Your content is really only as good as its context. Would you read something about a 2012 political election, or best practices for using MySpace? Probably not. Humans have an innate craving for trending news and breaking stories. Being able to blend your branded messaging with relevant topics will significantly increase the virality of your content marketing. However, as content marketing expert Marcus Sheridan believes, “many businesses…are missing the mark big time.”
Have you heard that 90% of companies are using custom content for marketing? Or that consumers believe that blogs are the most useful form of content? There’s a lot of compelling reasons to blog starting yesterday, not the least of which is that it’s no longer a differentiating factor. There are now nearly 7 million blogs on the internet, a meteoric increase over the 100,000 that existed a decade ago. From increased brand awareness to thought leadership to positive SEO, the reasons to blog are nearly endless. We’ve highlighted 25 of our favorites below:
Sorry, but first-time visitors to your company’s website probably don’t want to talk to your sales representative. The internet and mobile technology have revolutionized the way that consumers research organizations, and many prospects who find your website through organic search simply aren’t ready to make a purchase. This fact doesn’t mean you need to cut your losses, continue using various blog tricks, and wait for your phone to ring. It simply means you should realize the power of your blog for educating your future customers, and strive to create a reader experience that’s as informative and valuable as possible. Leveraging the experience and proven results of the best experts in the industry, we’ve curated 10 remarkable blog tricks to help you reach your sales goals, without resorting to pushy content:
“If you write great content, people will find it.” While that’s certainly an idyllic thought of a world in which marketers can just focus on creating outstanding content, it’s just not accurate anymore.
Over 2 million blog posts are published to the web each day. Call it an era of abundance, information obesity, or the content arms race, but the truth is that it’s much harder than it used to be to build an audience.
Figuring out how to start a blog isn’t the hard part. Creating a content strategy, an editorial calendar, and writing your first post aren’t for the faint-of-heart, but many bloggers find that growing an audience is their biggest challenge. It isn’t easy, but I’ve succeeded at growing traffic to a new blog 1000% a month for 9 consecutive months with some pretty scrappy content creation and promotion tactics. And the benefits of improved blog traffic are pretty clear:
Are list posts part of your content marketing strategy?
If they’re not, they definitely should be! List posts are the second most-shared form of content, after infographics. They’re easy-to-digest for readers, and have an instant viral quality. That doesn’t mean you can sit down to pen the perfect list post without effort, though. There are tactics you can use to improve your content’s performance. Here is some of the latest data to improve your approach:
Do blogging metrics really matter? Yes, they absolutely do. If the purpose of your content strategy is profit, customer acquisition or even brand awareness, it’s critical to apply regular analysis and take immediate action.
As Jay Baer points out, “without a statistical measure of your blogging process, adding content…can be an incredibly lonely proposition.” Unless you take a deep look into your traffic sources, page views and conversions on a consistent basis, you could find yourself at the helm of a blog that’s attracting the wrong type of visitors, or worse, just isn’t getting the attention you deserve.
How do you manage to create content without any time to blog?
Unless your company is in a position to hire a dedicated, full-time content creator, it can be challenging to work blogging into an already busy work schedule.
How long does it really take to create content? Reports vary, but many experts claim they work on an article for anywhere between 2 hours and several days. Are people on the quicker side creating low-quality stuff? Not necessarily – they’ve probably just mastered the art of productivity. I’ve been creating web content professionally since late 2010. On a typical day, I write anywhere between 2,000-3,500 words of really great stuff. I’ve learned more than a few tricks to speed myself up during my years at the keyboard. I’ve decided to provide you all with unprecedented, exclusive access into how I get it all done and save time blogging on a daily basis:
Surely, success of your blog is defined by your knowledge of the topic. That and the ability to convey your message in a language that would be easy for your audience to comprehend. But if you don’t have the right tools at your disposal, chances of your blog becoming remarkable are pretty slim.
Whether you want to know more about tools for better productivity during writing, better formatting options, or maybe a plagiarism checker, please read on. Each one of these tools has been carefully tried out and reviewed, and only the best ones out there made the cut.