How confident are you that you have a content marketing strategy that works?
With everything around the way you and I have been marketing, changing and with adblockers blocking ads and pop-up blockers and Google cracking down on intrusive pop-ups, the opportunity to grab your visitors’ attention is limited.
You don’t have a ton of options these days.
And hence it all boils down to how effective your content is, in keeping your readers on the edge of their seats.
While you and I have been hearing, “Content is King” from pretty much everyone, the million dollar question is how to create a content marketing strategy that works?
What are the things that you need to keep in mind, in order to churn out content that attracts readers?
And, how do you know if your content marketing strategy is effective?
Tips to Create a Content Marketing Strategy that Works
Creating noteworthy content starts with evaluating your readers and understanding what they would like to read. While competitor analysis can give you a fair idea of your reader’s mindset, it is also recommended that you do your own survey as well.
Once you have figured out this first part of the puzzle, it is about selecting the medium that you would like to use. Will it be your blog, social media or, some other platform. And then you can proceed to creating your content.
But it doesn’t end here. The last part is equally important but is very often ignore. It is about analyzing the outcome of your strategy and understanding if it is really working the way it was expected to.
This week’s link roundup is on content marketing. These posts will answer almost all of the questions that you would have in your mind about these steps and will also help you create a content marketing strategy that works.
Why is Content Marketing Today’s Marketing? 10 Stats That Prove It
Marketing is changing and the way it is done is now governed by the Googles and Facebooks of the Internet. Social media has changed the way content is consumed, and impatience and information overload has changed readers into “skimmers”.
They prefer scanning content rather than reading. And hence attention spans have gone down.
While everything has changed, one thing that is still standing tall is “Content Marketing”. You can still stop an internet user in his track with an attractive piece of content.
And Julia McCoy in this article proves it with 10 stats.
You’ve probably heard that content marketing is the wave of the future.
But do you know why?
While it’s true that content marketing is massively effective for nearly every company and industry on the globe, many marketers don’t understand why.
Let’s shine a light on this puzzling (yet fascinating) state of affairs, with 10 statistics that will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that content marketing is today’s marketing.
Image Courtesy – contentmarketinginstitute.com
Read more at contentmarketinginstitute.com
How to Calculate ROI for Your Content Marketing Campaign
If you are not measuring your success, then you are preparing for failure.
The success of a content marketing campaign is measured by its return on investment or, ROI. How much was your return on the investment you did in your content marketing campaigns?
If it was a positive ROI, you know that it was a success.
I remember one of my mentees asking me once, “How do you measure ROI, if all you have invested is time and there was no monetary investment”.
The answer is simple – “Time is money”. Put a money equivalent to your time. You can do this by calculating the per hour cost, which will be as below and then adding an opportunity cost to it at about 40% or, 50% of your per hour cost.
Per hour cost = Your Current earnings(By was of Salary or, self employed income)/No. of working hours
This article at Entrepreneur.com talks about some nice ways to calculate ROI from your content marketing campaign.
You already know that content marketing is one of the most valuable marketing strategies you can use for your brand. It doesn’t cost much time or money in the startup phase, and it has the potential to bring an enormous return. And all of that is great.
But how, exactly, do you know how much of a return your content marketing is bringing? What if you end up spending more money on it than it’s worth?
Knowing how to calculate ROI for your content marketing campaign proactively addresses these dilemmas. When you know your ROI, you can make the necessary adjustments to improve a floundering campaign, or identify the most profitable areas of your strategy to focus on in future months.
Image courtesy – entrepreneur.com
The Perfect Formula For A Clickable Headline (Infographic)
The first impression that you make on your reader is through the headline. If the headline is enticing enough to stop him in his track, then the likelihood of him reading the complete article increases manifold.
The same is the case in emails as well. Your subscriber reads the subject line and then decides if he need to click open the email or, not. Hence it is important that your headlines and subject lines be clickable.
This infographic at nichehacks.com explains a fool-proof formula on writing headlines that get clicked.
Article titles and headlines are arguably the most critical piece of the content equation.
It’s reported that 8 out of 10 people that come across content will at least read the headlines, but only 20% of those will read anything else.
Thus, it’s important that you learn how to write engaging and effective titles and headlines.
The secret to writing better titles and headlines is to start with the basics. This means focusing on understanding what drive user engagement.
Content Marketing Lessons From BuzzFeed [Study]
There was a sudden change in the way content was being churned out, after the immediate success of sites like Buzzfeed and Viralnova. People started creating sites with viral content that was readily available on the internet and then driving traffic to it using Facebook.
These sites were all successful because it was following a tried and tested formula. Even I created multiple sites like these and sold it on Flippa.
But the one mistake that most of these sites did is to not look at the basic strategy of Buzzfeed and such sites. Instead they were busy posting all kinds of content with a catchy headline so that people click on them and go to the site.
Since the quality of content was poor, visitor retention was poor and such sites started losing sheen. But sites like Buzzfeed still continues to do extremely well.
This article at marketinginsidergroup.com does a nice analysis of Buzzfeed and shows you a few content marketing tips that you can take away from sites like Buzzfeed.
BuzzFeed gets a lot of hate for its clickbaity titles and silly articles. But you can’t argue with the fact that BuzzFeed is one of the most popular websites in the US and around the world. The site boasts a whopping 7 billion views every month, with over 200 million unique visitors worldwide.
So what’s the secret to BuzzFeed’s success and what can content marketers learn from Buzzfeed? There is quite a bit more to it than just crafting clickbait headlines to keep people coming back for more over and over, right? So what is it?
Read more at marketinginsidergroup.com
Content Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Content marketing is simple if you stick to the basics. But often, it is with the most simplest of things that we do the most mistakes. Same is the case with content marketing as well.
But in order to have a content marketing strategy that works, you will need to ensure that you do not make these mistakes. Else all of the efforts that you put in could just go in vain.
This post at the Toprankblog.com talks about some of these common and silly mistakes that most content marketers make.
Question: How do you get better at content marketing?
Answer: You learn from your mistakes.
Follow-up Question: What’s even better than learning from your mistakes?
Answer: Learning from other people’s mistakes.
If you’re looking for bad content marketing, it’s a buyer’s market. Every brand is a publishing company now. Some are doing amazing work. Most are…not so much.
Image Courtesy – toprankblog.com
5 Content Strategies That Will Always Work
It is said that wise men never try to reinvent the wheel. In case you are looking for a content marketing strategy that works, you have two options – either build it from scratch or, take a plan that is already proven to work and implement it.
If I were you, I will take the second route and tweak it according to my needs and implement it. Considering that we already have some many things to do as part of our content marketing and promotion strategies, it makes sense to follow this route.
While there is no rocket science behind what works and what does not, it still makes sense to not reinvent the wheel.
This post at entrepreneur.com has a list of 5 excellent content strategies that are proven to work. The 4th one is something that I still need to work on.
According to a recent survey by Demand Gen Report, 47 percent of B2B buyers consume three to five content pieces before engaging with a salesperson. Yet, more than 70 percent of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. If so, you’re not just leaving money on the table – you’re practically handing it to your competitors.
Content marketing is here to stay. Make sure you’re following these five basic strategies for creating stellar content.
Image Courtesy – entrepreneur.com
15 Habits of Website Visitors That Will Completely Change the Way You Write Website Content
Website visitor habits have changed a lot. One of the places that this is quite evident these days is in the intolerance towards obtrusive ads. More and more people are installing ad-blockers for an ad free browsing experience. Modern day browsers are also moulding themselves to these habits.
There are many such noteworthy habits of your website visitors that you need to study, in order to churn out shareworthy content. Your content marketing strategy can succeed only if you read and understand your website visitors and readers’ habits and mould your strategy according to that.
And who better could explain it than Neil Patel. This post at the Crazyegg will show you 15 such habits.
For the most part, website visitors are quite predictable. If you understand the psychology, tendencies, and patterns of your visitors, you can tweak your content to capitalize on their habits. Here are 15 specific habits I’ve uncovered that will change your approach to writing content.
A study from the Nielson Group found that most people view a website in an F-shaped pattern where they tend to favor the left side of the screen.
That’s sort of true. The fact is, the ten-year-old study that first pushed that concept is, well, ten years old. A lot has changed.
Image Courtesy : blog.crazyegg.com
Read more at blog.crazyegg.com
3 Tips to Create Ultra-Targeted Content for More Engagement
All of the content that you generate is a waste if it is not able to engage your readers.
Your readers might just browse away after reading the first paragraph of your article, if it is boring and lacks quality.
It is hence essential to create ultra targeted content; targeted towards your audience, in order to get maximum engagement from them.
This article at the contentmarketinginstitute.com lays it out in 3 very simple and easy to follow tips.
A few weeks ago I was speaking with a friend and fellow content marketer who was having difficulty nailing down how to create content her audience wanted to engage with.
“Why do you want more engagement,” I asked out of curiosity.
She told me that one of the ways she judges whether her content strikes a chord with her audience is the level of engagement. Valid point, I agreed.
Engagement is the difference between a home-run piece of content and one doomed for a quick out.
Image Courtesy contentmarketinginstitute.com
Read more at contentmarketinginstitute.com
Over to You Now
I hope you liked these handpicked and curated pieces of content on building a content marketing strategy that works. Don’t be overwhelmed at the tone of these articles.
Take small and simple baby steps and put together a strategy for yourself. Take the tips and advises from these articles and use them as a guide.
Keep measuring so you know if you are heading towards the right direction or, not. If you see that you are not getting the desired results, then tweak your strategy and implement it. Measure the performance once again. Keep repeating this until you find a strategy that works.
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good sharing and tips