All posts tagged content strategy

“What are you going to do after hitting the “Publish” button?” – That is one of the crucial questions that you are about to face. Indeed, it is! Since we all know that publishing and posting a certain article would definitely not be the end of the process in having a guaranteed SEO, taking a step further can help us reach a particular goal in the marketing industry.

solidgoldcreativity.com

Spending hours on a particular content, and posting it on the web to help other people in giving out information is a rewarding thing to do, especially when you know that your target market engages with it. That is one of the reasons why we continue to make and post one every day. However, rewarding as it may seem, there are instances when we also spend some of our time thinking on what to do next after hitting the “publish” button.

Aside from merely publishing your content, there are 6 simple strategies that you can do to have a successful blog post. Generally, these strategies are all effective when you know what and how to do it.

 

1.  Answer all comments

movabletype.org

movabletype.org

Most bloggers and marketers, if not all, would not care letting their readers leave a comment. For as long as they have posted something, then they are done. Nope! This is a fallacy.

Bloggers or marketers have to admit! It is not easy to make people leave a comment on your post. However, for some reasons, making your target audience react or engage by leaving comments can make your blog look more authoritative, which also makes it as a social proof. The more good and satisfying comments you get, the more people would also engage to your posts. Also, they can stir an interesting idea for your next content.

Whether you like it or not, you can’t control what kind of reviews they are going to give you. That is why as much as possible, you have to acknowledge and answer their comments in a right and informative way.

2. Schedule your promotions

slideshare.net

slideshare.net

The promotion of your content plays a big role in creating and having high quality traffic on your post. Without doing so, your content will be stagnant and perhaps, forgotten. Promoting your content constantly is important as publishing your post since it drives new traffic every time you share it socially.

One way you can track the promotions of your content is to make a to-do list or a timeline on what social media platform you will be using on a specific day, week or month. When sharing on Twitter for example, you have to share it more than once in its first day, and a few times throughout the next few weeks.

Moreover, in order for you to drive more traffic, choose a social media platform that can help you gain quality traffic on your post. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and LinkedIn are some of the social platforms that can help you with your promotions.

 

3. Email the world

blog.mailchimp.com

blog.mailchimp.com

Aside from sharing your content in social media platforms, another way to promote your content is through emails. This is one of the reasons why you need to build your email list now. Your followers and subscribers will automatically receive the email that you have sent. Of course, these are the ideal people that will most likely engage in your emails.

Promoting your content through emails is simple, and it works. Basically, you have to include the link that will direct them to your post. You don’t need to include complicated themes or templates every time you use the email.  With the right composition of your content, you can definitely drive new traffic in your emails alone.

Moreover, you can also include a call-to-action. You can ask your followers to comment on the new post or share it on their respective social media accounts. In that way, your content will be disseminated all throughout social media.

 

4. Call in favors

entrepreneur.com

entrepreneur.com

Asking some favors from your followers is also one thing that can add traffic to your post. However, asking them to share your post can may also sound demanding. Sometimes, we feel embarrassed to email them and ask their help when we don’t even know their works.

The problem is, most bloggers or marketers would accept your favor if there is something that you do in return. Let’s take your content for example, if you link their name, brand or a particular quote coming from them, they will also feel obliged to return the favor to you, by sharing or mentioning you and your posts in their content as well.

That is why, it is also important to let them know that you have included or mentioned them on your content. Obviously, not everyone that you have asked will share your post, but many will.

 

5. Take advantage of groups

lrandcom.com

lrandcom.com

An online group is a great place to connect with people, and joining one is a great opportunity to share your content. Basically, joining groups gives you the chance to share any of your contents since there are no restrictions when it comes to post counts. Your reputation in the group is based more on your recent contribution and on how active are you socially.

There are actually a lot of groups that you can join with, but first, you have to make sure to find the best groups to join. You can join in LinkedIn groups and meet hundreds to thousands of professional bloggers and marketers, know who else have the same interest as you do in your Facebook groups, and accumulate followers in your Twitter account.

These are just some of the groups that you can take advantage of. Do not just stay on a particular blog without doing something. Extend your niche by joining groups.

 

6. Social Media

socialmediaexaminer.com

socialmediaexaminer.com

When we talk about publishing and promoting our content, having it on social media is our first priority. Where else? We usually think of which effective social media platforms are we going to utilize, what kind of strategy are we going to follow to have a successful blog post and gather high quality traffic, and on how to get our target audience’s attention.

Considering these concerns, it will always start and end with social media. That is why, choosing the right social media platform to use is as important as your content. You do not just post it anywhere and let your target market struggle in finding your content. As much as possible, make your content visible to every social media platform. With that, you will definitely gain high quality traffic on your posts.

Strategically, with the help of any SEO consulting services, we can have higher traffic and ranking than the other sites and blogs. However, even when we seek SEO services,  it is still not a guarantee that we can achieve our desired rank when we have a poor and crappy content. We all know that content is the heart and soul of a site or blog.

 

manobyte.net

manobyte.net

Creating an engaging content for your website can be demanding at times. Implementing a content strategy itself needs our full attention. What more when it comes to creating appealing and engaging contents? Basically, the content must be precise and direct so the readers can easily and clearly understand what you want to tell them.

Writing a content means writing down your ideas. But sometimes, ideas won’t just flow more so when our minds are already tired and empty. A winning content observes and follows a good content strategy. Here are some of the must-asked questions if you want to have a winning content strategy.

  1. Who are your users/audience?

As a writer, you can’t write a content if you don’t know who your audiences are. To whom are you writing for? Who are these people that you want to impart your ideas to? And who are these people who would be interested and willing to read your articles or blog posts? These questions are essential for you to answer to identify your target audience.

You can’t determine the specific traffic on your site if you fail to determine your target audience. Also, you can’t identify what kind of people who usually visits your site or blog in terms of demographics. You may have a lot of target markets which can be difficult to write for, or you may have an ideal target market who you think will be interested in your contents.

Knowing your target market is a prerequisite of focusing more correctly on that particular market. such a process may boost the traffic to your site and let you obtain more qualified leads. Well, that is, aside from having better and higher page ranking on the search engines.

  1. Who are your competitors?

To know and identify your competitors mean that you are up for the challenge in a competitive world of online content consumption. Knowing who your competitors are is one way to being proactive and strategic enough especially when they want to take you off guard and copy your strategies.

If you are smart enough, however, you can get some of the ideas from your competitors. For instance, you may determine how they manage to have a successful content strategy particularly when it comes to letting the people stay and being engaged in the content they made. It is a matter of who gets the idea first and how you act on the idea. It could be you or your rival.

  1. What can you offer?

Since you already know your target audience and your direct (and even indirect) competitors, the next thing you must consider is what can you offer to your target audience that your competitors may not necessarily copy or imitate. That’s your unique value.

Some of the questions worth pondering are: What kind of content these particular groups of people need to know? What else can you teach them that they still don’t know? What kind of content will you give to them that they may be interested in?

Always remember that there are thousands of digital marketers who write and publish the same content as you do. The only way your content can stand out from the others is to make your contents unique, valuable, informative, relevant, interesting, useful and engaging.

  1. What does your target audience need and want to hear?

If you don’t have any ideas on what kind of content you should be writing for your audience, try being active online. It is necessary to socialize online so that you’d know what the trending topics are and for you to fit into the crowd and to your target audience. When you do, you know what kind of topics that they want to know.

You can get ideas by interacting with the other online writers also, perhaps through forums or any other social networking sites. Grab that idea and make an engaging content out of it for your target audience. The more engaging and interesting your topic will be, the more people will be reading, liking, commenting and sharing your content. In short, an engaging content is a magnet for worthy interactions!

  1. What is the purpose of your content?

Now yo know what to write about, the next thing you must consider is to know what is the purpose of the content. Is it purely for traffic and lead generation? Is your content intended for selling? Is it for entertainment? Will it be informative or educational? Is it intended for the kids or for adults?

It is important to know the purpose of your content so you may easily align the topic with the right audience. You may also identify which category your content belongs to and for you not to be confused.

  1. How often should you publish content?

When you start blogging, it is now your duty to give your target market an interesting content that they might not know yet. You must have a schedule on when to publish since you are tapping on your readers’ expectation. Eventually, your readers will look forward to reading your blog on that specific day. Will you publish one article per week or every other week? Or even every day?

Publishing a new content on a regular basis is also a daunting task. You have to think of a new and interesting ideas. There are instances when you cannot think of anything to write. Just always go back to the basics of why you are  writing in the first place.

  1. How will you distribute your content?

Publishing your content is not enough. You need to let the people know that your website or blog exists. Knowing where to distribute or post your content other than your website is a way to gain more viewers.

Be reminded that in publishing, you must be careful where you are going to post your contents. Not all publishing platforms are created equal. If you want to gain more viewers, you have to post your article on the sites wherein there will be lots of people that may notice and read it. The traffic of your blog also varies on how you should distribute it socially.

Sometimes, we complicate things when, in fact, having a good and winning content strategy is as easy as answering 7 must-asked questions. The secret is in the basics! And the basics that we are talking about are discussed above.

the marriage of smm and seoToday, it takes more than just making websites visible online. It also requires online publishers to enhance and widen their social footprint with or without the help of an SEO company. Indeed, optimization strategies cannot be separated from social strategies especially if increasing searches and improving rankings are your goals (which should be).

Now here’s the perennial question: WHY ONLINE BUSINESSES MUST CARE? Perhaps, these figures will tell you blatantly why you cannot afford to ignore SEO + SMM (social media marketing) = SOCIAL SEO.

 

Demographics

  • Women are more active on social media than men.
  • Nearly 1/3 of all online users are a member of at least a social media network.
  • About 89% of young (aged 18-29) are socially active.
  • The folks (aged 50-60 and 65+) are also socially active at 60% and 43%, respectively.
  • About 72% of Internet users are active on social media.
  • About 71% of the users access social media through mobile devices.

 

Search

  • About 93% of all online experiences actually start with a search
  • Search is considered the best channel to drive direct sales
  • The #1 listing in organic results receives 33% organic traffic
  • The top 4 in SERP listings receive 83% organic traffic
  • Roughly 50% of mobile searches intend to find a local result
  • Approximately 61% of these searches actually result in a purchase
  • Monthly, Google processes 10.3 billion searches

 

Social Media

  • The most successful B2B companies use 7 social media platforms on an average
  • Social media is the #1 content marketing tactic at 87% followed by articles and e-newsletters
  • Social media sharing is the #3 metric used in measuring online success

 

Facebook

  • Facebook has a total of 1.2 billion users today (and growing).
  • About 23% of all Facebook users check their accounts about 5 times daily.
  • A company with more than 1,000 Facebook likes is likely to receive about 1,400 unique visits daily
  • About 70% of online businesses gain a new customer through Facebook.

 

Other Social Sites

  • Roughly 45% of B2B companies acquire a client through LinkedIn.
  • Approximately 20% of all LinkedIn users are below 30 years old.
  • Twitter has 550 million registered users, 215 million of which are active.
  • B2B companies that utilize Twitter generate twice as many leads on average than those that don’t.
  • Only 23% of all tweets generate an action (reply, re-tweet, etc.).
  • Google+ has 1 billion total users, but only 1/3 is active.
  • Google+ users spend 3 minutes per month on an average.
  • Pinterest has 20 million active users monthly.
  • Instagram has 150 million active users monthly.

 

the marriage of seo and smmNow that you’ve understand what you are missing, tying your SEO efforts with your social strategies is a must. Unfortunately, this is one aspect that is very difficult to pursue not because online marketers don’t know where to start, but they don’t know how to start.

Not to mention, there are challenges about SEO and SMM along the way that defy each component, so what more when they are combined. Here are some of these challenges that also cement the supposedly non-separation of SEO and SMM.

1) When to integrate?

Some online marketers deliberately chose to start their SEO and SMM efforts after building their websites. This is the culprit of all culprits!

SEO should be a fundamental part of the website design or re-design process. This is the reason there’s such a thing as ‘technical SEO.’ SEO and social media widgets, for instance, must be architected into the design early on, perhaps while still at the design stage.

2) How much to spend?

Unquestionably, marketers need to invest on a website. However, what good is a perfectly designed site if it lacks high quality content?

optimization and social mediaA business is an ongoing investment. Invest on brand journalists, too. These are the people who are ready and willing to align their goals based on the company goals. The secret is investing on quality. If it means investing a million dollar for excellent content, then so be it. You would eventually reap the highest ROI possible if you put a premium on excellent contents that convert.

Another culprit that Google itself is attempting to eradicate is the excessive buying of likes, shares, subscribers, followers, etc. All of these must be earned and not negotiated!

3) What approach?

The majority of online marketers are guilty of creating a portfolio of search and social tactics without having a clear focus on what tactics really work for their brand.

An all-or-nothing approach must be avoided. Instead, you should widen your knowledge base so you can make more solid decisions about which tactic works best for the nature and purpose of your business. For startups, trying most of the tactics will do to determine which ones will stay.

 

What to do now?

Think of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ as your primary engine to promote new contents. Organize social campaigns and write optimized contents for these particular campaigns.

When creating contents, follow the basics such as writing unique, informative and compelling contents, building well-structured pages, and following the SEO best practices. Don’t forget the metadata such as tags, images and authorship.

social media marketing smmCreate parameters, metrics or indicators, whatever you desire to measure the performance of the socially-shared contents. Look for rooms for improvement.

Silos won’t work. Think about this: why do you have two separate SEO and SMM teams? This is the essence of the lack of integration between the two. Break down the SEO vs. SMM barrier by combining the teams.

Further, have the team members meet on a regular basis so they may coordinate their strategies and together, they may set clear and measurable conversion and sales targets. The teams may also develop operational calendars to meet these targets.

 

SEO and SMM is not a one-time, big-time effort; it’s not an overnight success story as well. It is an ongoing process that takes time, money and effort to reap all the benefits of such. The secret is putting the right content with the right message in front of the right audience at the right time published on the right channel.

With this, nothing will stop the users from engaging with your contents and eventually with your brand. In short, create contents (the SEO part) for your target audience and publish the contents where your target audience is (the SMM part).

 

Sources:

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/01/17/20-social-media-facts-and-statistics-you-should-know-in-2014/

https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/83-exceptional-social-media-marketing-statistics-2014-160016146.html

http://www.imforza.com/blog/8-seo-stats-that-are-hard-to-ignore/

http://zerogravitymarketing.com/seo-statistics/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/

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