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One theme that is popular among content purists is the “Build it and they will come” school of thought. Many believe that if you create compelling content and publish it on your website or blog, your work is done; your audience will flock to it based on its merit alone. Yes, this may happen once in a while, but the chances are very slim. Content marketing is not a “set it and forget it” strategy, and those who treat it as such are putting themselves at a serious disadvantage.
Content marketing is about much more than creating compelling content; it’s also about making sure your audience discovers and shares the content you worked so hard to produce. Though creating high-quality content is essential, if you do not take the necessary steps to ensure your content will be found, you are leaving important opportunities on the table.
At Vertical Measures, we use an 8-step content marketing methodology, and more than half of those steps occur after our piece of content has been published. Let’s take a deeper dive into the four post-production steps that I believe are crucial to content marketing success:
Content optimization is the first step you need to take to increase the likelihood of your content being found. However, this process can be tricky, as optimizing content for the sole purpose of achieving high search engine rankings will most likely result in a poor-quality piece that consumers won’t waste their time with. The key is to create content that is targeted to the needs of your audience while keeping search engines in mind, as well — audience first, search engines second.
When you optimize your content, you provide data that search engines use to determine what your content and your company are about. Depending on the type of content you’re looking to optimize, this data can be communicated in a variety of ways. For example, when you optimize text content, you need to consider title tags, meta descriptions, H1 tags, and URL structure. But for images, you will want to provide relevant alt tags, image tags, and filenames, while keeping file size in mind, too. Search engines then use this information to rank your content in the search engine results (SERPs). If your content is optimized, it’s more likely to be listed on the SERPs when a user enters a relevant search string.
Searchers themselves also use the search-optimized information you provide to decide if your listed content will be worth their attention. Most searchers decide to visit a website they found through search by reading the title (title tag) and description (meta description) that appears in a SERP. If that information isn’t relevant to the content it describes, it will be evident to users, and they may avoid clicking through to your site — no matter how well it ranks in the search results. Conversely, a non-optimized title and description may cause a visitor to bounce from your content immediately — and feel like they’ve been duped by content that lacks relevance to their search intentions.
As you can see, optimization is necessary in order to provide search engine bots with the necessary context to accurately rank your content. Without these clues, your content may not appear in the SERPs for desired search terms and you will miss out on organic search traffic — as well as a chance to connect with interested consumers.
Content promotion is another essential step of successful content marketing. You can’t rely solely on people finding your content through search engines; you have to put it out there in other ways, too. Luckily, there are a number of ways to get your content in front of potential customers. Consider the following:
And the list goes on. Find out wherever your audience is hanging out online and look for opportunities to promote your content there. This will largely depend on your industry, audience, and the type of content piece, but is crucial for success.
Like promotion, distribution is about getting your compelling content in front of relevant eyeballs, but using a different strategy. You can get much more out of your content by distributing it on multiple platforms — a practice that often requires content repurposing.
For example, let’s say you wrote a lengthy article about a hot topic being discussed in your industry. In addition to publishing the article as you normally would, you can increase content distribution by:
Content distribution allows you to truly get the most out of your content. While repurposing your content for additional circulation takes extra work, turning one round of brainstorming and research into multiple pieces of content will save you time and effort in the long run.
Link building has gained a reputation for being spammy; however, it doesn’t have to be. Even Google’s own Matt Cutts recognizes that, “not all link building is bad.” Though engaging content should attract links on its own, proactive link building can be beneficial — if done correctly.
There are many link building tactics that do not violate search engines’ terms of service and still provide value, including the content promotion and distribution strategies discussed above. The more people discover your useful content, the better your odds of getting links from those people.
Guest blogging or writing just for the sake of a link isn’t a sustainable (or recommended) strategy, but legitimately sharing compelling content on an external blog or social media platform is great for branding, and often provides a link you can share through additional channels. Also, try the reverse of guest blogging by inviting talented people in your industry to contribute to your blog or social media outlets. Bloggers will want to promote their “extracurricular” content efforts in their own communities — which helps to spread your insight and influence — and will perhaps even reference the post in other content they produce, resulting in an additional link for you to share.
Or, you can consider producing a press release to highlight a single piece of content that has been performing well for your business. This can often create dozens, if not hundreds, of high quality links that point new viewers directly toward to your content.
Though it’s nice to think that our content will show up on the front page of Google on its own, unfortunately that’s not usually the case. Sure, content can go viral, but these instances are few and far between. Therefore, it’s important to remember that publishing high-quality, compelling content is just one of the many necessary steps in the content marketing process. Optimization, promotion, distribution, and link building are all imperative for achieving solid, sustainable content marketing success.
Looking for more ideas for increasing content engagement? Read CMI’s Content Marketing Playbook: 24 Epic Ideas for Connecting with Your Customers .
Cover image via Bigstock
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While there are many ways to get the word out, new tools on the market help marketers get their content out to more places on the web — places where audiences are already interacting with like-minded brands — to generate engagement that will (hopefully) result in more buyers, supporters, community members, etc.
Specifically, there are two categories of tools the Content Marketing Institute has recently explored:
From the marketer’s perspective, all of this is part of a promoted content strategy — and there is no doubt that it is one of the most disruptive areas of content marketing today.
To help make sense of this space — and the technologies that support it — we recently conducted hour-long briefings with seven key vendors in this space. The resulting guide, Content Discovery and Native Advertising Tools: An Analysis of 7 Solutions in a Disruptive Marketplace , is a detailed look at this space, as well as each of the vendors we spoke with:
We have undoubtedly missed a few players in this initial report, and we will add and remove companies in subsequent versions. But for now, those featured in this report are companies we’ve seen as being the most frequently discussed in the marketplace.
We have purposely not ranked any of the solutions as “better” than any other because we are not looking to “grade” them. Rather, our goal is to provide a clear sense of what each solution provides and assemble a coherent stratification of the market for purchasers, investors, and those generally interested in understanding this space.
Nothing in the profiles should be read as a tacit endorsement or particularly pointed critique of any particular solution. Our aim is to provide an unbiased examination of the tools without making any particular judgment as to their overall value.
For each profile, we cover an overview of the solution, the specific challenge that each attempts to solve, and its pricing structure. We also include details on the vendor’s approach to that challenge as it pertains to how a customer might utilize the solution. Lastly, we provide a brief history of the company, and contact information.
Here’s a taste of what you will find in the full report:
Of course, there is no one “magic” tool that will work for every organization, as goals and needs vary. However, as you make your purchasing decisions on tools and vendors, asking the following questions will help you learn more about the technologies available in this space, and how a particular solution might address your business needs:
Here are a few additional questions specific to content discovery tools:
Regardless of the options you choose to pursue as you begin to develop your content promotion plans, we advise content marketers to test and use these services much like you would a media buy. Experiment with numerous offerings to see where you get the best results. You may find, for example, that one solution will be best for developing your present audience, and that promoting longer-form content using a native advertising solutions provider might be a better strategy for another part of the funnel. Certainly, some providers that promote content across a network of sites will have stronger partners than others for your particular audience.
Download Content Discovery and Native Advertising Tools: An Analysis of 7 Solutions in a Disruptive Marketplace. This is the third report in CMI’s Content Marketing Technology Landscape series, which also includes:
We would love your thoughts: What questions do you have about content discovery and native advertising technologies? What has been your experience with these or other technologies?
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The problem is, not everyone (even webmasters themselves) understands the correct way to mark up blog content with this new language. While Schema.org is a great place to start learning about it, the site isn’t the most user-friendly of resources.
In this post, I’ll explain an easy way to add schema to your WordPress blog content by using free schema tools that are available online.
Google created its Structured Data Markup Helper and Structured Data Testing Tool to help make the schema markup process easier — and make sure the search engines will read it correctly.
I’ll begin with the Markup Helper. This tool is easy to use and will allow you to tag the information in your blog content that you want to mark up. It will then show you where to place that code within your content in WordPress.
Start by selecting the type of data you are working with (e.g., articles, event listings, book reviews, etc.), then paste the URL or HTML source code for the page you’d like to mark up.
There are 10 data type options to choose from. Since we are going to mark up a blog post, I have selected the “Article” data type. (The other options will allow you to mark up different types of information you may have on your website. You can find more information on how to use these data types on Schema.org.)
After you paste the blog post’s URL and click the “Start Tagging” button, you will be taken to a page that looks like this:
This is where you will start to highlight the “My Data Items” listed on the right side of the page.
With your mouse, highlight the text that you’d like to mark as the “Name” of the article. As shown in the photo below, I’ve highlighted the blog post title I’ve chosen, and the Markup Helper has presented a drop-down of options for tagging this selected text. All you need to do is select the “Name” tag and the title of the post will be stored in the “My Data Items” list on the right side of the screen.
Note that not everything in this area needs to be filled out. (In my example, you’ll see that there are options to mark up a URL, publisher, and aggregate ratings — these become important for companies that want to highlight ratings of products within their website, but they aren’t necessary if this doesn’t apply to your needs. Schema does a great job using the reviews on your website and then displaying the information in the search engine results pages.)
For marking up a blog post, you have to make sure the post you’ve selected will be using the same layout as your main blog template in WordPress. The reason for this is that when you create new posts, the code you add to the template (see Step 2) will automatically fill in the generic code you have. That way, you don’t have to re-add the code for every post!
After you have highlighted all the text you want to code, select the “Create HTML” button located at the top of the screen. This will provide the HTML source code with the schema markup you will use to add to your blog template.
Now that you’ve marked up your piece of content, you’re ready to add the code to your WordPress template. In a standard website built on WordPress, there are separate templates for every type of page design you use on your site. This is where you’ll place the code. You can find the templates in WordPress by selecting “Appearance” in the WordPress navigation bar in the left column. Select “Editor,” which will open up the stylesheets for your site. In the right column on that page, you’ll see a list of all the templates used on your site. Select the template that represents your blog posts — for this example, the template is called “Single Post.”
As you can see in the photo below, I have added the code the Markup Helper provided to my blog post template:
Next, go through all the other areas of your blog content that you marked in Step 1, and add the code provided by the Helper to the template.
One thing to notice is that I didn’t include the “Image” tag in my template code example above. One reason for this is that our blog is already set up to use Google Authorship for our writers, and we have configured all our blog’s snippets to use the image from the author’s Google+ page as the featured image. In addition, we place our images wherever they are most relevant within the body of a blog post, rather than using a static position for all blog images. If you do not have Authorship (even though you should), you can easily add the image code itemprop=”image” to every image you add to your blog posts.
After you have added the code, it is time to test the URL and make sure the code is rendering correctly. You can find the Structured Data Testing Tool used to do this among Google’s Webmaster tools.
Add the URL in the box provided and select “Preview.” If the schema is working correctly, each piece of information you tagged will appear in the correct categories, as it does in the photo below:
As you can see in the image, the Type, Name, Article Body, and Image are coded correctly — if a mistake was made in any of the code, you would see an error to inform you. (No need to worry about the bolded “property” not having any information immediately to the right in this example. Google lays out this page in list form, and the “property” this refers to is from the Schema code. For instance, itemprop=”image” or itemprop=”articlebody”. Property is just the “prop” part of the code.)
As the importance of schema increases, Google and other search engines will likely make schema markup a requirement for ranking well in SERPs. Learning to use the tools that Google has provided now will give you a leg up on the competition and provide snippets that are more compelling for your audience to click through.
Want more tips on optimizing your blog content? Read CMI’s eGuide: The Ultimate Guide to Blogging .
Cover image via Bigstock
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The more you blog, the more you need a simple, scalable way to track your previous blog posts and plan your future blog content.
Below is a simple Blog Post Tracker I created for my own use, as well as for use with my clients.
Although I created it using Mindjet’s MindManager for Windows, it’s based on features found in many mind mapping software programs. Here’s a tip: If you’re a MindManager user, you can download the MindManager file at Maps for That; others can explore the Tracker using the interactive Mindjet Viewer (found at the same URL).
Click to download full image
My three-step Tracker helps you streamline your content marketing process by:
The Blog Post Tracker is designed to be used with the content dashboard I’ve developed, which contains links to all of my current projects and resources. You can set up your own dashboard to open by default each time you begin a working session.
Here’s how to put your Blog Post Tracker to work in just three steps:
Start by copying and pasting the titles of previous blog posts, and add in the URLs for the actual blog posts as hyperlinks. This makes it easy for you to quickly revisit and review previous posts without having to search for them.
Tip: Before purchasing a mind mapping software program, make sure it allows you to add tags and use the tags to filter your mind maps. For example, if you use MindManager, you can easily add tags to one of your blog posts by right-clicking the blog post title, selecting Tags, and choosing your desired tag. Note that you can add multiple tags to blog posts — for example, this post could be tagged blogging, mind mapping, and productivity.
Planning your upcoming blog posts within the context of your existing blog content helps you build on topics that have previously proven popular or have sparked a lot of comments. In addition, when appropriate, you can include links to previous posts.
Although the Blog Post Tracker is designed to provide a “big picture” view of your blogging efforts, its overall structure encourages you to plan your upcoming blog posts in advance. The time you spend planning your blog posts will be repaid when you begin writing — start by identifying the main ideas you want to include in your blog post, then organize your supporting ideas in the proper order.
Here are some additional ideas for efficient planning of your blog content:
Another important aspect of the Blog Post Tracker is the ability to add ideas for future blog posts as soon as they occur to you — as I mentioned previously, the longer you wait before adding a new idea to your mind map, the greater the chance that the idea will slip your mind.
Avoid the temptation to wait until you have chosen a title for upcoming blog posts, or have “figured out” their structure. Just summarize the ideas, challenges, or topics you’d like to cover, and add details as they come to you.
By linking your Blog Post Tracker to a centralized content dashboard and using cloud sharing services like Mindjet Connect or Dropbox, you’ll also have the ability to add ideas whenever or wherever they occur to you — on whatever device you have handy (smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, etc.).
Filtering takes your blog post tracker to the next level. The tags you earlier added to your blog post topics now permit you to filter your mind map, displaying only the topics and categories you want to see at a given time.
Tip: Using the Power Filter in MindManager for Windows (or other equivalent commands when using other mind mapping programs), simply select the topics tagged with the content categories you want to show.
As you can see, after applying the Power Filter, the filtered view of the tracker will only display the posts (past, present, and future) that I have tagged as relevant to “graphic design.”
As the number of your blog posts increases, filtering will become increasingly important for organization purposes. Filtering also allows you to use your Blog Post Tracker as a project management tool. For example, once you get used to adding start dates and due dates to your posts, you can choose to display only the posts that you need to start working on, only those that are due next week, only posts that are overdue, etc.
In larger content marketing departments, or when working with freelancers, you can also assign resources to indicate individual or department responsibility for the various tasks associated with each blog post.
Once you familiarize yourself with the three-step Blog Post Tracker, you’ll undoubtedly come up with additional ways it can be used to suit your needs, such as for scheduling podcasts or tracking newsletter topics.
How does my mind map-based Blog Post Tracker differ from the way you’re currently tracking previous blog posts, planning future posts, and keeping track of new ideas? Would it work for you? Why, or why not? Share your comments and questions, below!
Looking for even more guidance on how to incorporate efficient processes and procedures into your content marketing efforts? Read “Managing Content Marketing,” by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose.
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