Tony Messer
August 29, 2017
As the importance of content becomes ever clearer, content marketing has moved to be a central part of any company’s marketing strategy. The aim is to make interesting and interactive content but how can you do this? And how do you make the most of your content when you do create it?
Here are a few ideas to help plan your content calendar.
Reinvent posts as infographics or videos
According to a study by HubSpot, 55% of visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a website. This means you need to grab their attention quickly and big, text heavy sections aren’t always the best way to do this. One great alternative to this is to create an infographic of the content or to take the content and make it into a video. Go for short and snappy videos that are backed with extra written content for maximum impact.
Collaborate with others
There are two main aims with any piece of content – to attract readers who may potentially be leads or even customers and to register with search engine bots to rate the website. Collaboration is a great way to do both of these things by adding your name to other people’s blogs and therefore spreading your reach and expertise. The same applies when accepting guest bloggers on your blog – you offer more to your audience and improve your search engine rankings. Look for bloggers who offer topics of interest to your audience but who aren’t your direct competitors.
Use podcasts
Creating a regular podcast is an excellent way to reach new people and can help share concepts such as company values, vision and successes as well as offering useful information to your listeners. Look at having a theme for the podcast and ensure each episode fits in with that theme. Also, invest in some good quality equipment to record the audio to ensure that it sounds professional and is easy to listen to. Once created, you can email subscribers to let them know it is available and market it on social media.
Use case studies
Whether repurposing content or looking to create something new, case studies can work well for any business offering products or services. This is a great way to show what your product or service does and use user generated content to prove it. It helps people relate to other’s problems and see your product or service as part of the solution. It also helps with social proof.
Make social media promotion integral
With over two billion users, there is no ignoring Facebook and sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are also hugely important parts of promoting your content. You can maintain a presence on all of them but concentrate the most efforts on the platforms that you know your audience uses the most and ensure the content and visuals are suitable for each one – for example, Pinterest use long and tall images while Instagram’s are square.
Repurpose content into a SlideShare
Like making content into a video or infographic, repurposing content into a SlideShare is another way to reach a new audience. People enjoy visuals and slide shares are a great combination of an infographic and a blog post – they have plenty of informative content like a post but are more visual based like an infographic. They can also easily be added to the website and shared on social media.
Gain exposure through commenting
Some experts believe that blog commenting is dead due to the importance of social media. But this can be a way to get your name out there if it is done correctly. Don’t just comment two or three-word answers that are vague and pointless like ‘Great post’ or ‘Nice job’ as these look spammy. Instead, interact with the author of the content, ask questions or add points to what they have said to encourage conversation. And in some cases, these comments will include an automatic link to your website that can help SEO a little too.
Use interesting facts in your promotion
Everyone loves a good interesting fact and these can be part of promoting your content. Look for topics that are being discussed on social media, look for ‘holidays’ that celebrate a certain thing such as International Cat Day and see if they have relevance to your business. Then create interesting fact graphics or use quality images to pair with the facts and publish them on social media. Ask your audience questions, ask for their own facts or anything that encourages interaction.
Answer questions
While your blog posts should always aim to answer those questions that potential customers have, make sure you actually answer any questions they do ask after you have written the piece. This might be in blog comments, by email or on social media but if someone reaches out and asks anything, even if it is tenuously related, make sure you engage with them. This helps build rapport with potential customers and shows you care about their opinions.
These are just a few ideas to help make the most of your content marketing and reach bigger audiences.
Do you have any favourite tactics that have worked well for your business?
