Content marketing is a must for businesses today, but most companies do it wrong. To improve your strategy and ensure that you’re doing content marketing properly, we’ve put together five essential tips to maximize content success.
Use these content tips to better reach new customers.
Content marketing is a hot topic, but it’s rarely perfected. Now you may probably think that it’s not true. And sure, maybe you did create the best piece of content ever…
You said to yourself “I mastered content marketing and there’s no way people will think it absurd!” right? But are people actually reading it?
Your content is likely good when it comes to the quality of information you are offering. But does that matter if there aren’t any results?
Here, we’re talking about how many visits your piece got, conversions from soft leads into customers, or hard sales and profit.
Content is nothing without the consumer – The one who reads, watches, or listens to consume (not necessarily enjoy) that piece of media.
You can create a game-changing article yet if no one wants it then you still won’t get any traffic for it.
One way to solve this issue is to ask yourself how well you market and promote what you published.
You must ensure people are aware of its existence so they come looking for more articles like yours.
This step seems simple enough but I see many bloggers neglecting their responsibility when it comes time for social sharing…
Don’t make the mistake of assuming everyone will read/see/listen just because you’ve published for the world to see.
That being said, here are five important principles to maximize content success.
1. Best Content doesn’t necessarily mean most Successful Content
The length of time you spend working on a piece of content is not worth it if the output isn’t professional.
Imagine you spent days working on a piece of content. You do your research, write it, and improve it.
You have proofread and improved some more so you include amazing visuals explainer videos with the search intent for interesting queries.
After everything is perfect with content on the first draft including visuals/videos etc., you hit the publish button.
The result then looks disastrous – meaning only a few people read your content and the traffic dies out too.
And, then out of the blue comes another average-quality article from an established site that hires a mediocre ghostwriter but receives thousands of visitors.
It is important to maintain professionalism when engaging in online writing as it will impact how people perceive you and your work
There is nothing more frustrating than seeing your competition get all the attention for mediocre work.
We live in a world that can be unfair, and it shouldn’t happen this way in an ideal world, right? The same thing applies to content marketing too.
It’s not a level playing field- you should be aware that there are some companies out there who have the resources and capability of spending much more than other brands on their influencer outreach tactics.
They don’t necessarily offer better products or services, they just invest in this one tactic way before anyone else does.
Compared with John and Tom
It can be compared to a series of boxing matches between John and Tom where John has to keep on trying even when he loses the first few rounds.
He needs to pick his battles with Tom rather than always charging head-on if he wants any chance at beating him in these matchups.
What do you get from this example? In this scenario, Tom is an established brand that has large newsletter subscribers and social media followers.
It’s hard to compete with a well-known party that is also surrounded by brand ambassadors. However, you need to play your own game instead of trying to beat them at theirs.
Strategies to maximize content success
- If you’re not ready to wade into the fray, here’s an idea. When starting, it’s important to keep your expectations modest. Cover topics that your competition hasn’t yet. You’ll be ahead of them for a change and can easily avoid any potential trouble.
- Know your competitor’s weaknesses and use them to leverage yourself. Maybe you’re more agile or can create controversial content.
- An effective content promotion strategy will take time, but in the end, it’s worth your efforts. A well-established brand with engaged fans is key for the success of content so put together a plan that works best for you and follow through.
2. Create Multi-Purpose Content
You’ve put lots of research, time, and effort into creating your content piece.
Leverage your content investment by creating other types of content to increase brand awareness and expand reach. For example, one of the most popular pieces can be repurposed as:
Conference talk – You could give a conference talk on how you came up with this idea or what mistakes not to make when writing it all down in detail.
Support article – Do an AMA (ask me anything) about research details for those who want more information than is provided in the original piece.
Podcast topic – Your readers would love hearing from real people too so try making a podcast out of some interesting insights. This piece could also work well as an interview with another professional in the same industry.
Guest post – about a related company/business that might have insight on how our business operates and what makes it stand out from its competitors.
How to Outrank Your SERP Rivals?
Here’s a piece of good news for you. Now you can create relevant content and outrank SERP rivals for your target keywords using the Semrush SEO Content Template tool.
You can easily triple the ROI on your investment by creating multi-purpose content.
3. Creating the Best Content Isn’t That Hard
There are no shortcuts when it comes to creating valuable content. You might also realize that crafting the best content isn’t as hard as you think.
It just takes a lot of work and creativity to make something valuable for your visitors. As a marketer, you must build something that provides the most value to visitors to maximize content success.
Ensure that your content satisfies their search intent by thinking like them. The tone of voice can be a helpful tool to create the best user experience for your visitors.
You should focus on creating something that provides value and answers their questions correctly.
Make sure to create the most up-to-date and accurate content piece when you’re covering a topic that’s been covered before.
Let’s see one example again. Suppose you want to rank well for “Banana bread recipe”. Then, your page should have a detailed description of banana bread on it.
Not only that, but you should also be sure to mark up all information about this topic with structured data as well.
When searching for recipes online, many potential bakers prefer watching videos as well as reading reviews of other users’ experiences with the same product.
It will help them decide on whether or not it’s worth trying out. Maybe you can even add a feature that lets your visitors upload photos of their Banana bread after they’ve baked them using your recipe.
4. The Key to ROI
The core content is the most important part of every business website because it keeps visitors engaged and interested in your products or services.
It’s easy to make a soft sell after you’ve made this connection with customers, so focus on creating high-quality core content for your site first.
But, instead of just hoping that a core content will perform well on its own, it might be helpful to create related content around the topic.
This way you can pull in visitors and encourage them to read your core content. It is similar to the classic “hubs and spoke” method for writing web pages.
Instead of putting all traffic through a one-piece or hub page with lots of links back out again, why not have several different topics so visitors are more likely to stay on the site?
You may be wondering whether it makes sense for a technical SEO tool to write about link building.
It’s somewhat related because of the shared topic, right? But is link building core content for an SEO software?”
The answer is “No” Then, is this investment worth your time and money? It depends. If your core content is already doing well, then go for it.
However, if your core content isn’t in order yet, you might want to hold off until that’s fixed first.
If you have a good reason to create the content, do it because there could be lots of PR value in it. PR gets attention and links benefit your site as a whole as well.
Advice to maximize content success
The goal of your company’s content is to provide value while growing the business. The best way to do this?
- Create original, high-quality material that resonates with potential customers and leads them down a marketing funnel toward conversion.
- Content marketing is a great way to scale your digital presence, but it requires careful planning. If you want short-term success and want to invest in a piece that’s not related to your business’ products or services, it may not be the right decision.
5. Control & Protect Your Content
To maximize content success, you should be mindful of where you publish your content. There are many benefits to publishing your content on social platforms such as LinkedIn Pulse, Medium, and Quora Posts.
You can start writing straight away without much hassle or preparation needed since you do not have any other task aside from creating the post itself.
Plus if it’s published on a platform with an already large audience then there is potential that more people will read what you wrote.
Though there are some major benefits to creating content out there, there also come with it many risks that need protecting.
“Content is the new way of doing marketing,” says Joe Pulizzi from Content Marketing Institute. It’s no surprise why marketers would jump onto this method so quickly.
After all, who wouldn’t want an easier and more affordable option for promoting their business? However, there are a few major downsides too.
You’d be making a huge investment by putting out your best work only for someone else to steal or claim as theirs to get ahead of you.
Let’s see two important downsides of using those platforms:
No Control over
If you are building a business online, it is important to keep your content always accessible.
You have no control over these external platforms. They could be shut down at any moment due to a shift in their policy (e.g Google Plus).
These types of changes can leave your information inaccessible for users until the platform decides to restore it. Or they may even choose to start pushing a premium subscription service instead.
Even if the platform allows ads, you’ll see competitors’ adverts on the same page as yours.
This is not only annoying but it can also harm your brand if people assume that these companies are working together or even affiliated with one another.
Questionable ROI
This is another disadvantage of using an external platform. The lack of support for adding newsletter signup forms and call-to-action boxes can make it difficult to get a good ROI on your content.
Additionally, when your content is going viral and gaining links they’re pointing to the external platform.
This could make it harder for you to rank in search engines as well as create a dependency upon that third-party site
Final Advice
If your business relies on converting traffic through the content you create, it would be a good idea not to post all the content.
Try publishing an introduction or summary there and lead people back to your site where they’ll find more information about what interests them.
Conclusion: Maximize content success
When you’re working on your content, make sure to consider whether or not it’s going to provide a sufficient ROI.
Content marketing isn’t just about creating the best piece of content you can. It’s also important that we get great returns on our investments (ROIs).
This means making sure we know what works and doesn’t work when creating this type of content on site.
To maximize content success, make sure to promote your content on social media and re-purpose it for different purposes. For example, Guest posts, Conference talks, or FAQs.
To keep your content marketing game strong, work hard to beat out the competition and fight for the battles you can win.
Also protect your investment in this endeavor because if it’s vital to business success, then management should hold onto that tight.
By far, this is considered the best way to shield your investment in content marketing.
