Content marketing is becoming one of the most important tools for any small businesses overall internet marketing and SEO strategy. SEO has evolved in recent years and this means that content marketing also needs to evolve and stay up to date with the latest marketing techniques. Some of the things that content marketers should be using include things like how to guides, e-books, comparison guides, and various other content marketing techniques.
The problem with content marketing is that there are going to be times when you run out of ideas for marketing your content and the whole point of this post is to give you 7 ways to make your content marketing amazing. Hopefully it will also help give you ideas so that you never struggle coming up with new content, which is something many people struggle with.
1. Use a Content Marketing Calendar and Stick To It
A content marketing calendar may sound incredibly simple but it’s one of the most effective ways of making sure you stick to your content marketing strategy. Most content marketers simply ignore this but if you do then you are doing so at your own peril.
It is very simple to create a content marketing calendar. All you need to do is create a schedule whereby you strategise and create content for every month and then stick to it rigorously.
2. Research, Test, and Find Out What Works
It is important to test and research what works when developing a content marketing strategy. There is no point in creating a content marketing strategy only to realise that it doesn’t work and you’ve wasted your time. One of the best things to do is research the kind of posts that have worked well in the past and do something similar.
Another great idea is to check social sharing statistics of content. One of the ways you can do this is via a service called AddThis that adds social sharing buttons on blogs that contain valuable tracking information. Doing this kind of research and testing is valuable if you want to have a decent content marketing strategy that actually pays off.
3. Look at Social Trends for Social Media Platforms
Social media can provide you with valuable information about what kind of content works. This is also called newsjacking because what you do is look at the trending topics on both Twitter and Facebook and see what is most popular. If you find trending topics related to your niche then you know it’s going to be a popular and it’s worth writing a blog post on.
4. Create Surveys to Get Ideas for Content
Surveys are one of the most simple but effective ways that you can get ideas for new content. This is because surveys allow you to understand what a consumers stance is on a particular topic or issue and the great thing is you can use the information from the survey to back up the information in your posts.
Surveys are very easy to create and you can get started with services like SurveyAudience and Google Consumer Surveys.
5. Take Advantage of Visual Content
Images are one of the most effective forms of content marketing. There are many forms of visual content you can use such as infographics, still images, and even animated GIFs. You can use these to supplement any written content you use. Visual images are such a powerful tool in your content marketing strategy because they capture people’s attention spans much more easily than just written content.
6. Use Video Blogging
Creating videos is one of the best ways that you can create high quality content that people will be drawn to. Many people watch online videos, the figures show that up to 78 percent of people watch videos each week and 55 percent of people say they watch videos everyday.
This means that there is a lot of opportunity for content marketers to use video blogging. It isn’t hard to make videos and it’s also easy for people to digest. You don’t need a high level of skill to make them and they can be made to look professional with minimal editing.
For more information on how to optimise your videos for YouTube check out our effective video SEO blog post.
7. Repurposing Useful Content
Finding and researching topics can be a time consuming exercise so what you can do instead is create a bundle of content around content you’ve already created for certain topics. One of the things you can do is pick content that has an underlying theme like website design tips and then package it with a supplemental blog post.
Another thing you can do is revisit some old content you’ve created and provide updates, which will help you come up with additional ideas for further content as well. Repurposing content is one of the most effective ways to make sure you don’t run out of ideas for content creation.
In Conclusion
Content marketing is an effective way of promoting your business and developing brand awareness. However, there are going to be times when you struggle with content creation and marketing itself. If you follow the 7 steps listed above then you will go a long way towards creating useful content and never running out of ideas.
We have plenty more advice filled articles to help with your content marketing strategy available on our blog.
Have you struggled with content marketing in the past? Which of these seven steps are you most looking forward to implementing?
Christian Michaels