5 Content Marketing Strategies that will
Skyrocket your Engagement and Conversion
By
Hephzibah Asaolu
www.hephzysocial.com
Content marketing as we all know, is the art of creating and distributing valuable
content to attract and convert potential buyers into customers. Now, for this
system to work properly, you need to design a content marketing strategy .
Having a concrete content marketing strategy will enable you to get inbound
traffic to your website, build brand awareness through engagement, generate
natural link popularity for SEO, open a channel of communication through social
shares and comments etc.
In this book, I will be looking at five (5) great content marketing best practices.
These are practices that will help you to create a winning content plan and
focused execution. You need a strong foundation of content that attracts
prospective customers at every stage of the buying circle.
Below are the best practices:
1. Know what your audience
The best way to get results from your content marketing efforts is to know your
audience and deliver what they want for them. In my post on content marketing
strategy checklist, I enumerated steps to know your audience and take them
through the buying stages.
You need to know what your audience cares about, what their interests and
motives are and their pain points. This will help you to know the type of content
you need to create for them. For example, the content a new visitor will need is
different from the one you will create for a prospective buyer who is getting
ready to make a purchase. You need to design content according to their buying
stages. Below is an image of your audience's journey through the buying stages.
There are four stages highlighted in the diagram above. When your audience first
comes to your website, they are like suspects. They want to know all about your
products and services. It is at this stage, you need to provide insightful
information about your products. For example, you can write how-to-guides, how
to articles, etc. These information will educate your audience about what you
have to offer them.
The second stage is the prospect stage. They have read your content and
understood your product or services. They are seeking for more information to
enable them make informed decision. This is where you can create e-books and
free reports.
When they are sure you have what they need, they will start interacting with your
business. They can sign up to your email list or contact you directly.
The last stage opportunity is when your audience is ready to make a purchase
based on your contents so far.
These are the stages you need to take your audience through with your content
marketing. This is a great content marketing strategy best practice that will
greatly help you to attract and retain your prospects.
2. Create a Content Formula
Content marketing is all about creating content that will help your audience solve
their most pressing needs or problems. To do this, you will need to create a
content formula that will help your customer make an informed decision. Above, i
made mention of the kind of contents that will be suitable for your audience at
each buying stage. Here you will see the formula to create those awesome posts.
Below are three foolproof formula you can use:
i. Use a List post
In a research carried out by OkDork and Buzzumo, it was discovered that list posts
receive most social shares after infographics. List posts are very popular and can
easily go viral. So, how do you write a great list posts:
a. Use the right number of items.
Ok Dor and Buzzumo analyzed 100 million articles and discovered that the most
popular form of list post that receives the greatest share are the ones with the
number 10,23, 16 and 24.
b. Make your list post easily digestible.
c. Include an introduction before you start creating the list just like I did above.
d. Add pictures
e. Write a conclusion
ii. Select a Viral Topic
The reason why most people don't succeed in content marketing is simply
because of the topic they use in creating content. In those days, you can succeed
with any topic you want. But nowadays, competitions are stiff and a lot of people
create content on a daily basis. So, your content needs to stand out. You need
create a topic that will make people want to share your content and that will
interest your prospects. The best way to do these are:
a. Look at what works for your competitors
There is no point reinventing the wheel. Check out your competitors websites
and look at headings that are creating a buzz on their websites. You can use ahref
or buzzumo to find it out. You can then model your topic after their own. For
example, if you are in the dog collar business and you are looking for article ideas
that work. Go to www.buzzumo.com and look for articles that are receiving high
number of shares.
In the image above, you can see different topics that are receiving a high number
of shares. Look at the topic "22 adorable dog collars every dog owner needs". You
can decide to make your own "26 adorable collars dog owners can't do without"
b. Use Quora to look at the questions your prospects are asking. This will give
you a clue as to what your audience wants to know. For example if you search for
dog collar, you will see different topic ideas you can use for your contents (as
shown below).
c. Copy your competitor's URL to google keyword planner tool and look at their
keywords. You can get an idea of what is working for them. For example, one of
the top dog collar website is http://www.petsmart.com/. So, go over to google
keyword planner and type in the website.
iii. Create the post, publish and promote it
Now that you know what type of content you want to create, you can create a top
quality list post on your topic. After you publish the post, you will need to
promote it effectively. If you do it well, it will go viral and you will have several
eyeballs on it.
3. Create an editorial calendar
In my post on how to create a marketing content editorial calendar. I provide
useful tips on how to create a winning content calendar.
A content calendar is more or less the same with the calendar you are familiar
with. The only twist to it is that you schedule your content creation, publishing,
promotion and measuring around specific dates.
Content marketing calendar helps to simplify the process of content creation,
plan and organize content publishing around events,dates and launches and gives
you enough time to create your content.
There are many content marketing calendar tools you can start with on the web.
Find some of them below:
1. Google docs
This is created by google and it looks just your Microsoft Excel. You can use it to
create your content marketing calendar.
2. WordPress Editorial Calendar
This is a WordPress plugin you can download and install on your blog. It provides
an overview of your blog and tells you when you need to make a post. It has
different features such as post dates, publish post titles, contents and times etc.
3. Hubspot editorial calendar
This is good for business owners who are just getting their feet wet in content
marketing.
Other great ones are Coschedule and Kapost editorial calendars.
4. Create Search Engine Optimizated contents
SEO is not dead as some people make us believe. You still need to attract search
engine traffic to maximize your earnings online. In order to create a content that
will benefit both humans and search engines, you need to:
i. Use one keyword per page - Choose relevant keyword for your content and
optimize it appropriately
ii. Use your keyword four or five times in your content. People who visit your
website through search engines will want to read about what brought them there
in the first place.
iii. Use a minimum page length for your post. It is discovered that longer posts
(1000 +) get more shared than shorter ones (300-500).
5. Measure Your content marketing ROI
After putting your best effort into content marketing, you need to measure your
results. In my post on "how to measure your content marketing ROI". I provide
specific insight on what you need to measure. The first one is the reach
(measured by impressions, traffic, subscriber/audience size, share of voice,
audience penetration across organization). You need to measure your reach by
the channels you are using for content marketing (website, blog, social media
channels etc.)
You measure page view, unique visitors, average time on page, engagement,
conversion. etc. I recommend you read the post for more insight.
Above are the five strategies that will help you skyrocket your content
engagement and conversion. Put them into practice today and see the level of
success you will achieve.
What other content marketing strategies do you think is necessary to attain
success in online marketing?
I invite you to check out my blog www.hephzysocial.com and read interesting
posts that will help you to skyrocket your business to the next level.
ABOUT HEPHZYSOCIAL
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* Help customers get the most from your products
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HOW HEPHZYSOCIAL CAN HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS
I'm a big believer that every online marketer must master the art of content
marketing and promotion. But with the increasing amounts of information out
there, how can you find practical techniques that will help you to achieve the
goals highlighted above?
That's where Hephzysocial comes in.
Hephzysocial has grown into one of the most popular content marketing sites on
the web for one simple reason:
Everything I publish is super actionable and designed to help you get more leads,
customers and sales.
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