From Questions About Content Marketing on Quora to read more http://b.qr.ae/1iPUfAi
shared by Jeremiah Barrett Consulting
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shared by Jeremiah Barrett Consulting
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
From Questions About Content Marketing on Quora to read more http://b.qr.ae/1i9WlIt
shared by Jeremiah Barrett Consulting
From Questions About Content Marketing on Quora to read more http://b.qr.ae/1e5q6Lb
shared by Jeremiah Barrett Consulting
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?
From Questions About Content Marketing on Quora to read more http://b.qr.ae/1fkmVhu
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