content marketing tips

Lower Content Marketing Costs And Increase The Value Of Your Marketing Dollars

February 5, 2016 By SEOPartner

Content is crucial—you have known and have proven that for some time now. That’s why you make sure to make the necessary investments that allow you to implement an effective content marketing strategy for your brand. That’s why companies today are prepared to spend more for content. For 2016, small businesses are expected to shell out around $2.2 million for their content strategy, while midsize enterprises will allocate around $43.6 million (Source: Content Marketing Institute).

Keep costs down and get more from your marketing dollars

As with any marketing endeavor, of course, it’s important to make sure your expenditures lead to measurable ROI. It pays to make sure that your marketing budget is allocated only for the most effective campaigns. Moreover, it would be most ideal if you could reduce your costs without sacrificing your performance and results.

How do you ensure wise spending for content marketing? These action steps can help.

Your first investment should be toward planning. Content marketing should be flexible to suit the changing needs and demands of the market. But it doesn’t mean that you’ll just be shooting from the hip. The most successful, and cost-effective, campaigns are guided by an overarching strategy. Avoid waste of money due to mistakes and guesswork. Develop your content marketing map first, so it can serve as a guide to your next decisions.

Document your standards and processes. Build SOPs for every task you routinely do to create, publish, distribute and promote content. This way, training your team becomes easier, and you get time and money savings by making cross-checking easier and eliminating repetitive efforts to communicate and deliver information.

Repurpose. Get more marketing value out of every piece of content by looking for other ways to use it and have it published across different channels. This technique not only allows you to increase content production at half the cost and workload. It also helps you reach out to more target audiences. For instance, a potential customer who may not be keen on reading your white paper will appreciate and be moved by an infographic derived from it. A podcast episode can be transcribed and offered to your audiences in PDF form.

Do it right. Don’t just do it—you’ve got to do it right. When creating content, make sure it’s top-notch quality and optimized to get results. When promoting over social media, focus your energy and budget on the channels where content will be most noticed and appreciated by your customers. Not sure if you’re doing it correctly? Then invest in the services of experts. At this high-stake marketplace, costly mistakes will not only waste your time and money, but may also ruin your reputation. So make sure to place your bets on avenues that lead to proven and measurable results.

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What Types Of Content Should You Refresh Now?

February 5, 2016 By SEOPartner

SEO experts anywhere will tell you that it’s important to keep your content updated. While it’s true that it works to consistently post fresh content, keeping your content updated also means that you refresh some of your content that has already been up for some time.

Revive your marketing with refreshed content

Content refreshing is great for driving traffic, and it also presents a great opportunity for you to perform some SEO housekeeping. If you want a solid content marketing strategy for the coming year, you’ll do well to practice regular content refreshment. You can certainly start now to ensure that you’re greeting the new quarter with refreshed and updated content.

Which of your content probably need to be refreshed? Not everything is eligible for updating, of course. Some blog posts simply cannot be tweaked to become more current, and there are also some sections with amazing evergreen content that are best left alone. The following, however, are the pieces that you’ll have to look at and evaluate to determine whether they need to be updated or not.

Certain site sections need regular updating. The most frequently updated ones are Services and/or Products. For instance, promo announcements need to be removed or changed. Descriptions of services and products also often need to be modified, if only to assure your users that whatever is posted on your pages is still relevant and applicable.

Another section that needs regular updating is the one you have for customer testimonials and reviews. You don’t want to be showing old feedback. Encourage your customers to leave testimonials and reviews so this section will always reflect fresh content.

E-books, documents, and white papers need to have their content updated, too. If you’re in the habit of using these as link magnets, then you can keep them interesting and valuable by updating them.

There are blog posts that have awesome content that can be refreshed and published anew in the future. You can archive the old post or pull it offline to avoid duplicates. You can also optimize these old posts to establish your expertise in a certain topic.

Many people get the idea that company profiles don’t need updating, but this is not the case. It’s important to update your profile, especially ones on social sites. Not only will you be able to keep information about your brand current, but you’ll also direct your followers’ attention to your company.

By diligently refreshing content as well as developing new installments, you can make your content strategy this year more effective and successful.

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Troubleshooting A Failing Content Marketing Campaign

February 3, 2016 By SEOPartner

Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/bigger-isnt-necessarily-better-content-campaigns-fail/154015/

Should you abandon a failing content marketing campaign, or should you give it another shot? Here’s what you can do to give your campaign a shot in the arm.

Tweak your campaign

Problem: Lack of actionable strategy
Solution: Aim for goals that are reasonable and reachable, and then create a plan for success. Monitor your strategies and review and refine these when necessary.

Problem: Lack of investment
Solution: Decide what a reasonable amount of investment looks like. If you cannot afford to hire professionals, you will need to invest more of your time. If you can afford to hire experts, let these experts handle the various aspects of the campaign for you.

Problem: Not giving your campaign a chance to succeed
Solution: Choose the right KPIs for your campaign and allow them enough time to work. If you are nowhere near your goals, find out what needs to be changed/adjusted.

Problem: You are not producing good content
Solution: Know what the standards are for good Web writing. Write posts that rely heavily on stats and research. Complement your content with custom images and graphics.

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Content Marketing Investments That Are Actually Worth It

January 28, 2016 By SEOPartner

Source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2016/29237/four-content-marketing-investments-to-make-this-year

Studies show that businesses now have a deeper understanding of how crucial an effective content marketing strategy is to their success. Thus, a bigger number are prepared to spend more on content this year. But with the increasing competition in the marketplace and the ballooning costs of marketing, you need to make sure that the money you spend will offer significant ROI.

Content marketing investments that pay

The following are content marketing investments that deliver more value out of your marketing dollars:

1. Personalization tools and predictive analytics

As consumers become more discriminating and empowered, brands should make sure that the messages they deliver are segmented and targeted to the needs and preferences of each customer.

2. Emerging paid channels

Keep your go-to, proven media and advertising channels if they still work for you. But at the same time, make sure to keep an eye out for new platforms that give you more ways to connect with your customers.

3. A more effective system

Your process dictates your results. Establish a process that gets every department aligned and working toward the same goals, monitor your costs vs. output, and invest in tools that make you and your team more productive.

4. Marketing expertise

Marketing is becoming more complex each day. Make sure you have access to the services of marketing analysts who will help you figure things out and make smarter decisions.

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How To Make Your Content Marketing Newsworthy

January 27, 2016 By SEOPartner

Source: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/make-content-marketing-newsworthy-01431646#F3KRg5T71bcQHXIc.97

Prior to social media, people relied on the newspaper for information. However, an average person’s newsfeed is filled with content marketing and social selling. Note that people have a natural tendency to gloss over ads and are drawn to newsworthy content. Make your content marketing more appealing by making it newsworthy.

Newsworthy gets more views

Revise your headline writing
Keep it short, about 100 characters, and capitalize these.

Use facts and lists
Use facts and lists to show your audience that you understand them. Plus, providing helpful information can help them see your business in a more positive light.

Add pictures
Opt for custom-made and newsworthy graphics. This can provide a welcome respite to the eyes and minds of your audience.

Don’t forget the CTA
Push your readers to your desired action by using a CTA.

Link your post to a landing page
Direct your readers to a specific landing page or blog post that matches your post’s headline.

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Avoid These Content Marketing Sins

January 20, 2016 By SEOPartner

Source: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/7-sins-content-marketing-01427801#kCXfFT55oIm5yAG3.97

You will always make mistakes in your content marketing efforts. However, when you repeat those mistakes consistently, you will undermine your efforts and hurt your brand.

Stop committing these mistakes

Here are the content marketing sins that you need to avoid and what you should do instead:

Excessive use of keywords
Focus on keywords that will likely stick to your audience.

Riding too much on popular topics
Create a content marketing calendar and touch upon trending topics without compromising your main message.

Inconsistent posting
Create a schedule so that your audience will know when to expect a new post from you.

Stealing content
Brainstorm. Hunt for topics on Twitter. Get inspiration from sites like scoop.it.

Closing your mind to new ideas
Be open to new ideas and don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Opinionated posts
Before responding to a complaint or angry post, take a minute or two to calm yourself.

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Metrics That Serve As Proof Of Content Marketing ROI

January 15, 2016 By SEOPartner

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2016/01/14/how-to-prove-content-marketing-roi/#2715e4857a0b5eebb7045377

After you’ve put your content out there, what happens? It can go around for a while. It may circulate to various circles. Some people will be moved by it, make a purchase because of it, share it to others. Some might put it on hold and think about it. Others will simply discard it.

Measure the returns of content marketing

So how do you really know if your piece of content has played a part in motivating a person to buy your offer? Content interaction and engagement can be complex to track. Here are some ways to measure the return of investment from content marketing.

Audience response – Google Analytics is a tool that allows you to get the numbers on the following: content views, unique visits, downloads, reading time, actions taken after reading the content, etc.

Leads – If you content was created for the purpose of generating new leads, then use tools that show you what directed your audience to your site and how many of those visits converted into a sale.

Social engagement – Use analytics for specific social media sites to know vital stats such as number of views, shares and comments. Examples of these tools are Twitter Analytics and Facebook Insights.

Inbound links – The number of hyperlinks from another website pointing back to your site can be used to measure the value of your content to your target market.

Others – Other metrics to track ROI: Number and quality of subscribers, page likes, profile follows, comments and opt-ins.

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