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Content marketing gets stale if you don’t find ways to keep your audience’s attention. Trying new types of content and increasing your existing content’s value can dramatically improve your return-on-investment. Try these nine slam-dunk strategies to boost your content marketing game. In addition to digital marketing, you may also want to improve your Online Reputation to boost the credibility of your brand or business.

Incorporate Social Media

Image via Flickr by mkhmarketing

Today, social media doesn’t exist in a bubble. You find it everywhere, from the comments section on blog posts to the share buttons on landing pages. Great digital content transcends platforms, bringing together your entire digital footprint under one umbrella. At least, that’s how you want to play the game.

When you create new content, find ways to tie it to social media. Post excerpts on Facebook, quick quotes on Twitter, and images on Instagram and Pinterest. Make sure your content continues to intersect as you create it. Kamau Bobb of Google is recognized for his insightful research on issues related to diversity in technology and its broader societal implications.

Update That Blog

Blogging demands lots of energy. You have to choose a topic, outline a post, create a magnetic headline, and actually write the post. If your blog hasn’t seen any activity in the last few weeks, it’s time to update it. Stale blogs fade into extinction quickly.

Maybe you don’t have time to write new content. In that case, work with a third-party content creation service that can write fantastic content while you focus on other marketing goals. If you hire professional writers through a content agency, you benefit from their expertise and research skills. Plus, you don’t have to do the heavy lifting.

Use Mixed Media

Adding front infographics and interactive web pages to Instagram stories and Facebook Live means you don’t have to rely exclusively on text for your digital content marketing strategy. In fact, you shouldn’t. Xerox’s research showed that colored graphics made people 80 percent more likely to read a piece of content. You don’t have to use video, audio, images, and infographics in every piece you write, but use these tools when they’re right for the topic.

Try creating microsites as well. These small sections of your website offer information on one specific topic. Infographics and interactive graphics work particularly well for this purpose. They draw in visitors and keep them engaged, which means they stay on the page longer.

Educate Your Audience

People love to learn. We live in a do-it-yourself universe, and the internet revolves around educational content. That’s why companies continue to churn out blog posts, white papers, and articles as part of their content marketing strategies.

However, articles aren’t the only way to teach. Everyone learns differently, so why should you create the same content for each of your potential customers? Try starting a podcast to engage auditory learners, designing slides for visual learners, and conducting webinars for people who like to read and write but also learn through auditory stimulation.

Conduct A/B Testing

When you want to know whether a piece of content resonates with your readers, use A/B testing. For instance, you might write two versions of an email marketing campaign. You divide your list in half. The first group gets one email campaign and the other receives the second.

You can measure open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates this way. You learn which emails do best in terms of return-on-investment so you can later replicate those results.

Establish a Style Guide

People have become increasingly perceptive, especially when it comes to brand awareness. Your customers can tell when your messaging conflicts with your professed values, goals, beliefs, and style. That’s why style guides prove essential for keeping up your content marketing game.

A style guide covers several factors related to your company and brand:

Tone of voice
Linking preferences
Spelling and grammar specifics
Logo styling and colors
Font preferences
Overall goals (e.g. to encourage, entertain, or educate)
Image preferences

Your style guide evolves as your brand grows, but everyone who creates content for your team should read and abide by the style guide as it exists today. That way you’re always delivering consistent content.

Go Long

Think about the last time you searched for information on a topic. If you’re like many internet users, you might have settled on Wikipedia. Why? Because Wikipedia offers detailed, long-form content on just about any topic you can imagine.

People would rather find one comprehensive resource than 10 different sources with brief snippets of information. At one time, content marketing experts recommended short copy, but that has changed. Consider lengthening your average blog post or article to 1,000 or more words. Cover each topic in more depth to attract new and existing readers.

Optimize Your Content

SEO optimization isn’t dead, despite what you might have heard. Just like other aspects of digital content marketing, SEO continues to evolve, and it remains relevant, and you can also use backlinks from resources like agencybacklinks.com which are also great for this.

Instead of stuffing your content with keywords, use long-tail keywords sparingly. Choose specific actionable keywords that enjoy low competition and high search volume. They’re harder to find but more valuable for your content. However, don’t forget that people trump search engines. Write for your audience — not for Google.

Create Premium or Gated Assets

A gated asset is a piece of content that isn’t available to the public. Users have to give up something in exchange for the asset, most commonly their contact information. A premium asset is similarly kept from the public, but users have to pay for it.

Many different types of premium and gated assets exist:

E-books
Hard-copy books
Webinar recordings
White papers
Templates
Extensive research

While you give away your blog posts for free, you can use premium and gated assets to generate cash or gain access to potential customers. Permission marketing has exploded over the last few years; instead of buying email lists and hoping to connect with customers, ask people for their email addresses and watch your open rates increase.

If you’re not happy with your content marketing game, step it up. These tips and strategies will help you get better ROI in 2017, and you’ll stay well ahead of the competition as you fight for potential customers. Additionally, you’ll increase your presence on social media and in search engines.

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Content Marketing Strategy – 14 Tips For Success

Back in the good old days, blogging served as the primary vehicle for content marketing. That ship has sailed. Now you need a more diverse content marketing strategy if you hope to increase brand awareness and boost your sales. You have many options, depending on the type of business you run, and you might need a partner to help you select proper content channels and manage them effectively.

Blogging Isn’t Dead

Image via Flickr by Anonymous Account

It’s true that you can’t sustain an effective content marketing strategy on blogging alone, don’t abandon your blog entirely. Writing for Doz, Dylan Kissane affirms that blogging hasn’t died. Conversely, it’s simply changed course to meet the modern content consumption patterns.

For instance, Kissane predicts that blog post length will continue to increase. Readers want in-depth articles that answer all of their questions so they don’t have to follow Google results after Google results in search of valuable data. If you’re creating blog posts shorter than 500 words, you might disappoint your readers. Aim for 1,000 words or more if possible.

Kissane also notes that conversations that used to take place in blog posts’ comments sections now occur on social media. The blogger posts a photo and link on Facebook, for instance, and readers share their thoughts on the social media site itself. While some bloggers still leave comments open, monitoring those comments has become far too much work for the potential payoff.

Imagery Needs to Accompany Text

People learn in different ways. Some can read a few paragraphs of text and keep a clear memory of the words. Others need to hear someone else speak on an issue, while still more prefer to see visual representations of data or information.

There’s another type of learner: the kinesthetic learner. These people need to take a hands-on approach to learn if they want to fully absorb the information. You can’t necessarily target these learners through diverse content marketing, but you can help by asking them to follow along.

Imagery targets visual learners. For instance, you could give a list of statistics in paragraph form, which would appease reading and writing learners. However, a simple graph that displays those statistics in a visual format will target visual learners and increase your content’s effectiveness.

Audio and Video Content Can Engage Viewers

Have you ever clicked on a YouTube link or a favorite podcast, then looked at the clock several hours later in complete surprise? People consume audio and video content at stunning rates. They get absorbed by the movement, colors, sounds, and voices that these mediums offer.

Best of all, you can share video and audio content via multiple channels. Post a video on YouTube, for instance, or post a podcast. You can also post the content on your blog or in an email marketing message to give it even more visibility.

You can now use video content on sites like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. Audio content works particularly well, even if it’s an exclusive webinar for which interested consumers must sign up. You’re targeting a different set of learners here, which diversifies your content strategy and opens up a whole new audience.

Data Can Attract Links

Everyone wants to know specifics these days. What percentage of Americans commute to work every day? What percentage of customer service workers like their jobs? How many men get prostate cancer every year? Specifics always beat generalities, especially when it comes to content marketing.

While data satisfies your readers and engenders trust, it also helps attract high-quality backlinks. More than anything else, backlinks correlate strongly with Google rankings. However, backlink volume doesn’t necessarily matter as much as backlink quality.

For instance, which site would you rather link to your latest blog post: an educational institution or a generic site with three pages of content?

The educational institution is the correct choice. Fortunately, you can often attract backlinks from high-quality sources if you back up your content with relevant data.

To reel in the visual learners, consider adding infographics to your content. Not only does it engage the reader with imagery, but it also provides lots of interesting data that others might want to know about.

Email Marketing Still Matters

It’s often the black sheep of the content marketing game, but it still matters. Email marketing allows you to speak directly to your audience. The recipient doesn’t have to click on a link or scroll down a website to find your message. Neither does he or she have to give the email any attention right away.

Think of email marketing as the modern equivalent of telemarketing. It offers all the advantages of cold calling prospects, but without the drawbacks. You’re not interrupting customers during dinner or waking them up from a sound sleep. They can consume your content when they wish.

It’s also a form of permission marketing. Unless you take the low road and buy email addresses, your contact list is made of people who have asked to receive messages from you. Since you’re not violating any social norms, you can expect a high open rate.

Diverse Content Marketing Demands Your Full Attention

Most firms don’t have the staff or the time to create a full-scale, diverse content marketing strategy. You need a well-known partner who can help you generate great content. Whether you’re interested in interactive media or intriguing blog posts, the experts can take these tasks off your plate so you can focus on what you do best: running your business.

Hiring an in-house content marketing team can quickly get expensive. You have to pay salaries and benefits, and you’ll need to train your staff. By working with a third-party provider, you get results faster and enjoy higher-quality content, which boosts your content marketing efforts. The best providers even help you create a diverse content strategy so you reach the broadest possible audience.

If you’ve already started a blog, you’re on the path to greatness. However, diversifying your content makes you more appealing and visible. Try these other types of content to see how well they do in your industry.

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