We’ve experimented with lots of different content marketing methods at Webpreneur Media, so I wanted to share with you 30 of the best ways we’ve found to increase engagement and improve your content strategy.
So here are our best and most practical ways to see a big impact from your Content Marketing:
Share content more than once. We often share our blog posts multiple times on social networks, for a few difference reasons - More traffic, hit multiple time zones, reach your new followers.
Create infographics about topics in your industry that are important. As people share the infographic, you’ll likely see more traffic and sales.
Sharing images on twitter increases retweets by 130%. Since Twitter announced inline images, we’ve been experimenting with this change by adding images to a lot of the tweets from our @webpreneurmedia Twitter account and have noticed a big difference in the engagement we’re getting.
Reframe content to suite your Social Media audience. Something we try to do each time we post a piece of content is to slightly reframe it so we’re not just repeating ourselves.
Provide content to your loyal readers before you promote the information, product, or service on other platforms. This encourages people to become a loyal VIP member.
Use both long form and short form posts to attract your audience. Long posts, over 1000 words, signal to readers and search engines that you’re an authority on the topic.
Focus on providing value and solutions in the content you share with readers, rather than making sales. You don’t want to be perceived as being only interested in the money.
Stay focused on your target market when planning content. Create a buyer persona or customer profile. Refer to the profile any time you want to make sure you’re meeting your ideal buyer’s needs.
Guest post on top ranked sites that allow you to use a good bio with a couple of links to your sales pages and website. Write unique content that is specifically for each site’s members, which should also fit your target market’s profile.
Avoid using click-bait headlines. Even if the so-called news does it, it’s not a good practice and ultimately ends up turning off readers. Keep it real.
Create headlines with a purpose. The content’s headline should allude to what readers will learn and why they should click through to read it.
Share and promote your own content as if it’s a product. Pay to promote it, share it multiple times, and encourage commenting and sharing by others.
Repurpose and re-use older content by turning it into something new. A top-10 post can become a top-10 YouTube video. A “how to” blog post can become an information product, when fleshed out to include more examples and instructions.
Get more readers to syndicate your content with a solution like Outbrain.com. It’s a good way to increase your popularity and authority.
Don’t go into content marketing blindly. Create and follow a content marketing plan, which includes strategies based on the products and services you want to promote.
Use keywords and other SEO strategies in your content but make the viewer’s experience your top priority. Keep them happy. Your audience will determine whether your content should be shared. Make your content easy to understand, consume, and share.
Reference influencers in your content. Include a simple quote by an influencer and tag or notify them. It’s a great way to get their attention and potentially encourage sharing.
Keep in mind that content isn’t just text. There are many forms and formats such as videos, posts, articles, white papers, infographics, audio, and many more. Each type will interest your audience, if it relates to relevant niche topics and meets the member’s needs.
Focus on evergreen content but pay attention to headlines so you can include trending content on the fly. Make it a habit to check trends once a day so that you can get in on the action, should something interesting turn-up.
If you hate writing, find a freelancer to help you create and distribute the content. Unless you effectively communicate with your audience on a regular basis, they will forget about you. Keep them coming back by supplying the content they search for.
Automate and delegate wisely. Auto posting and such is fine, as is hiring team members to handle some things. However, you still need to interact with your audience to gain their respect, earn their trust, and build relationships. Connect with content.
Follow your strategic content marketing plan. If you’re winging it, you’re going to get lost. This plan is your business map to success. It tells you where to go, who to take with you, how to get there, what to do when you arrive, and suggests other places of interest.
Use keyword tools to help you plan content that your audience is already looking for. Your job is to give them what they want, not make them want what you’re giving them.
Leverage the power of social media to ensure that your content is seen. Cross promote every piece of content you produce regardless of form. For example, promote your YouTube videos on Facebook. Then promote your Facebook community on your videos.
Give your content visual appeal. People learn and remember more when you include a relevant image beside content text.
If there is a cause that you share with your audience, incorporate it in your marketing strategy. For example, if you have a vegan blog, you could donate 10 percent of your earnings to a community garden project.
Dig for stats and data to back up your ideas and assumptions so that your audience will see you as an authority on the matter. Always quote your source and link back to it so that your audience knows where you got the information.
Curate content from authoritative sources and give your opinion about the information rather than just share it without comment.
Ask your audience what they’d like to see you produce. For example, ask your Snapchat audience for questions that you can answer on YouTube. Then you can turn each of the questions into a separate blog post.
Create a distribution strategy for your content. How are you going to get more people to read it? For example, you might add an article to your site, share it on your social networks, or email subscribers about it.
That’s it! I hope some of these might be useful for you here.
Abe