Content marketing isn’t “easy” but you definitely don’t need to make it harder than it has to be. The following 5 steps can help you find greater success with focused efforts…
1. Budget Wisely
Content marketing isn’t cheap – you will end up pulling out your wallet to hire a freelancer or spending time to ensure it’s valuable enough for sharing.
Throwing cash/time at new content that nets you zero sales, followers, or views isn’t going to help. Before you go all-in on content creation, closely observe your analytics and engagements to see what content works best for your business.
Platforms you barely pay attention to may be the ones driving all the traffic, or topics you rarely post about may attract the most engaged viewers. Put your energy where it’s deserved.
Investing time and effort into your content marketing efforts should be a no-brainer, but investing both in keywords that no one cares about is a no brain move…
2. Set Smarter Goals
If you’re just getting started in content marketing, you may not know what you’d like to achieve from your efforts. The metrics that matter most, in the beginning, are subscriber/follower counts, engagement rates, and green lights for SEO across all your posts.
Narrow your focus on one or two platforms at a time.
You may be asking, “what is the primary goal of every platform?” Well, every business is different but the primary objectives of popular platforms is fairly consistent.
Focusing on blogging? The outcome should be subscriber/page view directed; YouTube? Subscriber/view time directed; Twitter? Engagements; Instagram? Post longevity/engagements; Pinterest? Overall impressions.
After you’ve built up data on your chosen platform, determine what you need to do every day/week to achieve your monthly & yearly goals.
3. Schedule Out & Stick To It
Customers, readers, and viewers all appreciate consistency. They like to know who you are, what you stand for, and when they can expect more content from you.
Content that is high-quality & high-value will lead to an engaged community that is seeking to fulfill a need with you.
The posting schedule may not be the same on every platform, but this is probably a good thing. Varying posting schedules can get people to commit to following you on another social account to receive access to new content quicker (i.e. email list).
Plus, posting at the same time across all platforms could end in overload if they have their notifications turned on for you.
4. Knock-Out Offers
Constant self-promotion of paid products/services is spammy and tiresome. Take a lesson from Gary Vaynerchuk’s book “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.” Plan your biggest and best offers at the right time to defeat the noise and get the sale.
There is one type of content you should be consistently creating and the other type far less:
- Relationship Content (Often): You should create and share free, high-quality content that leaves your audience craving more and building anticipation for future releases of paid programs/services.
- Sales Content (Rare): Sales content should be in far less supply if you want to lock in higher conversion rates and more sales.
5. Create Shareable Content
There are a handful of ways you can create “trendy” shareable content. Let’s go over a few:
- Tie In Pop Culture
- Use Number/Bullet Point Lists
- Write Long-Form Content
- Host Interviews With Relevant Influencers
- Write About The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
- Give Away Freebies For Sharing
- Educate The Audience
Now, the above list addresses how to make the content shareable from the inside (if the user actually reads the page), but how do you make content shareable if they never click through?
Optimize your posts with images, videos, and infographics that blow away the competition. Find a brand theme, a better color scheme, and write explosive headlines that are too good not to be shared!
