If you have ever run an online business you know how incredibly important content is to your business. Content is what gives wings to your imagination. Content defines how your customers, and potential customers, view your brand. Content is to the online world what glamour is to the fashion industry. In fact in this day and age, if you are lucky, you may be excused for making a bad product decision but you can’t be excused for making bad or uninformed content decisions. This is why when you decide to start promoting your brand you need to ensure that your content marketing strategy is right on the money from the word go.
Let us give you a low-down on the 5 essential promotion strategies that will fix all your content marketing woes.
Be an in-demand headliner
Headlines are important. Upworthy is a case in point. And no we are not talking about clickbaits. Hubspot’s social media scientist Dan Zarrella analysed about 2.7 million tweets that had an embedded link and found that there is little to no correlation between retweets and clicks. In a very interesting observation Zarrella notes that 16.12% of all tweets with embedded links generated more retweets than clicks. What does that mean? Well, in plain English people retweet even if they haven’t clicked on the link to read the content. What enables people to do that is the headline to the article linked in the tweet. If it’s interesting, unique, and shareable, people will share it.
This analysis by Zarrella is proof that headlines play an important role in increasing the shareability quotient of your content.
Be a problem solver
No amount of pointless articles will help you build your brand if you don’t bring a problem-solving approach, and intent, to your content. The business community appreciates people who solve problems. If you are a content ninja looking to put your brand on a pedestal make sure your content speaks for itself and looks to solve problems in your niche. Customers respect brands that are transparent and if you are an online brand the single most important factor that may, or may not, win your brand reputation points is whether your content feels important to those who read it.
Do you create helpful educational tutorials? Do you provide accurate information on pancreatic cancer? Do you write about SEO that actually works? Create content that solves a problem and watch your brand reputation improve against all odds. Remember that customers and businessmen are also people. People have needs and bridging the gap between this need and the needy is an incredible opportunity for content creators and marketers alike. But a word of caution here. Keep the intent behind creating such content honest because churning out mediocre content for the sake of problem solving will only add to your woes.
Be a video and podcast ninja
There is more to online content than textual content. Videos are a great way to promote your brand and reach your target audience. If you write informative and in-depth articles that are important to a certain section of your audience, make sure you create a video based on that content. Doing so gives you two benefits: (1) You have one more content piece ready for promotion and (2) your content is now relevant to people who prefer videos over text. Video content is in fact incredibly relevant today and there is absolutely no reason why you should not be creating video content. Find a workaround that fits your business and start creating video content today.
If you are creating video content, why stop there? You can create podcasts to add versatility to your content stack. This format brings the same advantages to the table as video content does.
Be an internal link builder
Everybody who creates online content knows that internal link building is one of the most important practices that can help improve traffic conversion to your new content. Proper internal link building helps funnel some of the traffic from your most popular content to your new content. If you have great content that is highly shareable and widely cited this tactic is a perpetual goldmine. You are not hoping for somebody else’s content resource to link back to your content, you can do it using your own resource.
Build internal links intelligently and you will be able to define a traffic conversion process all your own.
Be a social media wizard
Social media was without doubt the buzzword of the decade (2005 – 2015). With incredible options available at your disposal there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be taking advantage of social media. But the problem with a large majority of brands has been their inability to master social media. All online marketers know that facebook has pretty much killed organic post reach unless you are willing to empty your pockets. That’s facebook’s business strategy and you can complain about it all you want but it’s not going to change anytime soon.
You can still achieve great results with social media if you know the workarounds facebook has left you with. All it takes is research and implementation logic. Have you heard of facebook’s Custom Audience feature? If the answer is no, go find it. If the answer is yes, did you know that you can leverage upon Custom Audiences by creating Lookalike audiences at no extra cost and increase your reach manifolds? Similar hacks come into play on Twitter and other social media channels.
Smart business owners don’t waste their time complaining, they find growth hacks to make best use of existing resources. Be that smart business owner. Be a social media wizard.
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