performance of this strategy and if this is something you should
use again in the future.
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Get guest bloggers to write for you
Since the process of guest blogging works two ways, you could also have guest bloggers on your
website. To begin with, you will need a page for those interested in submitting their pitch. Offer
a contact form for people to get in touch with you easily and send their own suggestion about
guest blogging collaboration. You might want to indicate the topics that are likely to be
featured on your blog because you are most likely to be interested in a particular niche rather
than sharing content on all sorts of topics.
The main benefits you can see through this practice include:
•
Keep your content fresh
•
Keep your blog active
•
Gain reputation
•
Gain visibility
•
Increase traffic
Repurposing content
When you create content in one format, you always have an option to repurpose the content
by converting it to another format. Basically, this means that if you have written an article
about a certain topic, you could create an infographic, a presentation or a video using the same
content. The main reason why this strategy is used in content distribution is the fact that it
helps you with expanding the reach and gaining new link-building opportunities. In the same
time, you will not have to invest too much work because you already have content to use as a
base. Besides gaining benefits, this approach is also recommended when you want to reuse the
content that you might have published years ago, but one that is still useful and current.
Things to have in mind when repurposing content:
Make sure the content is current
Just because you have found an amazing article in your blog archive and you would like to use it
to create an infographic, it does not mean that you should. Firstly, make sure the content you
want to reuse is still current. The content needs to be evergreen to be reusable. It needs to deal
with a topic that is still valuable and relevant months or even years after the content is
published. This means that anything time-sensitive would not be considered as a good material
for repurposing.
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Take a look at what is popular
To help you decide which content you should repurpose, take a look at popularity as a
reference. This means that you should check back to your Google Analytics and see which posts
or topics have been the most popular. You should also explore Google Trends, to see if those
topics are generally popular in online searches.
Updating might be in order
While most of your content might be evergreen, there still might be sections that are outdated
or irrelevant, which is why you should start by reviewing the material completely. Think about
this is a sort of a makeover and use it as an opportunity to make your high-performing content
even better.
How to repurpose
Through repurposing content, you essentially change the format and the overall structure of
the content. Most often you will change the content type, so here are some ideas how to
reshape content into something else:
•
Blog post → Guide
•
Blog post → Presentation
•
Blog post → Newsletter
•
Guide → Ebook
•
Guide → Course
•
Podcast → Blog post
•
Podcast → Newsletter
•
Webinar → Blog post
•
Interview → Blog post
•
Internal data → Case study
•
Internal data → Infographic
•
Visual content → Presentation
•
Video → Blog post
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Republish (Medium, LinkedIn Pulse)
Republishing content on blogging platforms such as Medium and LinkedIn Pulse is another way
to distribute content.
Basically, what these platforms offer is to publish or republish your content in order to reach
the new audience. Besides writing and publishing features used for creating and optimizing
content, these platforms offer social aspect that is integrated into the platform. This means that
users can easily recommend, share, write comments, bookmark, etc. These kinds of open
platforms are great places to creatively express yourself, get new ideas, but they are also
popular for searching new content online. All that is done on the platform itself. The major
benefit of publishing content through these platforms is to reach the new audience and to link
back to your website where you want to attract the readers. With this goal in mind, here are a
couple of recommendations that will help you get started with blogging for Medium, LinkedIn
Pulse, and similar websites:
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Make adjustments to the content
First, you want to adjust the content to the platform. You should not simply copy and paste the
entire article from your blog. Instead, make necessary adjustments based on these suggestions:
•
Have in mind the audience
The audience you will reach through blogging platforms is different from your website visitors.
They probably still do not know anything about you, and they might not have an idea what kind
of products or services you provide. This means that you might want to adjust the content
while having the audience in mind.
•
Adjust the title
The title is supposed to be enticing and engage your audience. The online users have to be
intrigued to keep reading and you will achieve this with a catchy title. You could use a new title
for the republished article to reduce the risk of duplicate content.
•
Optimize the article to get click and leads
If lead magnets and CTAs were not a part of the content originally, make sure you optimize the
content with these in mind to encourage online users to click on the links. Since the main goal
of this strategy is to reach the new audience, by encouraging clicks and gaining new leads, you
should optimize the article in such a way to achieve these goals.
Publish only a part of article
One way to attract traffic to your own website or blog is to publish only a part of the article
with the link to the original article on your website or blog, where the users can read the rest.
Of course, the snippet you provide should be interesting to encourage clicks.
Include links
Regardless if you decide to publish only a part of the article or the entire article, make sure you
link to your website or blog. Also, if you have a certain offer available on your website or blog,
such as a free download, make sure you include this if it is relevant to the topic.Apart from
getting visits, links on these platforms are good for SEO because these websites generally have
good domain and page authority.
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Ask users to visit your website
Take advantage of a powerful CTA by asking users to follow more stories you share. Invite them
to your blog or website, or to follow you on social media. This way you offer an opportunity for
them to connect and become your followers.
Avoid the risk of duplicate content
Syndication, in general, has a risk of content being marked as duplicate. Beside the penalty,
there is always a risk of losing traffic. Medium, LinkedIn Pulse, and similar websites probably
have higher authority than your own website, which means that your blog or website might be
pushed down the list of the search result, even though it is the source of the original content.
However, the potential for reaching more people and gaining traffic is such an incredible
opportunity for many websites to boost their traffic, in which case these risks are worth taking.
Even though a risk is always a part of content syndication, there are a couple of ways to reduce
the risk.
•
Don’t republish the entire article
Make adjustments to the content or republish only a part of the article.
•
Don’t republish every article
When you decide to publish a piece of content, make sure it is really something extraordinary,
something that has the potential of going viral and attracting many visitors to your own blog.
•
Wait for a couple of weeks
Once you publish the content on your own blog, wait for two or three weeks for search engines
to index it, before you republish.
•
Use rel=canonical tag if possible
This tag links to the original content which enables search engines to index the original versions
first, giving it the priority it deserves in the search results. When it comes to Medium, rather
than posting a new article, use “Import” option to share the story directly providing the link
from your blog. You will be able to edit it before publishing on Medium.
•
Hope for the best
Search engines have developed tremendously, and as stated by Google’s experts, they are now
able to assess which version is the original and give it the priority in the search results.
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Advanced algorithms are used for this purpose giving them the power to show the version they
find most appropriate for the users. Sometimes this may be the syndicated version, but
sometimes they will give preference to the original version.
The importance of content distribution
Content distribution offers numerous ways to share your content online, from free social media
profiles to paid ads and guest blogging. The choice of the method depends on the type of
content you have to distribute and the type of business you run. There is no dilemma that this
is a strategy that you should use, and mainly because you get:
•
The opportunity to expand your audience
•
To generate new leads
•
To increase the influence of your brand
•
The chance to obtain feedback from the online community
•
To increase sales by indirectly promoting your business
•
To participate in collaborative projects with experts in the sector
•
The possibility to assess your entire content marketing strategy
•
To gain authority by providing content that offers value
Content on its own has little chance of going viral and being seen by lots of people. The blog
readership is usually limited, especially if you are still beginning to build your online reputation.
To make the most out of the content you create and publish, make sure you explore the ways
of content distribution and find the formula that works best for your business.
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8
Content Marketing
Metrics to Monitor
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8. Content Marketing Metrics to Monitor
There are two main reasons why it is necessary to monitor content marketing. First of all, you
will get the opportunity assess the influence you were able to make with the published content.
This influence is reflected in numerous ways, including the number of sales, visits, leads, etc.
Secondly, you will get to see how content marketing affects your business, how it implements
with other types of online marketing, and whether this is something you should invest more
into in the future.
Relevant metrics to evaluate content performance
Evaluating content is somewhat complex due to the numerous factors that contribute to its
performance and due to the fact that performance can be measured only when you take all the
metrics into account. This is why, with content marketing, metrics should be analyzed
cumulatively.
Visits
The first metric you will need to monitor is the number of visits to the specific content you want
to analyze. The best way to monitor visits is to have content hosted on your own website or
blog. This way you will have access to the analytics data. One of the most commonly used tools
for this purpose is Google Analytics. It is free and easy to set up, with a straightforward
interface for monitoring and managing the data. Alternatively, you can use other tools for
monitoring the statistics on your website.
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Even if you host content on websites such as YouTube or Medium, these platforms provide
statistics for the published content.
The main obstacle occurs when you write a guest blog post, in which case the content is
published on another blog or website, and it is most likely that you will not have access to these
statistics. Occasionally, the website owner might provide you with the relevant data.
What can the number of visits say about the content? The main information you get indicates
the number of people who have seen the content. That is the number of people who took the
time to click on the link. If the number is high, this means that the title and the accompanying
text were engaging enough. If you notice a lot of organic traffic, this means that this piece of
content is well-optimized in terms of SEO and that it is shown high in the search engine result
pages. If there are lots of referrals, this could mean that an influential blog or website has
shared your content, regardless if this is something you have planned to do or if they have done
it on their own.
Negative statistics indicate that certain aspects should be changed. To analyze why the number
of visits was low, you have to take into account all of the factors that make a good post, all
optimization elements, etc. Sometimes you might even do everything right and the visits still
will not go up. Maybe your timing was off, or perhaps you mistakenly believed that a certain
topic is popular, when in fact, it is not.
The important thing with poor results is to try to detect the problem with lots of testing and
comparison with other content you publish. If you believe that content is valuable, even though
it got little attention, you could also try to repurpose content later on. There has been a lot of
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success stories when the content was republished in another form, for example, a dull blog post
became an exciting infographic.
When monitoring visits, try to detect the place the clicks are originating from. The link might
get shared on social media, in an email, on another website or anywhere you might have
posted the link. The link can also be shown in the organic search results or in paid ads.
Analyzing the visits based on the source can help you determine which of the strategies shows
the best results, which might offer valuable insights into how you should be changing and/or
improving your content marketing strategy.
In terms of visits, there are several metrics you need to track:
Unique visits
The number indicates the number of visitors who have visited your website for the first time.
This metric, in comparison with Returning visits, shows how likely you are to attract new
visitors.
Page views
The metric shows the total number of pages the users have clicked on during a specific time
period. Ideally, this number should be higher than the number of unique visits. If this is the
case, it will mean that your content is engaging because the users are clicking on more than one
page per visit.
Session duration
The time the users spend on your website is expressed through average session duration.
Besides the overall average session duration, Google Analytics also enables you to see the visits
based on the session duration interval. This will show you the number of visits lasting up to 10
seconds, the visits lasting between 11 and 30 seconds, and so on. The longer you keep the
visitors on your website, the better are the chances to convert those visitors.
Bounce rate
A certain number of users click to visit your website and then leave immediately, without
clicking on any other page. This is called a bounce rate, and the metric indicates poor
engagement level, which is why you should aim for the lower bounce rate.
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Traffic sources
The data about traffic sources show you how you generate new visits. It can be through organic
search, direct traffic, referral or social. It is important to know about these sources as it can
help you optimize and improve your business in order to boost traffic.
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Knowing about the visits is one indicator of how popular and successful the content is, but in
content marketing popularity of the content on its own is not the only goal. With your strategy,
you want to achieve something, regardless if those are sales, new leads, social followers, etc. To
learn how these visits actually affected those global goals, you will need to look into
conversions.
Conversions
A conversion is a desired action, something you want online users to do from which you will
benefit, such as liking your page, downloading your ebook, watching your video, or ultimately
buying your product. Having in mind that each business is different with different goals, it is
natural that conversions cannot be defined in general, rather than on an individual level. This
means your business determines what conversion is for you. Ask yourself the question “What
do you want users to do when they get to your website?”. Your answer is the action you will
consider conversion.
Through the content marketing strategy, you try to reach conversions. For example, you publish
a blog post about email marketing. You attract many visitors who are interested in this topic. At
the same time, you sell an email marketing software, and naturally, you want them to buy the
software. In essence, the content is a sort of a bait. You attract the relevant visitors with the
high-quality content, and then you try to convert those visitors into customers.
To achieve conversions, you will first have to publish high-quality, engaging content which
attracts the users you will potentially convert. The audience you attract should be relevant to
your business, so make sure you use platforms and paid advertising targeting options that bring
visitors that are interested in your business and could eventually buy from you.
You will then need to think about the actual post page. The page should be focused on the
article, but to make sure the visitors stay and explore more, you will need:
Link to the homepage
This link enables everyone to go to your homepage and find out more about your business.
Homepage link is essential to provide more information about your business, especially for the
first-time visitors.
Links to other internal pages
When possible, provide internal links alongside the new content you publish. For example, you
could provide a previous article as a reference or you could add related content suggestions.
This will reduce bounce rate and it will help you keep visitors longer.
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Link to the landing page
This link is the best way to increase conversions because it directly leads to the page where you
can convert the visitors. The landing page will contain a brief description and a CTA that will
encourage conversions. Sometimes the actual content can contain the CTA.
In order to measure conversions, you will need to analyze the conversion rate.
Conversion rate is calculated like this:
(Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of visits) 100
The higher the conversion rate the better because this indicates that you are creating truly
valuable content that resonates well with your audience and is able to convert them. If you
notice a low conversion rate, it is time to optimize your content strategy and think about a
different approach to try to increase conversions.
How to monitor the metrics?
To evaluate the importance of content marketing for your business, you will first need the tools
for tracking content published on your own blog, as well as on third-party blogs, social media,
social bookmarking websites, etc. One of the most commonly used tools for monitoring the
website analytics data is Google Analytics.
Audience overview
This is the page opened by default in the Google Analytics account. It shows the statistics for
the chosen period, including the most relevant metrics to assess visits, such as the number of
sessions, page views, average session duration, bounce rate, etc. The audience data also
includes demographics and geo details, behavior of the visitors, the technology used to access
the website, etc. All of this can help you a lot with evaluating how your website content
performs.
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Goals
Goals are used for tracking desired activity through Google Analytics. By setting up a goal, you
choose an action, such as the number of pages visited per one visit, visiting a specific page, a
certain session duration, etc. This action will be a goal you want to achieve.
To set up a goal, go to the Admin section of Google Analytics (lower left corner) and click on the
View you want to manage. Then find the option Goals in the menu shown beneath this view.
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Click on the button +New Goal and fill in the details about the goal you want to track.
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Once the goal is activated, Google Analytics will track all the traffic that resulted in goal
completion.
You will get additional data about the goal completion rate, sources, etc. This will enable you to
determine which traffic helps with goal completion. It is also possible to assign a monetary
value to each goal, in which case Google Analytics will also track and calculate goal value.
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Advanced segments
Advanced segments are used to configure certain filters that create a customized view. Google
Analytics still tracks all the data, all the traffic coming in, but for a segment, the data is limited
by the filters you choose. This means that you might get to see only a part of the website traffic,
which is relevant to the segment.
When it comes to content marketing and evaluating the performance of this strategy, advanced
segments allow you to filter traffic by specific actions that help you understand the
performance of the content you share online.
You will have to click on +New Segment to create a new one that will filter the data based on
your criteria.
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For example, use Traffic Sources/Keyword to filter traffic by a keyword used to reach your
website, with both paid and unpaid traffic. On the other hand, if you want to focus on exploring
the behavior and habits of mobile users, use Technology/Mobile option to filter the traffic
coming from mobile. This way, you can click on the advanced segment and get the data about
mobile users exclusively, which gives you insights into how they behave, what type of content is
the most popular among them, what the conversion rate is, etc.
The criteria for segmentation include:
•
Demographics (Age, gender, language, affinity category, in-market segment, other
category, location)
•
Technology (Operating system, system version, browser, browser version, device
category, etc.)
•
Behavior (Sessions, transaction, session duration, days since last session)
•
Date of first session
•
Traffic sources (Campaign, medium, source, keyword, filtering by session and
filtering by users)
•
Advanced segments (Conditions and sequences)
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Campaign URL builder
Campaign URL builder is a very helpful tool for tracking content performance. It basically allows
you to tag each URL based on different criteria, such as campaign source (search engines,
newsletter, etc.), medium (banner, email, social media, etc.), campaign term, content, etc.
Campaign URL builder can then be linked to the Google Analytics account to show detailed
information about each URL.
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Shortening services
Another way to track the performance of the content is by using shortening services, such as
Bitly. These services basically allow you to track the content URL. You will create a custom URL
through the service and then track its performance through the statistics that are available. You
will get the data about the clicks, about geographic distribution, etc.
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9
Content Marketing
Strategy
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9. Content Marketing Strategy
Once you know how content marketing works, how content is created, optimized, distributed
and managed, you have the full picture. You get all the insights into things that make up
content marketing, and therefore you get to design a strategy based on a deeper understanding
of content and its role in marketing.
To make the best out of your content, to make sure that you benefit the most out of content
marketing, start by developing the strategy, where you will determine the path you are going to
take to achieve your goals.
Determine goals
You will first start with defining the goals. The goals in content marketing are often connected
with the other types of online marketing, and with the mission you as a business have. When it
comes to content marketing, determine how content helps you get to your goals. Here are
some questions to help you with this:
•
What do you want to achieve? (You want to increase sales, to generate new leads,
etc.)
•
How can content help you with this goal? (It will increase traffic, encourage signups,
etc.)
•
What kind of content would be the best to achieve this goal? (What your audience
will appreciate, what they will find useful, etc.)
Choose the types of content
The second task is closely related to the previous one. When you determine the goals, you will
also get to think about the types of content and which of them are the most suitable for
achieving those goals. Analyze each type of content, how it is created and how it can be
implemented online. When choosing the content type, always have in mind your own business
and how you can adapt a certain piece of content in your business strategy.
Define your target group
Naturally, the next thing you will define is the target group. This should be done simultaneously
when choosing the content type. The target group helps you create a strategy that is more
personalized, more focused and thus more productive.
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When you think about the target group during the content creation, this helps you create
content that is focused on the end users. You get to think about what they would expect, need,
appreciate, etc. You also get to think about how this content is going to make them feel. Will
they be happy to read it? Will it be helpful or inspiring?
All these thoughts help you create content that resonates well with your target group and the
main benefit is the fact that you get to connect with them. This kind of personalized approach
creates that special bond between you and your audience. It helps you increase the level of
loyalty and build your online reputation. It is what helps you acquire new customers and keep
the old ones.
Start with content creation
Having finished with the preparation process, it is time to start content creation. During the
content creation, as you go through the phases, always make sure you have your plan at hand
to regularly look back on goals you want to achieve. This way, creating content will be more
organized and you will be focused on goal completion.
Content tactics
The way people communicate has evolved over the years, which obviously affected the
business world. During this time, businesses have been recognizing the emerging opportunities
and how new ways of communication can be used to increase business success. The process of
communicating with customers and gaining their attention has become a true challenge, and
more and more businesses are struggling to get their message across. To make sure they
overcome this obstacle, businesses have been introducing new strategies in the way they
communicate with their audience. One of those is content creation as an opportunity to gain
reputation.
As with any strategy, it helps to have a set of tactics you can use. These are techniques used to
create content that is more engaging and generally performs better. The amount of content
shared online gets bigger and bigger each year, and it is becoming more and more difficult to
reach the online users and get them to actually read (or watch) your content. Fortunately, there
are a couple of tactics that can help you with getting your content read (or watched).
Attention grabbers
Attention grabbers are statements, quotes or statistics that are used to attract the attention of
the visitors. They are engaging, astonishing, interesting, funny, shocking, and their main
purpose is to grab attention and “pull” the reader into the text.
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Use the attention grabbers at the beginning of the text, preferably in the first sentence or the
first paragraph. Add a statement that is shocking or provocative, stunning and surprising at the
same time. The readers might agree or disagree, but this kind of statement will make them
want to read and find out more.
Common attention grabbers are statistics, industry data, case study findings, controversial
statements, and similar text that will get the readers interested in the topic and encourage
them to read the rest of the article.
In terms of video content, a short snippet of the footage can be shown at the beginning as an
attention grabber.
Questions
One of the reasons for using the search engines is to find a solution to a problem and you do
that by asking a question. Search engines are asked a lot of questions each day, starting from
“How to use Google Analytics?” to “How to cook spaghetti Bolognese?”. The best way to reach
those users is to answer their question in an article, which will hopefully be ranked at the top of
the search result page.
For content creators, this means that questions offer a variety of opportunities to create
practical and useful content. The true value of such content is in the fact that with this content
you get to help users solve the problem they have. If you understand your target group and if
you are able to predict the problems and questions they might have, this gives you the edge as
you get to prepare and make available the content they will find valuable. This kind of content
performs well because it directly addresses the need online users have. As a matter of fact, you
will notice quite a bit of articles, guides, and videos that start with a question word. Most
common question word is “how”, followed by “why”, “what”, “when”, etc.
Storytelling
Storytelling is a process of sharing stories, embellishing the narratives and using them in the
purpose of entertainment, education, or for business. It is the process of wrapping a message in
a form of a story that is relatable and it brings out different kinds of emotions. Unlike
promotional messages, storytelling focuses on the story and the emotion it creates, putting the
promotional aspect into the background.
Storytelling stimulates imagination and creates a sense of community. These two features are
the main reasons why storytelling has been so productive in the business world. In essence,
storytelling connects the teller and the listener, creating a special bond which is built on a
deeper understanding based on the story. Through the story, the teller tries to engage the
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emotions of the listener, and this way that special bond is established. The story should inspire
and persuade the viewers appealing to their emotions awakened by a compelling story.
In terms of business, storytelling is the process of developing a concept that promotes a story
your audience can relate to. Instead of promotional language and direct persuasive activities to
engage the viewers, a story is a subtle way to connect with them. Instead of being direct and
promoting your brand, products or services, as a business, you develop a story that will attract
the interest in your brand, products, or services you provide. You only need to get the audience
interested using this story, after which you will use other techniques to convert the viewers into
customers.
CTA
A CTA (call-to-action)is a link displayed as an image or as a text that invites the online visitors to
take an action. The type of action can vary from website to website because the goals you have
can be quite different, which means that the action you want to encourage can be as well. A
CTA is clickable, so it is often referred to as a button. It should be engaging, concise, with a clear
message for the user. Therefore, if you want the users to download your ebook, for example,
make sure the CTA clearly says so.
The CTA takes the visitors to a specific page where the desired action is taking place. For
example, if you want the users to fill out a form, the CTA will be linked to a page with that
specific form. The text that is often seen on CTAs include:
•
Download now
•
Register now
•
Get your ebook
•
Sign up for exclusive access
•
Get a coupon
•
Attend a webinar
•
Contact us
•
Try it now
The purpose of the CTAs is to encourage a certain action, so here are some commonly used
types of CTAs you could consider adding on your website:
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Lead generation
This is a very common type of CTA nowadays. Basically, lead generation represents the process
of gaining email addresses of potential customers, who are also referred to as leads. You do so
by offering something to them for free. It can be an ebook, a guide, an audio file, a template,
etc. Anything they can find valuable can be used in such an offer. To claim this offer, the users
will have to provide their email address. Sometimes, instead of making the email address the
only requirement for the access, you could add a form that will have to be filled out to claim the
offer.
When asking for an email address only, the user gets access swiftly, and they are more likely to
do so than filling a bunch of fields in a form. On the other hand, forms are great for getting to
know the leads, which can be very helpful for email campaign segmentation.
Lead nurturing
Once you have generated leads, this means that you have gained new contacts, but this does
not necessarily mean that you have been able to convert the visitors. To be able to achieve
conversions, and to make sure you keep your customers engaged and loyal to your brand, you
should nurture leads. This is mainly done through email marketing and the tactics used for this
purpose include sending exclusive offers, enabling early access, premium features, etc. The
concept is based on the interaction with the existing leads, and the CTA invites them to interact
with you.
Read more
This is probably the most common CTA on a website. It is a read more button that invites the
online visitors to click to access the full content. As such, it is often placed on the homepage, by
which you invite and encourage the visitors to enter your website and explore content you
offer. It can also be a part of email marketing. In this case, you would share a part of the
content or an engaging description inviting the recipients to click on the read more button to
check out the entire content.
Social sharing
Social sharing buttons on your website serve to encourage social sharing among your website
visitors. This is a good way to improve reach on social media and work on word-of-mouth
marketing because you expect visitors to recommend content they found on your website.
However, make sure you post social sharing CTAs where it makes sense. This means that blog
posts, tutorials, etc. are good places for these buttons. A subscription page or a page with a
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form to fill are the places where these buttons would be a sort of intrusive and people are
unlikely to share these pages anyway.
Plan content distribution
Content marketing does not end with content being created. One portion of traffic will come
from organic searches, and you do have to be patient for such reach to happen. This occurs
when online users look for search terms that take them to your content. Content distribution
involves your effort for sharing and promoting this content online.
Various ways of content distribution are available, but to make sure you are taking advantage
of them and optimizing your efforts, your content marketing strategy should include planning
content distribution. The plan should include:
Distribution channels
The channels you have selected as the ones you will be using to share content. You will have to
create profile/pages on those prior to starting content distribution. It is also recommended to
customize each profile with images, description, links, etc.
Defined approach
You will have to define the approach you will be using, the way you are going to address your
target group, and the plan you will follow when it comes to content distribution. What you
need to do here is to define exactly how you are going to use channels to distribute content.
Will your language be more formal or are you going to share funny GIFs and graphics as well?
How is content going to be promoted? Are you counting on the organic reach or have you
already planned a budget for paid promotion? These are all the questions that help you define
the way you will use different distribution channels and tactics in the purpose of promoting
your business and reaching new clients.
Schedule
It is helpful to have a plan of posting activity to keep you organized and on track with content
distribution. You might want to post each day, a couple of days a week, or you might want to
post only when you have new content to share. A posting schedule will be different from one
channel to another. For example, you are more likely to share on Twitter a couple of times a
day, while you are unlikely to do that on Reddit.
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Promotions (Optional)
Promotions or contests can be a part of planned content distribution. This way you encourage
users to share your content online and in return, they get to participate in a promotion and
potentially win benefits, awards, exclusive access, etc.
Analyze the metrics
When everything is in place, all that is left to do is analyze. You should analyze each and every
aspect of the content marketing strategy as you go on with the implementation of each phase.
This will help you quickly learn about benefits and drawbacks of each action, and it allows
corrective actions if necessary. As soon as your content is live on the internet, you are ready to
start monitoring. Make sure you check the content performance before any promotion and
distribution, and then compare the results after these tactics.
What is essential for good and productive analysis is the comparison. Lots of comparison of all
the metrics that affect content performance guarantees that you find a way to maximize the
efforts and shape your strategy in a way that gets best results.
The bottom line is that content marketing should be an organized and well thought through
strategy. It should be a plan of activities you are going to conduct and how you are going to
conduct them in a way that the strategy boosts your business and promote your brand among
online users. A key to success is customization and using the approach that is perfectly tailored
for your business. Perhaps a certain type of content might not be performing well on your
website. Perhaps a CTA button is more effective than the link. All of these are the things you
will learn along the way after you analyze the efficiency of the strategy and think about steps to
improve it.
In the end, it is important to mention that content marketing should be integrated into overall
business planning and business strategy. Since it affects and overlaps with other segments of
business running, especially with online marketing, make sure you plan and analyze content
marketing alongside with other strategies and how this segment can be implemented in a way
that it supports other approaches and tactics you will be using in online promotion of your
business.
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10
Top Challenges of
Implementing Content
Marketing Strategy
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10. Top Challenges of Implementing Content
Marketing Strategy
On your path to success, you will encounter a lot of bumps. That is perfectly normal, regardless
of the type of business you run. Being aware of the challenges that might await you, helps you
prepare yourself and counter the negative effects these might cause.
Producing engaging content
Producing engaging content has been identified as the top challenge by a large group of
marketers. Creating content might be easy, but creating good and engaging content is not. It
requires a lot of time and effort. It requires research and devotion. Finally, it requires writing
and editing skills. With all the other tasks and active campaigns, sometimes content creation
can become a challenge.
One of the ways to overcome this challenge is to outsource content creation. Hiring someone
to do this task for you will free up a lot of your time, which could be invested into different
projects and assignments. Still, this imposes an additional cost for your business, which is why
you have to be sure that this fits your overall business planning and budget. In this case, you
will have to find a person who is able to deliver content of a certain standard.
Exploring different content types and tactics can also help with increasing the level of
engagement. Your goal would be to explore metrics for each type and determine the formula
that brings most benefits.
Measuring content ROI
Many businesses have difficulties in measuring ROI of their content marketing efforts. When
analyzing ROI, there is a need to identify how each part of marketing strategy affected the
return, and for this, you have to be able to quantify the exact return from the piece of content
in question. This can often be quite difficult, as you do not always have the way of knowing
which content results in a conversion.
The conversion path can also be difficult to track. For example, a user might find one of your
articles, which got him interested, which is why he signed up for a newsletter. Later on, you
send an email campaign, and after the same user clicked on an email link, he eventually bought
from you. In this case, the conversion tracking will show that the email campaign resulted in a
conversion, but in reality, it was the content that helped you gain a new customer. There are
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more situations like these, where tracking conversion becomes an obstacle due to numerous
factors, complicated conversion path being only one of them.
One way to increase the number of trackable conversions through content is to have a CTA in
the actual content. This way, with that piece of content you immediately provide the link to the
landing page, where you expect a conversion to happen. If the users click on the CTA in the
actual content they have found, you will be able to track such conversions through the website
analytics and in this case, you will be able to properly attribute the conversions to the content
marketing.
When tracking is not possible, try comparing the overall influence the content has on your
website performance. Compare the number of visits, signups and other metrics before active
content marketing strategy and after that strategy has been implemented. Even though you still
will not be able to calculate the exact ROI, you will get the insights into trends and tendencies
affected by content creation and publication.
Producing content consistently
It is obvious that there is a tendency to publish content frequently, as all the research, white
papers and case studies are showing that producing content consistently, such as once a day,
does bring better results. Be that as it may, you will have to balance between quality and
quantity. Keeping up with a busy publishing schedule might just set you out to fail. This kind of
strategy requires lots of resources to keep the quality at the same level. Otherwise, the content
quality will suffer.
In such a situation, one might be facing a real struggle. Is it better to keep up with the
recommendations and publish once a day even if you are not completely satisfied with the
content you have created? Or is it better to publish occasionally when you finish working on an
extraordinary post? The answer is somewhere in between.
First of all, if you have the resources to keep the quality and quantity on a high level, then you
should do so. Otherwise, try sacrificing quantity first. Instead of every day, go for one or two
excellent posts per week. Then analyze the metrics and check the performance of the content.
Once in a while, try to repurpose content to save time.
Even though publishing consistently at high standards is difficult, it is better to create truly
amazing content occasionally than to publish low-quality content each day. Your audience will
appreciate the quality over quantity because after all, it is better to interact with less content
but to find that content truly worthy and useful.
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Gaining visibility
Gaining visibility is another challenge that content marketers have. After you have spent so
much time working on the content and after it is finally published and available for everyone to
see it, it can be a bit disappointing and frustrating when there is no one actually watching.
When you get no reactions, no visits, no feedback. This produces no results for the website, and
even more importantly, it can influence you to start doubting your content, your ability to
create content, etc.
For starters, have in mind that the amount of content published each day is astonishing. One
look at the live stats, and you can see that there are more than two million blog posts published
today and the number is going up by the second. This means that gaining visibility is a challenge
most marketers will face.
To combat this challenge, you will have to work on building your reputation. Gaining reputation
online means that you get a group of followers who are loyal to your brand and who will
interact with you through social media, emails, blog comments, etc. Quality is also a great way
to work on your visibility because the content of high quality naturally earns links and shares,
which also means that it will naturally work its way up in the search engine results.
Paid promotion
Another trend that has been taking over is the paid content promotion over platforms such as
Facebook and Twitter. These are great ways to promote your content using advanced targeting
options and getting the right people to see your content. It helps with growing your audience
and it generally helps you with gaining visibility. However, the main problem with paid
promotion is the budget you will need to prioritize for this form of advertising. For smaller
companies, and sometimes even for the large ones, it can be a problem. When you also take
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into account the difficulty of calculating the ROI, the budget for the content promotion
sometimes just might not be a priority.
To overcome this obstacle, start by focusing on what you have to work with. Even it if is a tight
budget, come up with a plan on how you can use it to maximize the efficiency of paid
promotion. Set up your goals properly, and try to find the best way to reach them. For example,
with a limited budget at your disposal, try using paid promotion on Facebook only, leaving
Twitter and other social networks with no paid advertising. Another way to get paid promotion
is to work with influencers. You give them your product to test and to review, and in return,
they share their opinion online with their followers.
A good thing about being aware of these challenges is the possibility to prepare yourself. When
you analyze each challenge and how it can actually affect your business in a negative way, you
will develop a strategy that predicts the obstacles that might occur along the way. As a result,
you will be able to prepare solutions for the obstacles if and once they occur. This allows you go
along your path without disruptions while staying on track with content marketing strategy.
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11
Content Marketing and
Online Marketing
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11. Content Marketing and Online Marketing
We have mentioned the connection between content marketing and online marketing on
several occasions throughout this ebook, and now it is time to explore this connection in
details.
Online marketing, also called internet or digital marketing, is the method of advertising
products or services using online tools, strategies and methods. Unlike with traditional
marketing, online marketing is completely oriented towards the internet and reaching the users
online. Content marketing, as the method of using content for online promotion, is a part of
online marketing. Just like search engine marketing, email marketing, and social media
marketing, content marketing is one segment of online marketing that is focused on one
particular aspect, in this case, content. Each of these segments is connected, and together they
contribute to online marketing.
In fact, as you will see later on, content marketing can be seen as a base for all other parts of
online marketing. It is a core of every online promotion, and it is where every campaign, paid or
free, starts.
Content marketing and SEO
Content generates traffic. It is as simple as that. Many businesses have traffic generation as one
of their primary goals when starting content creation. The reason why traffic is important is the
fact that increases exposure and influence of your brand. It helps with expanding the reach
which often results in gaining new leads or customers. Search engine optimization is focused on
organic, also called free, promotion, which means your goal, in this case, is to reach users
through search results pages and by naturally gaining links from other blogs or websites.
These are the primary goals of SEO, and content marketing provides a sort of foundation to
achieve them. In both cases, with SERP or backlinks, you need the reason for your website to be
shown or linked to. You need to provide some quality that will help you differentiate, that will
provide the answer to the user query. You achieve this by creating content.
Content marketing and SEM
Even though SEO is a part of SEM, in this section, the focus is on paid advertising of search
engine marketing, and how content marketing influences this part of your business. SEM
includes promotion through search engines ads. Through this promotion, there is a tendency to
directly advertise products or services and thus make them easily accessible to the online users.
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This is a very productive sort of promotion, as it gives you full control over the campaign costs
and allows you to monitor the ROI.
However, due to a large number of ads displayed every day, some companies are deciding to
resort to a subtle kind of advertising and this is where content marketing comes into play. So,
instead of directly advertising your product or services, you advertise content.
In order for this strategy to be a success, several criteria need to be fulfilled. Firstly, you will
need truly extraordinary content. It has to be engaging, interesting, appealing and well-
targeted. It has to be worthy of promoting it. You will also need a clearly visible CTA in the
content, which directly leads to a conversion page where you get the opportunity to convert
the visitors. Even though this is a subtle approach, and you do not want to be too promotional,
this is essential to help you boost your profit and actually make this campaign pays off.
Content marketing and social media marketing
To be active on social media, you will need to post regularly. Sometimes you might share
content published by different websites and blogs, but to make sure that you gain authority and
build your reputation, you will absolutely need your own content. The format of such content
can vary, but the main point is that there is uniqueness and originality to it. Of course, high
quality is another characteristic crucial for building a reputation on social networks.
In that sense, content marketing provides the material to be shared on social media. Content
marketing is simply a method used to achieve these goals you have defined within social media
marketing strategy. Content enables you to engage the social media followers, to get them to
comment, like or share, to provide feedback, to visit your website, to register for an event, etc.
This means that content marketing provides the basis for developing social media marketing
presence, regardless if you use status updates, images, videos or blog posts to achieve this.
Content marketing and email marketing
Email marketing represents the online promotion of products or services through an email
campaign. It is the way of communicating with the subscribers through email messages in order
to establish and improve the relationship with them. This communication has to encourage
users to interact and take action, and for this to happen, for this communication to be
successful, you will need content.
Content can be an actual part of the email campaign, where you share the snippets or key
findings in the email message. It can also be linked to, in which case the email message is simply
an invitation for the subscribers to access the content which is linked to. This form of content
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distribution is particularly effective due to a high performance of the email marketing. It is also
easily trackable, which helps you analyze the efficiency of such content promotion.
Content marketing and lead generation
The connection of content marketing and lead generation is actually directly related to email
marketing. Lead generation is the process of collecting email addresses of online users who are
considered potential sales contacts. This means that leads are contacts that are more likely to
become your customers in comparison to other subscribers. You then contact leads through an
email campaign in the effort to convert them. In this sense, leads are more valuable contacts,
and lead generation often requires more effort than simply having a signup button on the
website.
This is where content marketing comes into play. One of the most common strategies for lead
generation you will encounter nowadays involves offering free content in exchange for an email
address. Besides an email address, there might be a short form to fill in, which usually contains
the fields that might be relevant for the website owner in terms of learning more about the
audience, as well as for mailing list segmentation. The form can include subscriber’s age,
location, the size of the company, the role in the company, etc.
For this strategy to be effective, to make sure you attract only the quality leads, the content
used in the process needs to meet certain standards:
•
High-quality content - This is essential for any content marketing strategy. High-
quality content is generally a content that performs better, which also helps with
lead generation process.
•
Designed for the target group - The content you share with your leads should be
designed specifically for them. This ensures they will be interested in such content.
•
Available - Make your content available to all the potential leads by featuring it on
your website. The best place is near the top of the page, or even as a pop-up
window.
•
Easily accessible - You should not make it too complicated to access the content.
Online users are impatient and when they need information, they want to find it
fast. Supply a form to fill if necessary, and leave only the most essential fields to be
mandatory when accessing the content. Also, have in mind the mobile users and
make the content easily accessible to them as well.
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Benefits of content marketing
Benefits of content marketing are numerous because this strategy, directly and indirectly,
affects many aspects of business running, including other parts of online marketing. Some of
the most commonly defined benefits obtained through content marketing include:
Gaining attention
This is the first part of getting people to know about your business. Content essentially helps
you meet the new online users and if content provides value and sparks interest, it will be
enough to attract the attention of the users and encourage them to learn more about your
business. Regardless if the content is distributed through social media, email marketing or paid
ads, gaining attention is the first step in achieving your ultimate goal, i.e. getting new
customers.
Gaining reputation
While gaining attention is beneficial when it comes to attracting new visitors, content
marketing has a more profound role. Through consistent content marketing strategy that is
focused on providing quality content, relevant to your target group, you get a certain
reputation. If you are constantly providing quality and useful information to your followers, you
will become influential in your niche, thus you will gain respect from your followers. This can all
help with promoting your brand and ensuring a certain level of loyalty in the long run.
Lead generation
Another, perhaps the major benefit for companies is lead generation through content
marketing. Content is consistently one of the most used techniques for lead generation, which
means content marketing has a huge impact on the initial process of acquiring new customers.
At this point, the leads are only potential sales contact, but the successful communication will
help you deepen this relationship.
Lead nurturing
Here is another email marketing method which is essentially used to establish and maintain a
good relationship with your leads. The purpose of this method is to convert the leads into
customers or to keep the existing customers loyal to your brand. This is another aspect where
content marketing comes into play as the opportunity to share custom content designed for
lead nurturing. By giving them exclusive access to such content, you establish communication
and engage the recipients.
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Sales
The sales cycle starts with the interest in your brand and it ends with the actual sales. Through
this cycle, a customer goes through a couple of phases, where content has a crucial role.
Content enables you to position your company in the search engine results pages, to gain
reputation and to provide true value to your followers. It helps you engage them, and keep
them loyal. All of this combined is going to boost the sales and affect your business in a positive
way. Content indirectly leads you to increase profit you generate through sales.
In essence, content marketing can be regarded as a foundation of all your business efforts and
strategies online. It is a starting point when first designing a website and it assists you until the
sale is realized. Different types of content and different content strategies are used along the
way, but ultimately, it is all done with one idea in mind - content marketing assists with overall
online marketing efforts providing much-needed value to distinguish your business from many
others on the market. Finally, the content becomes a sort of a connection between you and
online users, becoming essential in the process of converting the online users, using all online
marketing strategies that are available to you.
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12
Content Marketing and
Influencer Marketing
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12.
Content
Marketing
and
Influencer
Marketing
Development and expansion of content in online marketing and its usage in many aspects of
online promotion have slowly led to the appearance of another form of marketing that can be
seen as a part of content marketing. It is influencer marketing and the main reason why it is
connected with content marketing is the fact that involves advertising through influencer’s
content.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing, also called influence marketing, is a type of online marketing focused on
working with individuals who have a certain influence in a particular sector. The influence
means they have the power to influence and persuade their followers. This way, an influencer is
able to sway the audience and affect their buying habits.
The influence is built slowly over a course of time and it represents a cumulative effort of an
individual to establish a name and an authority for themselves in a particular sector. Even
though it is a long-term effort, creating influence opens up so many opportunities to
influencers, especially in terms of business opportunities and chances to work with renowned
brands from the industry they work in.
The characteristics of the influencers include:
•
Being an expert in the industry
•
Knowing the market and current trends
•
Having the group of followers and supporters
•
Earning their trust
•
Knowing the group well and being able to address them directly
How to start with influencer marketing?
As seen, influencer marketing provides a lot of benefits, which is why you should explore ways
you can promote your business through this kind of online marketing strategy. Since this is a
planned campaign, there is a set of steps you should follow to help you when starting out with
influencer marketing.
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Identify the influencers
You will first need to identify the influencers you want to work with. To make sure you pick only
those worthy of working with, and to make sure your campaign really is effective, choose the
influencers whose target group matches yours. Since your business will be promoted to this
audience, you need to focus on the specific target group who could actually become interested
in your business. For example, if you provide email marketing software, you will need to find an
influencer who is followed by those who could be interested in such software.
Another aspect you should have in mind when choosing the influencers, you want to work with,
is whether your business is global or local. Considering this aspect will also help narrow down
the list of potential influencers because this also has a direct influence on the campaign
performance.
The best way to start looking for the influencers is to use the search engines. You can type the
keywords you are interested in and check the search engine results to see which ones match
your query. Sometimes adding a word “influencers” into the search term can help you find
ready-made lists of influencers in that particular industry. Social media is another great place
for searching influencers because every influencer uses at least one social media platform to
interact regularly with his or her target group. Besides this manual searching method, there are
tools that help you identify and rank influencers based on different criteria, such as the number
of followers, blog authority, etc.
Rank the influencers
The reason why you should rank the influencers is the fact that you will probably identify a
couple of influencers in the sector of your interest. Sometimes you might want to work with
one or several influencers at the same time. However, all the influencers you identify might not
make the cut, and you will actually end up working with selected few or even one. To make
sure you select the right influencers, the best idea is to rank them.
There are two ways to do this process. If you are using a tool to find influencers, sometimes you
will have an option to sort and compare influencers. This will basically give you a list of already
ranked influencers. The other way to select those you want to work with is to create your own
custom ranking system. Start by creating a table and then fill in the names of the influencers
you have identified. Then try to fill in some of the following data about each influencer:
•
Number of social followers (separately for each network)
•
Number of subscribers
•
Average monthly blog visits
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•
Have they worked with your competitors?
•
Reach of similar collaborations organized in the past (social media shares,
comments, blog visits, etc.)
Of course, it is not always possible to get all the data from this list, but it is recommended that
you find out as much as possible about the influencer you are interested in working with, as
well as about the previous campaigns the influencer has participated in. This all helps you
evaluate:
•
The influence that particular influencer has
•
The planned outcome you could expect from such campaign
•
How likely this collaboration is to happen
Determine the goal of the campaign
Once you know who you are working with, it is time to think about the campaign and how you
are going to organize everything. For starters, take the time to think about the goals. The
campaign goals help you evaluate the success of the campaign, which is why they are valuable
metric to have in any strategy. Goals also help you shape the path and the approach you are
going to take with the campaign, allowing you to choose actions and tactics that will help with
achieving these goals.
Alternatively, you can think about the goals before even choosing the influencers if you believe
that goals could actually help you with choosing the perfect influencer to work with.
Think about content
This is the point where you focus on the content you want to create in collaboration with an
influencer. Firstly, there is a possibility to have your own content where you will use influencer
marketing campaign to promote it. In this case, the influencer is not involved in content
creation, but instead, it is simply the one who recommends it. On the other hand, you can have
the influencer working alone on the content that is going to be designed in a way that it
promotes your business, along with the products or services you offer. Some influencers find
this approach more appealing because they have the creative freedom to design the content in
a way that matches their style. In the end, the content creation can be a true collaboration,
where you as a business will participate in content creation alongside with the influencer.
The type of content you are going to choose is determined by:
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•
•
•
Your business goals
The influencer’s idea
The target group expectations
Get in touch with the influencer
Up until this point, it has all been about preparation and your plans how you want this
collaboration to be conducted. Obviously, a great part will depend on the person you are
working with, which you will learn once you get in touch with the influencer. The process is
quite simple. You prepare the offer and you get in touch in order to pitch that offer. The best
way to do is through an email which ideally should:
Be personalized
This approach is proven to be the most effective with email campaigns so there is no reason to
avoid it when contacting the influencers. To get the recipient interested in the matter, use a
custom and engaging subject line. Also, make sure you address the influencer by his or her
name. The personalized approach shows that you have done the research and that you are
familiar with the person you are going to potentially work with.
Explain the offer
The second part of the email includes the offer for collaboration. This is where you explain all
the details about your plans and ideas. Make sure your offer is interesting and properly
explained so that you get the influencer interested. Have in mind that yours is not the only offer
the influencer will have, so your offer needs to stand out.
Highlight the benefits
To go a step further, highlight the reason why the influencer should work with you. Focusing on
benefits of such collaboration will encourage the influencer to consider your offer.
Provide contact details
Finally, you want to get a response from the influencer, as well as feedback about the offer you
proposed. This means you should provide a method for an influencer to contact you, and
preferably, you should provide a couple of methods, such as a phone number, an email
address, social media profiles, etc.
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Major benefits of influencer marketing
This strategy has been popularized greatly in the recent years, and it is a trend you will need to
look out for, but to understand how your business can actually benefit from working with
influencers, here are some of the main benefits of influencer marketing.
Expanding reach
When you decide to work with influencers, the most obvious benefit is the possibility to reach
their audience. This kind of campaign is oriented at the audience that does not necessarily have
connections or know about your business at all. In this case, you have the opportunity to
expand your reach, which usually results in expanding the number of leads, customers, website
visitors, etc.
Targeted campaign
Choosing to work with an influencer is a process that involves going through several criteria,
but one of the most important ones is choosing the influencers based on their target group.
When you choose an influencer whose target group could really be interested in your business,
you get to organize a highly-targeted campaign, and such campaign is most likely to get good
results.
Boosting sales
Since influencers have the ability to affect their audience and their buying habit, it is only
natural to expect to boost sales through such actions. To make sure you are able to track these
sales and actually account them to influencer marketing, make sure you use trackable links for
the products mentioned by the influencer.
Increasing the influence
Unlike sales, which are usually easier to track, gaining influence is a benefit you will find more
difficult to measure. However, this benefit is obviously a result of such campaign, because a
recommendation from an influencer will have a positive effect on your business and on the
reputation you have among the online users. In this sense, working with influencers actually,
helps you build your own influence and authority online through this recommendation.
Influencer marketing is not an absolutely necessary part of online marketing, but a strategy that
could be quite effective for some type of businesses. It is important to recognize the
opportunities it can provide for your company and whether it is something you should focus on.
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Rather than being an ongoing strategy, influencer marketing is actually a strategy you should
use occasionally when you notice a possibility to promote your business through such form of
online marketing. In the end, all that matters is your business, and if you believe that working
with influencers could help you take your business to the next level, this is a strategy you want
to further explore and determine how to organize it to get the most out of it.
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13
Tools and Apps to Help
You with Content
Marketing
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13. Tools and Apps to Help You with Content
Marketing
Carrying out tasks in content marketing gets easier with the right tools. There are tools for each
and every segment of the process, but this does not mean that you need or have to use all of
them. What you need is to choose a set of tools and apps that really do make your job on day-
to-day basis easier. You should feel comfortable using these tools, and preferably they should
save time and make things easier for you.
While we will suggest a certain part of tools and apps you will find beneficial in content
marketing, most of them have alternatives. This means that you need to focus on features the
tool provides. Then explore different versions and similar tools that are available on the market,
and choose the one you prefer. Some of the tools are free, while some require a payment to
gain access. Some offer a limited amount of features for free, with a paid upgrade to gain full
access. With paid tools, there is usually a trial period during which you enjoy a free access to all
of the features for a limited period of time.
When it comes to small businesses, starting out with free versions is a great way to explore the
options that are available. At this point, the number of needed features is not as extensive,
which usually means that free versions will suffice. You also have to be able to recognize the
growing needs of your business and when it is time to upgrade and move on to a more
complex, and often more expensive, tool or app.
Content creation tools and apps
The following list of tools will help you with different aspects of content creation. It includes
tools for written, visual, and audio/video content.
Writing
Headline analyzer
This tool shows suggestions on how to write a better title. For each title, you get a score, and
the score changes as you modify the title. You will see how the tool helps you choose the
optimal title or even get some new ideas.
Title capitalization
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If the rules for title capitalization are a bit blurry, here is a tool that does the work for you,
without the need for you to remember the rules.
Evernote
Evernote is an organization tool that helps you keep track of all your writing projects, notes,
ideas, and files.
Hemingway App
This tool helps you improve your writing by focusing primarily on the style. It highlights complex
or confusing sentences and it shows word alternatives to make the text more readable.
Grammarly
Grammarly is another tool to improve your writing skills. The primary focus of this tool are
grammatical and spelling mistakes, for which you are offered suggestions on how to fix them.
Write Well
If you need inspiration along the way, take a look at this resource that offers a set of writing
templates which you can customize based on your own business.
Keyword Plannerand UberSuggest
You will need to use keywords when creating content, which is where these two tools can help.
Basically, they give you keyword ideas related to the keyword you enter into the search box.
Besides content creation, these keyword suggestions are also helpful for SEO and SEM
campaigns.
Designing
Since visual content can greatly improve the performance of written content, here are a couple
of tools to help you with designing images. These are quite handy even if you are not a
professional designer.
Jing
Jing allows capturing and sharing images and video. It also provides some basic visual elements,
such as adding text, arrows, etc.
Nimbus screenshot and screencast
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This tool is the alternative to a previous one. It comes as a software to download or it can be
used as a browser extension. The key features include capturing screen as images or videos,
which can be very helpful with content creation.
Skitch
Skitch is Evernote’s app that provides the tools to share ideas and collaborate on projects. It
allows adding shapes and text to the existing or captured images, adding annotations, etc. It is
linked to your Evernote account, where you can store design projects alongside writing projects
and notes.
Canva
Canva is an extraordinary tool for designing your own images and graphics using plenty of
ready-made templates, shapes, and layouts. It uses drag-and-drop method to combine
elements and a set of tools to customize each image or infographic. It is quite straightforward
and versatile, a perfect tool if you want custom designs.
Infogram
This tool enables you to make infographics and charts using predesigned images, icons, and
layouts which you can customize.
Stencils
Stencils offers tools and features to create engaging images. The features include more than
960,000 background photos (including royalty-free ones), over 200,000 icons and graphics,
numerous templates, Google web fonts, etc.
Wordle
You can use this tool to create the word clouds. You simply paste the text or words you want to
appear in the cloud and the tool does the work.
Image Color Picker
Matching colors is an important part of image design, so here is an awesome tool where you
basically upload an image, click on the color on the image, and the tool shows you the color
code.
Placeit
Placeit is a great place for product mockups. All you need to do is provide a screenshot or a URL
and the tool will generate the mockups across different devices.
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Haiku Deck
If you want to create presentations, this tool is a good choice with lots of features to polish and
style your presentations. Templates are available, as well as access to free creative commons
images.
Photo sharing websites
Photo sharing websites offer free or paid images that can be used for visual content marketing.
This option is very helpful when you are not able to make your own images. Here are several
websites that provide images and graphics to download.
Gratisography
Pixabay
Freepik
GettyImages
Audio/Video
The purpose of the following tools is to help you with audio and video recording and editing.
Audacity
Audacity is a multi-track audio editor and recorder.
ScreenFlow
Screenflow is a software for Mac that enables screen recording, screencasting, and video
editing.
Camtasia
Camtasia enables easy video editing, with a drag-and-drop editor. Besides importing and editing
videos, it also enables screen recording.
Audioblocks
A subscription-based resource, Audioblock offers royalty free music, sound effects, and loops.
Audiojungle
This community offers over 500,000 tracks and sounds to download.
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Content optimization tools and apps
Within this group, you will find tools and apps that enable content optimization. These are
mostly SEO tools because one of the essential parts of search engine optimization is
optimization of content.
Smallpdf
In case PDFs are part of your daily work, you will find this tool quite useful. It offers features to
convert from Word to PDF, JPG to PDF, Excel to PDF and vice versa. Other features include
merging, splitting, rotating and compressing PDF files.
Remove’em
Over-optimization of the anchor text can be an issue and it may have a negative impact on your
SEO, which is why you will benefit from this tool. It basically identifies the anchor text diversity
and it shows if and where your website is at risk of anchor text over-optimization.
Word to Clean HTML
Convert the Word documents to HTML using this converter. It strips the text from the invalid or
proprietary tags, leaving you with clean HTML.
Copyscape
Copyscape is probably the best-known tool for analyzing a text for plagiarism. This helps you
check the originality of the content before it is published.
Varvy
Varvy is a great SEO tool to assist with complete website analysis, including pagespeed,
accessibility, etc. When it comes to content optimization, this tools can detect the issues such
as the validity of HTML, image optimization, page headers, etc.
Schema
Search engines have created structured data called Schema. Schema.org provides the
vocabulary of formats necessary to add information to your website content. As a result, this
enables you to markup your pages and make them better optimized for search engines.
Yoast SEO
The tool provides real-time content analysis with features to optimize your WordPress website
and the content you share on the blog.
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Broken Link Checker
This is a plugin that detects broken links in your blog posts, pages, comments, etc. Since broken
links have a negative influence on SEO, this tool can help a lot with optimizing your website. It
also detects missing images and redirects.
Content management tools and apps
When it comes to content management, you will need tools to help you organize your content
creation activity, as well as to monitor content performance. Management tools and apps offer
a lot of interesting features including automation of certain tasks, scheduling, the collaboration
between team members, etc.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a tool to organize your projects and communication with team members. Features
such as to-dos, chats, scheduling, file exchange, etc. are all helpful with project and content
management, especially if those involve a collaboration of several people.
Divvy
Divvy a platform that supports content creation and workflow. It helps you stay organized,
streamline the process of content creation and collaborate across teams.
Mintent
Mintent is a content automation platform which helps you with content management providing
tools such as content workflow automation, project management, measuring content
production, targeting messages and customers in the buying cycle, etc. It integrates with
commonly used platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Google Analytics, social media, etc.
Curata
Curata is a CMP platform that assists with content management, analytics and measuring
content impact. It also supports curation software which enables you to find, curate and share
great content to completely define your social media strategy.
Gather Content
Centralized content production, especially if you are working with a team, is the best way to
stay organized and keep up with the clear workflow. This software enables such collaboration.
Planning, organizing and managing content creation is much more productive with this kind of
management tool.
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Content distribution tools and apps
Content distribution is the process of sharing your content online through different channels,
and the most important tools you will need here should support publishing content
simultaneously on several platforms and scheduling. These are real time-savers when it comes
to content distribution.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck assists with management of Twitter account or multiple Twitter accounts. It
contains columns to display specific content such retweets, messages, tweets that contain a
specific word or phrase, etc.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a leading platform in the realm of social media management. It provides a
dashboard for managing the social profiles, as well as analytics to monitor trends and how
content shared through social media is performing. The premium plans support numerous app
integrations, custom branded URLs, contests, and many other features that can help you fully
master social media and take advantage of the possibilities this kind of content distribution
offers.
Buffer
This is another social media management platform you can explore in the attempt to optimize
your work online. Besides integrations for the most popular social networks, post scheduling,
link shortening and tracking, other features include timing tool, social analytics, calendar, etc.
All of this combined helps you manage and monitor your presence on social media.
Social Pilot
This platform’s main features include social media scheduling, social media calendar, analytics
and team collaboration. These are all perfect for optimizing content distribution and making
content marketing strategy more efficient
Storify
Storify allows creating and sharing stories within an app that support features such as drag-and-
drop re-ordering, social sharing, commenting. Advanced features include custom CSS styling,
SEO optimization, automated content curation, content approval workflow, etc.
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Tools to find influencers
As influencer marketing can take part in your content marketing strategy, you will benefit from
the following tools used to look for influencers. Through these tools, you basically search for
people who are associated with certain keywords.
Buzzsumo
When you search for a specific topic, you get the list of influencers and bloggers related to the
topic ranked based on the metrics such as page and domain authority, the number of followers,
retweet ratio, etc. The platform also offers some advanced features such as assistance with
outreach, filters, and reporting tools.
Followerwonk
This software helps you search for influencers on Twitter. It allows sorting the influencers using
different filters as well as comparing them using “Compare Users” feature.
Keyhole
This is the hashtag and keyword tracking tool that helps you find relevant content and
influencers.
Klout
It allows analysis and measurement of the individual’s influence on social networks, which is
expressed with Klout score, a numerical value between 1 and 100.
Kred
This tool uses an algorithm to calculate two scores called “influence” and “outreach”. Twitter
and Facebook activities contribute to the score and are measured to calculate the influence.
How to choose the right tools?
First of all, explore the options you have. Sometimes you might not even be aware that there
are tools that can be of great assistance in your daily work. Explore the tools based on the
different section you need help with, and check out the most common features they include.
Think about how you can benefit from these features. Think about which features would you
consider must-have. Your goal is to optimize your work by saving time and getting some
valuable insights into the performance of the content you create.
Many tools that are mentioned in this ebook, as well as their alternatives which might not be
mentioned at all, offer similar features. In this case, choosing one over the other might just be
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based on your own preference. The good thing is that most of them do offer a free trial. This is
the best way to make sure a tool is right for you before you decide to purchase a particular
plan. Make sure you explore features that are available with a free plan or a free trial, and
check if the particular tool is something that you can use in your daily work.
Not using any tools can mean that you are missing out on many possibilities and opportunities
to grow your business. On the other hand, using too many of them might be a sign you are
wasting your effort and budget on the tools you do not actually need, nor is your business
gaining any benefits from those. Ideally, you should focus on a selected few. For example,
select only one content management tool and take a look at how you can use it in a way that it
optimizes content management for your business.
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14
Content Marketing
Glossary
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14. Content Marketing Glossary
1. Affiliate marketing – Affiliate marketing is based on reaching visitors and customers
through the network of affiliates who promote the product for you. It is a performance-
based marketing because the affiliates are paid based on the achieved goals.
2. Algorithm – It is a set of rules and instructions followed by a computer program. Search
engines use an algorithm to rank the websites and show the most relevant results to the
users.
3. B2C – B2C (business to customer) is the exchange of information and transactions
between a company on one side and the customers on the other.
4. Backlink – A backlink is a link from one website to the other web resource. Backlinks are
used as one of the factors that influence Google ranking system.
5. Backlink profile – Backlink profile is the collection of websites that link to a particular
website.
6. Bing Ads – An advertising program that enables advertising through Bing search engine.
7. Bookmark – It is a URL that is stored and can easily be accessed later.
8. Brainstorm – To brainstorm means to gather ideas that spontaneously come to your
mind. This is a technique that helps with developing creativity and problem-solving.
9. Brand – A brand is a name, a term or a product design that is associated with a
particular product or organization which make them recognizable on the market.
10. Broadcast – To broadcast means to make public. In the online world, it refers to
publication through internet media, such as a podcast, a video, etc.
11. CMP – Content marketing platform, used for content management, distribution, etc.
12. Crawler – A web crawler, also known as a spider, is an Internet bot. Its purpose is to find
and index content on the internet so that the content can be included in the search
results.
13. CTA – Call to action is a button or a link that invites users to take an action.
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14. Curation – This term is used in reference to content curation and it includes activities of
gathering and publishing information related to a specific topic.
15. Domain authority – Also abbreviated DA, domain authority is a score developed by Moz,
that shows how well a website will rank in the SERP. It ranges from 0 to 100.
16. Email spam filter – These are tools developed by email service providers to sort between
wanted and unwanted email messages.
17. Email marketing – Email marketing is a part of online marketing focused on establishing
the connection with the online users and promoting a business through email
communication.
18. Engagement – Engagement is the ability to encourage a certain action, to inspire online
users to do something you see as relevant for your business.
19. Extension – Extensions are downloaded and added to a website to add new features.
They are also called plugins.
20. Follower – A follower is a person who supports you, and this support is usually
expressed by following a social media account or joining the mailing list.
21. Google AdWords – The advertising program enabling advertising through Google search
engine.
22. HTML–Hypertext Markup Language is a standardized system for tagging text files.
23. HTML editor – The editor inside CMS platform enabling you to access and alter HTML
code.
24. Inbound link – An inbound link is a so-called receiving link. It means that someone has
linked to your website.
25. Index – To index a page means that search engines crawlers have been able to access
the page and make it available when a relevant search query is conducted.
26. Keyword – Keyword is a word or phrase that is associated with website content.
27. Landing page – A landing page is an entry page where the online users access the
website. It can be a click-through page, after which the user continues the visit, or lead
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generation page, also called as a lead capture, in which case the conversion happens on
this page.
28. Lead – Leads are contacts that are potentially interested in becoming customers, due to
the fact that they are within your target group.
29. Link building – Link building is an SEO process that involves a set of activities to earn
links to your website and specific pages on the website.
30. Link juice – This term is used in SEO to signify power a website has that can be passed to
a website it is linking to. It is seen as a vote of trust because if you link to a source, it is
as if you are recommending it, so your authority passes on to that website. This is one of
the factors that influences ranking in the search engines.
31. Metric –In online marketing, a metric is an instrument to measure something, usually
related to the website analytics.
32. Niche – In terms of online marketing, niche refers to a segmented topic that is narrowed
down and targeted at the relevant audience.
33. NoIndex – It is a tag that instructs the search engines not to index a specific page of the
website.
34. Off-site optimization – This is the process of improving website positioning through
actions that are hosted on external websites, such as the process of gaining inbound
links.
35. On-site optimization – It includes a set of actions to optimize a website and its content
to improve the ranking in the search engine results.
36. Online marketing – Online marketing, or internet marketing, is the method of
advertising products or services using online tools, strategies and methods. It includes
different media for such promotion, which is why there are subtypes of online
marketing, which include content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing,
etc.
37. Organic reach – It includes the number of people who were shown your content using
unpaid distribution channels. It is also called natural or free reach, as opposed to paid
reach.
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38. Organic search results – Organic search results are those that appear based on the
relevance in the search engine results pages, as opposed to non-organic or paid search
results.
39. Page authority – Page authority (PA) is a Moz’s score that predicts how well a page will
rank in the search engine results pages. It ranges from 0 to 100.
40. Performance–The performance represents the accomplishment of given tasks. When it
comes to content, performance is used to describe how content is accepted, whether it
is generating visits, social shares, etc.
41. Plugin – A plugin or an extension is installed to a website to introduce new features.
42. Positioning – In marketing, positioning refers to the place a company or a brand has in
the mind of consumers. In terms of SEO, positioning is expressed through a rank the
website has in the search engines.
43. Publishing platform–It is a platform or software used for publishing content online.
44. Ranking – In SEO, ranking refers to the position a website has in the search engine result
pages.
45. Reader friendly – It means that it is adapted to the online users and adapted so that
they can easily skim through and read it.
46. Referral–This represents the traffic that comes to your website through other sources,
for example, from other websites.
47. Rel=canonical – It is a tag, an HTML element, that helps with preventing duplicate
content. When you use this tag, you will provide “canonical URL” which means that URL
will be a preferred version of the web page.
48. ROI – Return on investment is used to compare the profitability of a strategy by
comparing the profit and the investment.
49. Segmentation – This term is usually used in email marketing where segmentation refers
to dividing something, such as email subscribers, based on different criteria.
50. SEM – Search engine marketing (SEM) is a type of online marketing. It includes
promoting and advertising a website, or specific website pages, through the search
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engines using either paid reach (such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads) or organic reach
(search engine optimization).
51. SEO – Search engine optimization (SEO) is a part of search engine marketing. The goal of
SEO is to optimize and promote a website through organic, also called natural or free
results.
52. SEO friendly – If something is SEO friendly, it means that it follows SEO guidelines. In
terms of URL building, an SEO friendly URL is the one that is short, descriptive, readable,
and without unusual characters.
53. SERP – A search engine result page (SERP) is a list of results shown by the search
engines as a response to a search query. SERP can contain organic results as well as paid
results (search engine ads).
54. Server – It is a computer that hosts and manages a website. It delivers the data to the
online users.
55. SMM – Social media marketing (SMM) is a part of online marketing. It includes
promotion of a business through social media platforms. In order to achieve this goal,
you will need to create social media profiles or pages through which you will then
interact with social media users.
56. Software – A program or an application used by a computer.
57. Spider – Search engine crawlers are also called spiders. They are programs used to
discover and index website content so that this content can be shown in the search
engine result pages.
58. Subscribe – Subscribing means to express an agreement to be notified about future
updates through the email address provided when subscribing. Online users usually
subscribe for blog updates.
59. Toggle – Toggle means to switch from one setting to another. In terms of text editor,
you can use Toggle option to switch to an HTML editor.
60. Traffic – In online marketing, traffic or web traffic is the amount of data sent and
received by the website visitors. It includes both the number of visits (unique and
returning) as well as the number of pages visited.
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61. Transcript – Transcript is a material presented as written text or printer friendly version.
This material is originally presented in another format, usually audio or video.
62. User experience – The term user experience (UX) includes all the aspects of the
interaction between the online users and a company. When it comes to online
marketing, the user experience on the website is one of the metrics that affect website
positioning.
63. Visibility – Website visibility is the term used to describe how likely a website is to be
discovered on the internet through the search engine results. Ranking high in the search
engine result pages ensures high visibility because the top results get the most visits.
64. Vlog – A vlog is a blog which is in a form of a video.
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15
Questionnaire
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15. Questionnaire
Questions
1. Content marketing is focused on:
a) Creating and distributing content that directly or indirectly promotes your business
b) Creating and distributing video files exclusively
c) Creating and managing a WordPress blog
d) Distributing third-party online materials
2. What do you need to think about when creating content?
a) Organic and paid reach
b) Search engine result pages
c) Social media marketing
d) Audience and niche
3. Which of these is a type of written content?
a) Podcast
b) Ebook
c) Infographic
d) Live chat
4. When writing content, you should think about:
a) Writing for both the people and the search engines
b) Writing only posts that have more than 1000 words
c) The data from the Google AdWords
d) Social media guidelines
5. When using images, it is important to:
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a) Make your own photos
b) Have the permission to use the image
c) The image is irrelevant but funny
d) Use only images downloaded for free
6. What are keywords?
a) Headers and titles on the blog
b) Words used for the infographic
c) Words or phrases that are associated with the website and its content
d) Irrelevant terms that are part of visual representations
7. One of the most common references in content marketing is Bill Gates’s essay titled:
a) Content is Dead
b) Content is the King
c) Content is the Future
d) Content is Old News
8. The statistics show that:
a) Visual aspect boosts the performance of content
b) SEO is a part of content marketing
c) Shorter articles perform better
d) Companies that use content marketing do not have good results
9. Online marketing is also called:
a) Internet marketing
b) Social media marketing
c) Content marketing
d) Email marketing
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10. A CTA is a link that can be displayed as:
a) A goal
b) An image or a text
c) A tool
d) A landing page and a lead
11. How are content marketing and SEO connected?
a) SEO uses content to increase organic reach
b) Content is used in paid advertising only
c) Content marketing promotes your brand on social media
d) They are not connected
12. An infographic is:
a) An audio representation of the data
b) A visual representation of the data
c) A written type of content
d) The most commonly used type of visual content
13. Which of these is a type of blog post?
a) Newsletter
b) Graphic
c) List
d) Live chat
14. Successful content creation strategy requires:
a) Content that is written for search engines only
b) Using guest blogging as a preferred method
c) Using only one type of content
d) Content to be up-to-date and relevant to your target group
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15. The success of the email marketing campaign is based on:
a) The number of social media users and skillfulness to communicate the message
b) The quality of the mailing list and content that is shared through email campaigns
c) The quality of the mailing list and the SEO
d) The bounce rate and click-through rate
16. An influencer is:
a) A person who is proficient with using Google AdWords
b) A competitor
c) A person who is an expert in the industry with a loyal fan base
d) A person who is working for the company
17. To make sure your social media post gains as much as visibility as possible you should:
a) Post every day at the same time
b) Not include visual elements into the post
c) Not share too many posts at the same time
d) Post at generally recommended time for posting on social media
18. Which of these is a channel for content distribution?
a) Social media
b) Google Analytics
c) Bounce rate
d) Landing page
19. What is the first step in starting with influencer marketing?
a) Rank the influencers
b) Identify the influencers
c) Get in touch with the influencer
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d) Boost sales
20. What is a conversion?
a) Links to the internal website pages
b) Landing page that contains a CTA
c) The number of users who visited a single page on your website
d) A desired action you want website visitors to complete
21. What is a bounce rate?
a) Links to the home page
b) The time one user spends on your website
c) The number of users who visited a single page on your website
d) The number of unique visitors
22. How can you monitor content performance metrics in Google Analytics?
a) Using goals and advanced segments
b) Using bounce rate and landing page
c) Using shortening service
d) Using the CTA
23. A popular community for content distribution is:
a) Quora
b) Delicious
c) Twitter
d) Influencer
24. Which of these are paid advertising methods for distribution of content?
a) Search engine ads and social network advertising
b) Google AdWords and Google Analytics
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c) Email campaign
d) Search engine ads and email campaigns
25. How can you calculate the conversion rate?
a) (Number of unique visitors ÷ Number of visits) 100
b) (Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of visits) 100
c) (Average session duration ÷ Number of visits) 100
d) (Page views ÷ Number of visits) * 100
26. Quality digital content is:
a) Short and concise
b) Relevant, shareable and engaging
c) Entertaining and short-lived
d) Broken into segments without any visual elements
27. What is niche?
a) A topic you are focused on which also corresponds to the target group interests
b) A type of influencer marketing
c) A method in the process of content distribution
d) Organic reach
28. What does content distribution represent?
a) The best way to generate ROI
b) The high-quality content
c) The process of delivering content to the online users
d) The process of tagging content
29. Knowing about your audience when creating content helps you to:
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a) Create SEO friendly content
b) Predict what kind of content they would need
c) Distribute content on social media
d) Use affiliate marketing
30. What problem might occur with content syndication?
a) Duplicate content
b) Content distribution
c) Authority
d) Guest blogging
31. Content marketing metrics allow you:
a) To increase the influence of your brand
b) The chance to obtain feedback from the online community
c) To gain authority by providing content that offers value
d) To assess your content marketing strategy
32. Which of these are content creation tactics?
a) Social media and email
b) Bounce rate and page views
c) Attention grabbers and storytelling
d) Advanced segments and goals
33. What are the benefits of accepting guest posts on your blog?
a) Duplicate content and content management
b) Increasing sales and leads
c) Getting the pages indexed and shown in the search results
d) Keeping your blog active and fresh
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34. SEM refers to:
a) Social media reach
b) Social media engagement
c) Search engine marketing
d) Search engine optimization
35. Which of these can be used to monitor metrics relevant for content marketing?
a) Goals and segments in Google Analytics
b) Content distribution channels
c) Target group
d) Attention grabbers and storytelling
36. What is the top challenge in content marketing?
a) Producing engaging content
b) Paid promotion
c) Content distribution
d) Email campaign
37. Influencer marketing is focused on:
a) Social media marketing
b) Working with influential individuals on content creation projects
c) Gaining visibility in search engine result pages
d) Using both organic and paid reach in SERP
38. Unique visits is a metric indicating:
a) The total number of times one visitor visits the website
b) The total number of visitors who visit the website for the first time
c) The total number of pages that the users have clicked on
d) The average number of pages visited per one visit
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39. Which of these is a benefit of content marketing?
a) Producing content consistently
b) Producing engaging content
c) Lead generation
d) Content management
40. How to avoid duplicate content with content syndication?
a) Use guest blogging guidelines
b) Use rel=canonical and NoIndex tags
c) Use the HTML code
d) Work with authority websites
41. What are the benefits of working with the influencers?
a) Expanding reach and increasing the influence
b) Content management
c) Producing engaging content
d) Ranking the influencers
42. Why is email marketing the most important distribution channel?
a) It is the best way to reach new customers
b) It is the easiest strategy
c) It delivers the highest ROI
d) It helps with lead generation
43. What is a CMS?
a) Content media strategy
b) Content management system
c) Content marketing strategy
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d) Content management strategy
44. An SEO friendly URL is:
a) Long
b) Full of unusual symbols
c) Complex and long
d) Readable and short
45. Which of these is a practice to avoid when optimizing content?
a) Adding headings
b) Image optimization
c) Alt text
d) Over-optimization
46. The main advantage of using paid advertising in content distribution is because:
a) It is the cheapest way to reach new leads
b) It helps with social media influence
c) It is fast and easy to manage
d) It increases organic reach
47. Which of these is considered over-optimization?
a) Website comments
b) Placing too many keywords in the footer
c) Video optimization
d) Alt text
48. What does image optimization include?
a) Resizing the images and using alt text
b) Placing keywords in the footer of the website
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c) Over-optimization
d) Editing and proofreading
49. What are some of the goals you can achieve through content marketing?
a) Optimize the website
b) Get more visits and increase leads
c) Work with competitors
d) Explore social media metrics
50. Why should you analyze the source of visits on your website?
a) To optimize images and video
b) To use the CTA on the landing page
c) To gain reputation
d) To compare them and determine which distribution strategy brings success
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Answers
1. a
2. d
3. b
4. a
5. b
6. c
7. b
8. a
9. a
10. b
11. a
12. b
13. c
14. d
15. b
16. c
17. c
18.19.20.21.22.23.24.25.26.27.28.29.30.31.32.33.34.a
b
d
c
a
a
a
b
b
a
c
b
a
d
c
d
c
35.36.37.38.39.40.41.42.43.44.45.46.47.48.49.50.a
a
b
b
c
b
a
c
b
d
d
c
b
a
b
d
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16
Conclusion
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16. Conclusion
As we have taken you to this journey of what content marketing is and how implements into a
business strategy, we can now go back to dwell on the statement “Content is the king” with a
deeper understanding of that statement. What Bill Gates predicted back in the days when we
could hardly grasp what the internet is, let alone where it will take us, is proving to be so true
nowadays.
Content has indeed taken over the internet and has become a way to express yourself, a way to
reach new people, to show off your creativity and talent. Ultimately, it has become a way to
reach customers and new opportunities to grow your business.
This means only one thing. Content has to be considered as one of many business strategies,
and as such it has to meet certain standards. It has to be personalized and customized
according to a target group to reach its full potential. It has to be original and trustworthy to
gain a loyal readership. Finally, it has to be engaging and informative to grow your audience and
reach more people.
Even though content marketing has its challenges, when we think about successful content
marketing we often associate it with these qualities:
Content requires customization and personalization
These two qualities are what differentiates great content from average content. Writing in
general and trying to reach everybody hardly ever brings any result. So does lack of
personalization. To make sure that content truly achieves its purpose, you have to make sure it
resonates well with your target group.
You will achieve this with customizing and personalizing your content. Customization here
refers to choosing different content types, finding the right approach and technique, etc. When
it comes to personalization, it has been concluded that content that is personalized tends to
bring more success. This means that people tend to respond better when they know that there
is a person behind the content. It also means that the response rate is higher when you directly
address your group in a way they can identify with.
Quality is the norm
Quality as a requirement in content creation has never been more important than now, mainly
because a large amount of content being published. Quality has become a sort of a way of
differentiating things on the internet. People are now aware that the content that reaches
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them does not always meet this requirement, which is why they have become more selective of
things they interact with.
For businesses, this means that content marketing requires more work and dedication to create
content that really meets these high standards.
As content creation goes through phases, it is essential to keep uniqueness, relevance, and
accuracy. These all contribute to creating content of high quality, content that will generally
perform better and bring better results.
Understanding management and optimization
Just because you publish content it does not mean you should expect instant success. One of
the ways you surely can improve the performance of the content is skillful management and
optimization. Despite the fact that these are a bit more technical aspects of content marketing,
they are still important for the overall performance of the content. Therefore, you will need a
deeper understanding of the process involved in management and optimization to make sure
the content meets the standards, and that it is discovered and indexed in the search results.
Using content distribution to advantage
Content distribution has a huge role in reaching the end users. There are lots of distribution
channels that are available, and choosing the right ones is solely based on your content
marketing strategy. It depends on your target group and their habits when it comes to online
presence. Choose the channels that are most likely to help you increase the reach of content
you publish and make sure you monitor the performance. Also, keep up with the trends. If you
notice a new social network or bookmarking website that is gaining in popularity, you should
get on the bandwagon and start building your presence immediately.
Analyze the data
In the end, you get to analyze everything. An analysis helps you make things better, it helps you
perfect your approach and adjust the strategy in a way to bring better results. What you need
to focus on is how the content performs, which content has the best performance and what
might be causing such great performance. Sometimes a paid promotion can increase the virality
of a great post, or sometimes working with influencers can prove to be more effective.
When you analyze both the metrics and the feedback obtained from the community, you will
get better insights into your content and how it contributes to achieving the company goals.
After all, the content is a part of online marketing, which means that a successful
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implementation of content brings to successful online marketing with all its benefits for your
company.
The trends are still supporting the fact that content has such an important role when creating
an online presence, that to begin an online strategy without thinking about content sets you to
fail. In fact, various studies confirm that most marketers agree about the importance of content
in establishing an online presence. Even though there might be obstacles along the way,
overcoming those obstacles will help you explore the true potential of content marketing. One
of the trends that particularly stands out is the significance of visual and video content and how
these types of content tend to perform better.
Content marketing is and it will remain to be an essential part of forming your online presence.
Regardless if you are a small-sized or a large company, regardless if there is a team of experts
working on content marketing or if one person handles all of the tasks, the potential that
content can gain is always there. It can gain visibility, it can help you earn reputation and
promote your business. Eventually, it can bring customers and increase sales, which is what
most marketers are trying to do. This is why content marketing is a strategy you should focus
on and explore options that can help you define an approach that will bring most benefits to
your company.
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