Being an inbound marketer isn't always as exciting and creative as you'd like it to be. You're always under a lot of pressure to get your marketing and especially your content to perform. With analytical tools being widely available now, your efforts are constantly under a microscope so you NEED to be doing well – you need your content to excel. But what can you do to improve your content? A recent article by Neil Patel offers 7 Surefire Ways to Get More Impact From Your Content Marketing. Have a read of three tips here:
Hire the best
The mantra, “Content is king", has been modified by the more nuanced expression, “Quality content is king". To have great quality content, you have to have high-quality writers.
Tip: If you pay $25 an article, you may not find the best writer. The elite writers and content creators usually work at a far higher level of pay.
With the rise of quality as a ranking factor, marketers realised that they couldn’t simply push out vast amounts of content. Instead, they needed to selectively push out the best content.
What constitutes good quality? Here are some guidelines:
- Go deep. Articles that treat the issue in depth are far more successful at reaching and convincing an audience.
- Go long. Long-form content has a higher chance of converting audience. Articles that exceed 1,000 words have a greater chance of appearing in the search engine results pages and prompting user engagement.
- Use a variety of content. Today’s content needs a strong dose of variety – images, infographics, embedded tweets and Facebook posts, and videos.
- Be readable. The user’s experience is a crucial factor in the ongoing reliability, authority, and success of the content. Issues such as mobile readability, formatting, style, and layout affect the experience.
Imitate the world’s best brands
While I like to see myself as an innovator in content marketing, I don’t claim to have a corner on the market of content marketing strategy.
I’ve benefited in incredible ways from observing some of the world’s best and biggest brands. Here are some of the things that I’ve seen to be successful:
- Deep, thorough, and authoritative content
- Content syndication
- Humor
- Lifestyle-marketing techniques
- Infographics
- User-generated content
- Heavy social promotion of long-form content pieces
- Storytelling
The world’s best brands aren’t necessarily the world’s biggest brands. Big brands often have huge budgets that allow them to mass-produce content. Yet, it’s often the small brands that possess the creativity to push the envelope on content marketing strategy.
Focus on what you do best; forget the rest
I want to repurpose the cliché, “Do your best and forget the rest”, to “Publish your best content where it does the best, and forget the rest of the content platforms”.
There are dozens of places where you could publish content. Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean that you should. If you have the resources and personnel to manage every social account, publish on every blog, comment on every forum, and manage every profile, then go for it.
However, if you can’t do a great job because you’re in too many places, stop. Select the one or two channels where your awesome content gets high engagement, and focus on those.
There’s a cognitive bias known as the “sunk-cost fallacy” – you believe that you should continue on a path that is obviously not the best because you’ve already invested so much time or resources into it.
If something isn’t working, stop it. Reject the sunk-cost fallacy, and do the things that are truly effective.
Think this was helpful? Head to the Content Marketing Institute's blog to read the full story here and if you think you need help with your Inbound Marketing strategy as a whole, check out our training offer below.
