Welcome back!
Today, I’m going to dive into one of the topics that fascinates me the most—content marketing.
The ability to create content that is, in itself, marketing.
You’ve probably heard the term “content marketing” before—but what exactly is content marketing, and how can you use this discipline in your business?
Today, I’ll walk you through 5 tips that will help you kick ass at content marketing!
In reality, content marketing allows you to engage potential customers early in the buying process, giving you the opportunity to build a relationship, shape their buying behavior, and educate them about a given product!
Content marketing is here to stay
As seen above, more and more companies are recognizing the value of content marketing. However, very few actually know what they’re doing—they just want to ‘join in’, and that’s what we’re going to take a closer look at.
How do you go from just “being there” to having 100% control over what you’re doing and knowing why you’re doing it?
Let’s get started!
1. Solid platform for content
Without a solid platform, it will be difficult to see a real impact from the content you create. That’s why it’s very important to start with the fundamentals in place.
Content marketing can take many forms—in this article, we’ll focus on the written aspect of content marketing, as the written discipline is relatively easy for all businesses to get involved in.
WordPress
If you want to start blogging, WordPress is the optimal solution for you. WordPress is designed for bloggers and has all the necessary features to make blogging as easy as pie.
Example of a layout sketch I made for Trendsonline. Feel free to print it out, as I will reference it several times.
If you have a programmer on board, you can of course hardcode everything from scratch.
However, I don’t recommend this because you’ll also need to train writers on the system. Most people find it relatively easy to navigate the WordPress platform—even when it comes to outsourcing—so you can save many hours (and money) by setting up the blog in WordPress.
(This blog is also built on the WordPress platform)
Responsive design
Having a responsive design means that your website can be viewed and displayed on all devices (laptop, tablet, and mobile). This is where many businesses fall short!
They forget that 50% of their visitors are likely browsing from their mobile phone or tablet.
The curve for growth on mobile devices
Therefore, you should always ensure your site is optimized for mobile.
Optimizing your site for mobile devices covers everything from button spacing, sharing options, and font size to pop-up features. EVERYTHING looks different on mobile, and your users will likely leave your website quickly if it’s not optimized for mobile. However, if you stay ahead of these things, you’re future-proofed—so ALWAYS make sure this part is in order.
Speed
The speed of your website is, in my opinion, an underrated parameter. It’s crucial that your users can quickly browse through your site, as this will keep them around longer.
Remember that many of your users don’t have high-speed internet—and many, as mentioned, browse your site from mobile devices, where they may only have 3G access.
In other words, you should optimize for the slowest connection—not the fastest.
Google has also stated that they consider speed in their algorithms, so there’s no excuse not to optimize your site’s speed—it’s a WIN-WIN for both you and your users.
Tips for optimizing speed
- Optimize your images to take up as little space as possible before uploading them to your site. You can use various programs for this. If you use WordPress, you can, for example, use this plugin to optimize your images when they’re uploaded.
- Be careful with installing too many advanced plugins—such as email pop-ups, Facebook buttons, and fancy galleries—too many plugins and features can often negatively affect your site’s speed.
- Optimize your code. There are many good guides for this—I recommend my good friend Rune’s article from Trendsonline on how he beat Amazon and Microsoft’s speed.
- Be careful with too much graphics on your website. Often, a simpler design works better for your users and for speed. 5-10 years ago, it was common to have a site with a lot of graphics and an overuse of effects (we all remember the classic snowflakes falling down the screen, right?)—today, it’s more common to design the website based on what users demand. In other words: Keep your site clean!
30% of your visitors will leave your website if it loads slower than 3 seconds.
Social effects
We love reading something others have read or commented on. In fact, several large media outlets are built on this very principle. Did you know that Reddit created a large number of users and began creating content themselves? That’s how they got others on the platform.
Comments
When people comment on a post, for example, it creates energy around your content. Whether it’s YouTube comments, blog comments, or Facebook comments—regardless of the medium, it creates engagement!
Example from Sarahposin.com—306 comments in connection with a competition
For this reason, it’s also important that you show your comments. If we take my design example from earlier, I’ve made room for a number of comments that you see when you read the post.
If you conclude your article or post with the possibility of discussion—which I always recommend you do—you can easily get a lot of comments, and this generates engagement!
Social sharing functions
We can’t ignore the so-called ‘social sharing functions’. The sharing function on social media is a crucial element when it comes to virality. In other words, you need to make it easy for your users to share your posts.
There are various options if you use WordPress. Explore what works best for the content you produce—and use it going forward.
- Visual content? Try Pinterest
- Very tech-oriented? Try Twitter
- B2B related? Try LinkedIn
- Mainstream? Try Facebook
I’m not saying you should exclude media from your strategy, but in my opinion, you should focus on a few key media that are relevant to your business rather than focusing on all social media—there are many out there now!
Rating
Rating—Amazon and Tripadvisor master this discipline to perfection! Their algorithms are unique
when it comes to rating.
You can do it very simply by adding ratings to your content. You can add stars to your posts, making it easy for your users to rank them. It’s best to set up the rating option after your post, ensuring that your users have actually read the post before they rate it.
Don’t forget user-generated content
When talking about content marketing, you can’t ignore user-generated content—also known as UGC—especially since we’ve already touched on social media.
This type of content can be anything from videos on TikTok, a comment on LinkedIn, a picture with a hashtag on Instagram, and the list goes on…
The point is that this is content that authentically revolves around a brand.
The company can either encourage users to create this type of content, for example, by using a hashtag or through a collaboration agreement, but this type of content can also come from comments and reviews spontaneously posted by users.
The authentic aspect of this type of content creates social proof for brands.
In fact, Vogue Business describes it perfectly in their article on how the growing influence of TikTok and Instagram is giving brands reason to invest resources in encouraging users to create UGC.
UGC has become very important for consumers, especially from younger generations.
They simply trust nano- and micro-influencers who share their experiences with a product more than they trust what the brand itself can offer.
If a business profile shares this type of user-generated content (with the creator’s consent), it can go a long way in building a brand.
Tracking
One of the things I find fascinating about internet marketing is that you can track and monitor everything you do. Whether it’s Facebook ads, content, or banner advertising—EVERYTHING can be tracked and monitored.
Google Analytics
I’ve written a lot about Google Analytics before—a free tool for tracking and data analysis provided by Google. Google Analytics is both simple and advanced—it all depends on how you use it. Essentially, it’s about using the data you need and leaving the rest.
When you create content, I recommend diving into parameters such as:
- Time on page (how good is your content?)
- New vs. returning users (how good are you at retaining your users?)
- Top pages (which pages perform best for your users?)
- Goal setup (a bit more advanced, but if you set goals in Google Analytics, you can see where your users come from when they sign up for newsletters. If you run an online shop, you can see where your sales come from)
Search engines & content marketing
Google is still a huge source of quality traffic, especially when it comes to selling products and services. Many people often misunderstand the quality of Facebook vs. Google traffic. It’s easy to generate traffic via Facebook, but when comparing user behavior on Google and Facebook, it’s clear that users coming via Google spend significantly more time on your site than those coming from Facebook. This is often because Facebook users click on a post due to a catchy headline, while visitors from Google click because of genuine interest.
Interesting development, but remember the point above
Optimize title tags + meta descriptions
One of the most important elements when you want to ensure that Google understands what your website is about is to optimize your title tags and meta descriptions.
As you can see, the title tag and meta description are the first two elements that Google sees, and they are also the two most important elements when a user searches on Google because they are crucial in determining whether the user clicks on your site.
If we compare the two examples above, it’s clear that the bottom one is well thought out, and consideration has been given to what they want to rank highly for in search results.
There are many good tools out there. If you use WordPress, you can’t go wrong with the Yoast SEO tool.
SEO and content plays a vital role together in ranking, so ensure you’re on top of the latest SEO trends to get the most out of your content.
Good tips for title tags and meta descriptions
- Keep all title tags and meta descriptions as unique as possible
- Keep them short and precise, and avoid long, difficult words
- Make sure they are inviting so users want to click
- If you are local, consider including the city name and postal code
- If you want to strengthen your brand, you can include it at the end of all title tags
Social graph
Have you ever tried sharing a post, an article, or another form of content on social media? Then you may have noticed that it doesn’t look as good as it did on your site. The image might not be right, or the headline isn’t updated—it can be frustrating!
Just as we can optimize our content for Google, we can also optimize our tags for social media, so our content looks its best on these platforms.
Again, we take WordPress and our tool, Yoast SEO, as an example. You can also hardcode it, but that’s a complex process, so I’ll keep it as simple as possible.
Under the Yoast SEO tool, you can enable the social graph, which allows you to add social data to your articles—see the example from my blog below.
It’s very simple, and the cool thing is that you can have different title tags for Google and Facebook. Facebook often requires more clickbait-style headlines if you want to ensure that users click.
It could be “5 insane tips for Google Adwords [double your revenue]”. You can also upload an image that fits the article well, which increases the chances of getting more clicks from Facebook.
Example of a good, solid Facebook post
If you still have problems with your site’s content not being updated when you try to share it on social media, you can use a marketing tool developed by Facebook called “Facebook Debugger.”
It works by asking Facebook to scrape NEW information from your site—this ensures that the latest version is included.
2. What should you write about?
Nothing beats passion. You should write from the heart. This post took me 4-5 days to write, including breaks and research. However, it took me 5 years to gain enough knowledge to even write this post. I’m not unique, but we all have something to say, and if you’ve been doing something for a long time (like I’ve been involved in online marketing for many years), there’s a good chance others can learn from you.
When you start writing blog posts, it will often be rough. This is the case for many businesses and bloggers. However, you can get ahead by considering one particular parameter…
Namely, data!
Use data for your content strategy
As the internet has grown, and more content has been created than ever before, there has also been a need to
analyze content. For this purpose, Buzzsumo has created an excellent tool.
Let’s assume I need to write a blog post for Forbes about content marketing. How would I approach the task?
I would start by looking at what performs really well on Forbes in general.
Go to Buzzsumo and enter Forbes.com
Now I can see which articles perform really well on Forbes. I ask myself: ‘Can I somehow include that information in my articles, or can I link to these pages?’
I can also see that there are many shares on Facebook compared to other social media, so I know I need to create a catchy headline, as mentioned in the previous section. I would also note Facebook for potential promotion via ads.
Go back to Buzzsumo and enter “content marketing”. Here, I choose a time interval so I can see what has been trending in the last few months.
Now I even have a few good ideas about what topics I can write about.
If you have a free account on Buzzsumo, you can only use it a few times a day and see up to 5 results—that’s enough, but if you’re a larger media outlet, I recommend buying the full version—it can really give you an edge over your competitors in terms of content.
Let’s combine that data with Google Trends
Go to Google Trends and enter “content marketing”
Under queries, I get a pretty good idea of what elements I can include in my article. Now I already have a good idea of what I should write about in my article.
I also know that content marketing is a highly competitive industry, so the more niche-focused I can be, the greater the chance I’ll succeed!
There are many methods to help you test whether the article you’re writing has a chance of performing well.
Google method
If you start by entering your main topic, you have a good chance of being inspired by Google Suggest. Now I know that many people want examples and possible templates—basically, people probably want something actionable—and that suits me perfectly!
Keyword Planner (advanced)
When working with Google, we’re lucky they provide many tools. This also applies to their ad platform. To find the right keywords, you can use their Keyword Planner.
This method is very popular among American content marketers because it gives you a very concrete idea of what will work on Google and how high the search volume is for different words. Again—the more specific you are, the better.
Based on the above, I could easily write an article about “Content Marketing Strategy for B2B [With templates]“.
I hope the above has given you an idea that you should write based on data—even if you write from the heart. Unfortunately, most people give up on content marketing because their content doesn’t perform. But if you analyze data before writing a post, I promise your posts will perform!
3. How to create the best content
Earlier, we looked at how to find out what to write about. In this section, I’ll briefly go over a few ways you can optimize your content to get the most out of your posts.
The headline must work!
The headline is one of the most important things when it comes to writing blog posts, but in general, everything related to content marketing requires a sharp headline—otherwise, you’ll find that no one clicks on your posts.
Only 2 out of 10 people will read past your headline.
The statistic above speaks for itself. Headlines are the focus for everyone at the moment! Especially the major media outlets that want us to click on more articles than before. Unfortunately, this has also created a culture of click-baiting, which—in a figurative sense—means that we write headlines with the intent of getting clicks, without always focusing on quality.
Good examples
- 5 reasons to drink wine every day (without overdoing it)
- 5 reasons you’re not losing weight and what you can do about it
- That’s why juice cleanses don’t work
Remember ethics and morals… and you can certainly use the strategy wisely. The worst thing you can do is bet everything on getting more clicks—and forget to double-check that your article matches the headline. This doesn’t create loyal readers!
Tools
There are many ways to come up with the best possible headline. If you look at the previous section, we’ve already touched on some of these, including Buzzsumo, Google Trends, and Keyword Planner.
Let’s take a few more!
If you write in English, you can use a headline analyzer to see how your headline performs. You can naturally also use it in English and translate it into Danish.
Let’s test it out.
It’s hard to get above 70, but you can test an unlimited number of times and see if you can come up with a headline that really hits the high scale.
This tool analyzes how well your headline will perform—especially on social media. So it analyzes the use of words and how they’re put together. If you’re completely out of ideas for the headline, I recommend using a headline generator.
Outsource content
If you’re not the best at writing articles, I recommend considering outsourcing your content. Instead of trying to force through a text that you know in advance won’t be optimal, focus your time on what you’re good at and have others handle the rest.
There are many outlets that want to write texts—however, it’s really hard to find outlets that prioritize quality! Often, you’ll end up with an office full of writers who are willing to write an article for $10, but the quality will reflect that—remember this!
Textbroker
When I outsource my texts, I use Textbroker. It’s naturally mostly in English, but you can always find someone to translate from English to Danish. Textbroker works relatively simply—the most important thing is to set guidelines for how the article should be structured, what the language should be like, and who the audience should be.
You pay for quality, and a good post that hits hard will cost between $80-150. For startups, this can naturally be a significant expense, but you can start with one article per month and work your way up.
If you use the tools above, you can set up very specific guidelines for your articles—and even provide concrete topics and headlines.
Remember, all the articles you write must be unique. No copy-cats here. So make sure the articles you have written adhere to these rules. Textbroker has a system that checks if the texts are duplicated content. If you choose cheaper options, you often end up with duplicated content.
Small tips for setup
- Keep your paragraphs short and your sentences shorter. The best blogs have an incredible amount of whitespace around each paragraph, and that’s on purpose. It creates an overview for the reader—there’s nothing worse than a long block of text.
- Support your articles with facts, data, and references. When you read my articles, you’ll see that I often link to good sources, cases, etc. This is entirely intentional. It builds credibility with the reader, and I give them the opportunity to dive deeper into the topic.
- Start your content with an interesting introduction to keep the reader engaged, and end your content with the opportunity for interaction with your readers. No one knows everything—if you offer others the chance to add their experiences, both you and they will learn more.
4. Build an audience for your content
The hardest part of content marketing is building an audience. You need an audience to write for. In fact, 80% of all bloggers give up because they feel nothing is happening.
It takes patience, but again: You can optimize your content with some small hacks.
Social media
Let’s assume I want to know which social media I should be present on—I would start by analyzing my competitors. In this case, I would use Buzzsumo again and this time enter Quicksprout—a global marketing blog run by Neil Patel.
Now it’s clear which social media are most used. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn stand out and are the largest social media in terms of shares.
Then I would spend 2 minutes comparing which social media are most popular geographically—specifically in Denmark, as that’s where I want to write my posts.
I also have a tool installed in my Chrome browser called SimilarWeb. It can be used to check how much traffic a website gets from different media.
Very simple tool that gives a good overview of which social media generate the most traffic. Moreover, this can also give an idea of where it would be wise to advertise. Again—these tools provide incredible insight into what works in many areas—not just a specific one.
Leverage other people’s audiences
A really good tactic is to leverage other websites’ social media. Make sure to mention major industry leaders, software companies, and educational sources. After you’ve written your blog post, you can email them:
Hi Trendsonline,
I’ve just written a post about content marketing, and since I find so much inspiration in your media, I’ve decided to link to you.
Find my post here: Insert link
If you’d be interested in linking back or sharing it through your channels, you’re more than welcome. I just wanted to pass on some social karma as I’ve been following your site for a long time.
Best regards,
Micky Weis
It doesn’t always work, but 8/10 times I contact them, they’re happy to share the posts on their media, and that’s when traffic can really take off. If you’re also a bit smart, you can quickly get these new users to follow you on social media or sign up for your newsletter.
Email list
Don’t fall off now! An email list is your most powerful tool for selling more online. We’ve seen a shift in how we sell things online. Previously, it was solely through ads and pushy sales tactics that we could sell our products, and it was one-way communication.
Today, things look a bit different.
This is where your email list comes in as a very important element, especially because it’s the most personal channel.
Get more email sign-ups
It has become very simple to send emails today compared to what it used to be. There are a lot of different email clients. Personally, I use Mailchimp because I think it works flawlessly. (Mailchimp is where you send your emails and create the design part).
To get more people to sign up for your newsletter, you need to use so-called email boxes. You can see them on my website at the top, at the bottom of each post, and in the sidebars.
SumoMe – Sarahposin.com
SumoMe is a very nice app for newly started bloggers or businesses. It’s free when you don’t need their pro features, and you can even connect it to your Mailchimp account so that new sign-ups go directly over and are ready to receive your newsletters.
As you can see below, the conversion is good on Sarah’s website. It’s about testing text and call-to-actions to see what works.
Another very important detail is that SumoMe works incredibly well on mobile phones. Unfortunately, I still see many websites that have these email popups—they really don’t work well. I’ve previously done split tests where I test with and without, and it’s clear that traffic drops significantly on mobile because visitors bounce back to Google again.
Tips for email sign-ups
- There are tons of plugins. I highly recommend SumoMe and Bloom for WordPress. Both are very simple to work with, and although Bloom is a paid module, it doesn’t cost a fortune.
- Play on emotions and interests. No one wants to receive product-related news. For example, Sarah’s readers want to receive free workout tips and recipes, but they probably wouldn’t sign up if it said, “Buy my magazine”—test, test, and test.
- Make sure they can be clicked away again—it’s okay if people don’t want to sign up—don’t force it on users. Make it possible to remove your sign-up boxes again. Always keep the users in mind; if it’s annoying for you, it’s probably incredibly annoying for your users too.
- If you have many visitors, you might consider creating a free PDF book with your 10 best tips in your industry. People then have to sign up to receive your PDF book by entering their emails. A win/win for both parties, and it’s also very common in the US. Just remember to mention that you send out newsletters, so people don’t feel exploited.
5. Promote your content
The last part we need to cover in this post is promotion.
Let’s go over the different options.
Facebook advertising
If you have a relatively small budget, you can start on Facebook with advertising. I mention Facebook because their enormous amount of data has created an ad system that can segment far better than most others—it also means you can target a very specific audience.
Step-by-step guide
- Start by creating a Facebook page—you’ll need it when creating ads.
- Then create your first campaign via Power Editor. When you create a campaign, you need to choose the goal of the campaign—also called the objective. In this case, I want more clicks (visitors) to my website.
- After creating the campaign, you need to create the audience—this is done by creating what’s called an ad set. Here, you can define your target audience and choose which devices your adsshould be displayed on. For example, if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, it would be a bad idea to drive traffic that way.
- Finally, you need to create the creative part, namely the ads. This is where you need to be creative. I usually recommend having 10-15 ads for each audience (ad set). That way, you can test different ads.
Guest blogging
To establish yourself as a brand—or create hype around a new product—guest blogging can have huge value. If you, for example, want to launch a new tech product like a new antivirus program, you can reach out to smaller tech blogs.
You can write about a solution for users like “5 tips to make your computer faster”—you can then include your new product without it seeming too pushy.
I’ve previously written a bit about guest blogging, which you can find in the post here. Highly recommended if you want to use the strategy as a regular part of your promotion strategy.
Spend 70% of your time promoting and branding your content—and 30% writing it.
Small tips for promotion
- Everything is difficult at the start—use all the little tricks and get friends and family to hype your content. In other words, use your network to get the ball rolling. No one experiences millions of visitors from day one.
- Start with a few posts so you can maintain high quality and produce posts in a steady stream. It’s not realistic to write 5 of these posts a week, but it’s possible to write 1 a week and then combine it with shorter articles.
- If you write about other products in your blog posts, you can contact these companies and ask if they will share it through their channels—it means a lot to you, but it might only take them 2 minutes. Remember, every little bit helps! (For example, I can now write to Trendsonline, Rune Jensen, Slikhaar, and many more because of this post).
Conclusion
That’s it! Now you know everything there is to know about content marketing (almost)!
I hope the fire is lit within you, and you’re ready to create the coolest content on the web.
That’s all for now! I sincerely hope this post gave you an idea of what content marketing is—at least for the blogging part—content marketing could just as well be video and much more.
What are your best experiences with content marketing, and is there anything I’ve forgotten?
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