Imagine a brand telling a story about how they started or why they do what they do. It is not just about the product it is about their values and mission.

This kind of storytelling helps brands stand out and show they are more than just another company selling something. Storytelling makes brands appear more relatable and trustworthy.

About Content Writing

In this digital era, content marketing has become increasingly important for businesses looking to engage with their target audience. With the rapid growth of online content, it has become essential for brands to stand out from the competition.

Content marketing allows businesses to create and distribute valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain their target audience.

By providing valuable information and insights, brands can establish themselves as industry leaders and build trust with their audience.

What is the use of Storytelling in Marketing?

Storytelling is not a novel concept in marketing it is an age-old practice that has delighted audiences for centuries.

From ancient oral practices to modern-day advertising, stories have the remarkable ability to stir emotions, develop connections, and leave a memorable mark on listeners.

Storytelling is not just a tactic it is a fundamental component of a strong content marketing strategy. It enables brands to convey their core values, cultivate trust, and carve out a distinctive identity in the minds of consumers.

By infusing narratives into their marketing efforts, companies can craft a storyline that resonates with their target demographic, encouraging brand loyalty and driving customer engagement.

Role of Storytelling in Advertising

In advertising, storytelling plays a critical role in effectively capturing the attention of prospective customers and motivating them to take meaningful action.

Instead of just emphasizing the features of a product or service, the art of storytelling takes a more subtle approach.

A convincing narrative allows a brand to humanize itself, making it more relatable and authentic in the eyes of consumers.

When done effectively, storytelling can produce empathy, spark curiosity, and promote a sense of belonging among customers.

This approach leads to increased brand loyalty, advocacy, and ultimately, long-term success.

Why is Storytelling important in Digital Marketing?

In the digital marketing landscape, storytelling serves as a powerful tool for conveying a brand’s message and engaging with consumers online. Whether through blog posts, videos, or social media updates, effective storytelling has the ability to captivate audiences and generate meaningful connections in an increasingly digital world.

To enhance your digital marketing efforts through storytelling, consider the following tips:

Know Your Audience

Understand your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points.

Focus on the “Why”

Communicate the purpose and passion behind your brand. Highlight how your products or services address specific challenges or aspirations of your audience.

Be Authentic

Stay true to your brand’s identity and values. Authentic storytelling builds trust with your audience, enabling stronger connections over time.

Use Multiple Channels

Utilize various digital platforms and channels to distribute your story effectively. Leverage social media, email marketing, blogs, podcasts, and more to reach different segments of your audience.

By implementing these storytelling strategies, you can create effective narratives that connect with your audience, drive engagement, and ultimately, achieve your digital marketing goals.

Optimization of Storytelling for SEO

Include Relevant Keywords

Storytelling should not be limited to just captivating narratives it should also be optimized for search engines.

By including relevant keywords seamlessly within your content, you can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts while still delivering a compelling story.

Structure Your Story for Readability

While storytelling can be a captivating way to communicate your brand’s message, it is essential to remember that readability is crucial for both users and search engines.

A well-structured story with headings and subheadings not only makes it easier for readers to read but also improves your chances of ranking higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Use Engaging Visuals

Visuals can significantly enhance the power of storytelling. Including relevant images, videos, or infographics throughout your content can captivate your audience and make your story more memorable.

Provide Value and Solve Problems

An effective story should not only entertain but also provide value to your audience. By crafting stories that offer solutions to problems, you establish yourself as an authority in your industry and build trust with your readers.

Focus on understanding your target audience’s needs and desires, and tailor your storytelling to address them effectively.

Encourage User Interaction

Storytelling in content marketing is a two-way street. Encourage user interaction and engagement by containing calls to action, inviting comments, or providing opportunities for user-generated content.

While storytelling may not seem naturally linked to SEO, its impact on a brand’s search engine rankings cannot be exaggerated.

By combining storytelling elements with SEO-focused content, brands can enhance engagement and shareability, thereby increasing the likelihood of it being linked to and shared by other websites.

Using Storytelling for Social Media

Social media platforms provide an unparalleled opportunity for brands to leverage the power of storytelling.

By sharing authentic and relatable stories, businesses can develop personal connections with their followers, encouraging a sense of community and belonging.

Whether through live videos, behind-the-scenes footage, or user-generated content, the key lies in creating content that stimulates emotions and sparks conversations, inspiring users to share and engage with the brand.

Conclusion

In conclusion, storytelling is not just a marketing strategy it is a transformative force that has the power to develop deeper connections, set brands apart from the competition, and develop a lasting brand identity.

Whether through social media, advertising, or SEO, storytelling offers a compelling avenue for brands to captivate and engage consumers in ways that traditional marketing methods cannot.

The post How Storytelling Revolutionizes Content Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

However, that’s not all it takes to build a successful content marketing strategy. Other factors matter, too, with the key one being content updation.

In this post, I share the reasons why updating your content is critical. We’ll also look at how to do this strategically so that you aren’t updating your content in a random way that creates problems instead of solving them.

Why You Should Update Your Content

Search engines like Google take information and content very seriously. Very often, people look for information that can affect their health, happiness, and finances.

Blog content and articles around such topics and other categories in general need to be accurate, relevant, and up-to-date.

Content must also reflect changes in technology, the relevant industry, and other factors that affect its integrity.

So, content freshness is a major factor in winning in content marketing. And this translates to updating your content regularly so you don’t lose your position in search engine rankings.

Other reasons to update your content include:

• Keeping pace with industry trends
• Preventing content decay
• Enhancing user experience
• Increasing audience engagement
• Boosting credibility
• Attracting new visitors
• Retaining existing audience

There are even more subtle benefits, but the ones listed here are some of the most important. As you can see, content updates are critical if you want your business to survive. Next, let’s explore how to strategize your content updates.

How to Strategize Your Content Updates

Here’s how you can strategize the best way to find obsolete or outdated content, rewrite them, and update your posts.

Identifying Outdated Content: The Key Steps

Recognizing the content that requires an update is the first and foremost step in crafting an effective content update strategy. Here are some practical tips to help you identify outdated content:

1. Use SEO Tools: Tools like Google Analytics, SEMRush, and Ahrefs can help you track changes in your content’s performance. Look for pages with decreasing traffic, falling search rankings, or declining engagement, as these are likely candidates for an update.
2. Review Content Regularly: Set a schedule to review your content regularly. Make it a monthly task or assign a specific person to handle updates – that’s what we do for each of our blogs. We also have multiple people to handle reviews for large blogs. Manually reviewing older posts or information in an effective way to find what needs to be updated.
3. Watch for partner, product, and industry updates: Keep an eye out for updates from your partners, changes in your product or services, and developments in your industry. These can all impact the accuracy and relevance of your content. For example, the change that took place when Twitter became X is a perfect example of such a scenario.
4. Read comments and feedback: Pay attention to the comments and feedback left by your readers. They may point out information that is no longer accurate or suggest updates they would like to see.
5. Monitor social media: Keep an eye on social media, especially hashtags related to your industry, product, or service. This can help you identify topics that are trending and need to be addressed in your content.

At this stage, focus on identifying content rather than making changes immediately. Especially if your content needs careful review and multiple changes.

However, if all you need to do is add a single word or sentence like a new product feature, then it makes sense to update articles and posts right away without needing a strategy.

In this instance, we are focused on creating a strategic approach to updating content, so let’s move on to the next step.

Create a System

Answering Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How will help you create a system to update your content without a hitch.

Let’s start with who is responsible for the updates. Will it be one person or a team? Which department will handle this task? There’s no single correct answer in this situation. It depends on how many updates you have to make. For a blog with hundreds and thousands of posts, you’ll need a dedicated team. But if you need to refresh a few dozen articles, one person could be enough.

Next, define what you’ll update. This means prioritizing your content. The most important pieces are the ones that drive the most sales, engagement, and traffic. These are the money makers and should get top priority so they don’t slip through the SERP rankings.

However, what’s important depends on the goal. If you’ve done a rebrand, then your priority will be updating those pages that mention the older brand elements rather than the content that gets the most traffic. Let your overarching goal define your update priorities.

At this stage, you should set up the ‘Where’ as in where will you track these new updates. In my company, we use Asana. It’s a project management platform that lets you assign tasks and track them easily. You’ll know who is working on an update and how the overall project is going.

You can also figure out the exact ‘How,’ ‘When,’ and other details during this time.

Let’s say you have multiple blogs or have multiple important categories in one blog. You could create a separate Asana project for each of them and title them ‘Health and Fitness Update’ and ‘Company XYZ Update’.

Then, create tasks under each one. With a specific page or post update belonging to a single task each. Add due dates to them and assign each one to the right person. You can also use tasks and subtasks for greater refinement.

In this way, you have a clear picture of the overall changes you will make, when they happen, and who is responsible. We work this way in our company, and it’s highly effective.

Execution and Review

Mistakes can happen, or you may find that your update strategy is not as effective as you thought. That’s why it’s important to review your strategy after execution.

Consider these points:

• Did our updates help achieve the desired goal?
• Were there any unexpected changes or issues caused by the updates?
• How can we improve our update process for future use?

Also, assign a person to recheck to see if the edits and updates are accurate and error-free. This is especially important if multiple people are responsible for different updates.

Once you have completed the review, note any changes or improvements that need to be made in your update process. These notes will come in handy when it’s time for the next round of updates.

You should also track your website performance after these updates using SEO platforms like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console.

Best Practices

When updating content, there are a few best practices to keep in mind:

• Be thorough. Don’t just make surface-level changes. Go through the entire piece of content and update any outdated information or links. And remember that Google knows if you make superficial changes. You won’t benefit by changing a word or two if you want to maintain your rankings.
• Keep your tone consistent. If you’re updating a piece of content that was written in a specific tone, try to maintain that same tone throughout the updates.
• Review regularly. Don’t let too much time pass before reviewing your older content. It should be a regular practice to keep it up-to-date and relevant.
• Encourage communication in your team. Your writers and editors will have questions when updating content, so make sure there is open communication throughout the process and also be available to help.
• Create a style guide and documentation. This will ensure consistency across all your content and make it easier for new team members to understand the tone and voice of your brand.

Keep these best practices in mind to ensure that your updated content is high-quality, relevant, and consistent with your overall brand image.

Over to You

There you go. This is my best advice on how to effectively update your content.

Ultimately, you can develop a different system or strategy that’s different and works for your business.

What is important is that you’re organized and have a clear goal when making updates. This will ensure that your content remains informative, authoritative, and friendly while staying relevant and valuable to your audience.

Keep updating your content, and you’re sure to see it reflected in your boosted search rankings, traffic, and sales!

The post A Strategy to Identify, Rewrite and Update Your Outdated Content appeared first on SiteProNews.

Metaverse marketing is still in its infancy, meaning that metaverse enterprises have a unique opportunity to experiment with content concepts. It’s become the most effective method for drawing people’s attention to this virtual environment. 

According to Statista forecasts, the global metaverse market will increase to 82 billion US dollars in 2023 before skyrocketing to 936.6 billion US dollars by 2030. So, what does this mean for businesses? And what does this mean for content marketing in particular? 

Introduction to the Metaverse and Content Marketing

The metaverse emphasizes making information more immersive and interactive, which will require firms to reconsider their content marketing tactics and online content distribution. The metaverse provides content such as games, virtual events, digital items, and virtual stores that marketers may use to promote their goods and services. 

To reach new audiences and create relationships, brands can use digital activations, branded NFTs, and user-generated content in their metaverse content marketing campaigns. On the other hand, brands can only launch effective initiatives if they innovate, create a community, foster collaborations, and monitor engagement to maximize it.

Nike, Samsung, and Coca-Cola already use the metaverse to communicate with customers. Examining these successful campaigns allows you to gain valuable insights into your brand’s Metaverse strategy. And with the integration of the metaverse, digital marketing is predicted to advance to the next level. 

However, it’s an evolving concept, with innovators attempting to create what will become the norm of the internet’s metaverse age in the future years. And no one knows what the metaverse will look like. But that should be the most exciting part for content marketers!

Four Tips to Leverage When Creating a Metaverse Content Marketing Strategy

Metaverse marketing allows you to construct a one-of-a-kind universe that embodies your business and allows you to set up an online store to offer digital products. Businesses can also create immersive virtual reality experiences.

You can accomplish this through text, images, and videos in ways that no other media can—and it’s growing increasingly popular among marketers, especially as VR headsets become more widely available in homes worldwide. Here are some strategies you can utilize:

1. Target-Specific Audience and Preferences 

As the number of users in the metaverse grows, businesses will need to establish their presence among appropriate subgroups and communities. 

To generate engaging content, brands must understand their audiences’ objectives and interests. Because the metaverse serves as an alternate reality for internet users, the content must represent their character and individuality. 

Don’t forget to harness the power of storytelling in the Metaverse to captivate your audience, leaving them spellbound by the rich tapestry of characters, plot twists, and emotional resonance.

After all, customized content helps businesses explain their metaverse products and gain more growth-driven prospects. Joining the metaverse’s native creator community to create user-generated content is also a terrific way to show appreciation and promote loyalty.

2. Craft Immersive Content for the Metaverse

Brands must demonstrate their innovative streak within the digital landscape of the metaverse. They can offer lavish conferences or NFT auctions where people can pay in bitcoins. 

The metaverse is a blank canvas for all concepts. The platform’s technology enables brands to create and launch ideas, and brands should not be afraid to experiment to stand out. Engage your target audience in immersive digital landscapes like Somnium Space, Decentraland, and Cryptovoxels, and amplify the reach of your Metaverse creations.

Companies must examine the skills and abilities they will need for the metaverse, determine which skills they already have and which ones they will need to gain, and engage someone to manage the creation and implementation of a cohesive strategy to capture value, just like they would with any new project. Additionally, marketers should aim to collaborate with individuals on these platforms, such as independent developers and creator communities.

You can also capitalize on the Metaverse’s potential for monetization through immersive brand experiences, limited edition virtual collectibles, or virtual real estate investments.

3. Utilize VR/AR Technologies in Marketing

Many major technology companies are exploring new metaverse options such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and other technologies. Consider using AR tactics to push your brand to the top of search results. Google AR and VR, for example, can project 3D digital items directly in front of the audience.  

The metaverse’s superior augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) technology makes it a perfect platform for immersive experiences. Concerts, interactive live events, conferences, and other similar experiences and events could be included.

4. Measure the Effectiveness of Metaverse Marketing

Brands must guarantee that their metaverse content marketing efforts accomplish predetermined goals and objectives by evaluating audience engagement using KPIs. There are various KPIs and metrics to track in traditional marketing to see how well your business is doing. 

What should be tracked in metaverse marketing is still unclear, but one thing is certain: engagement. Key performance metrics such as actions taken, time spent, and return rate help marketers measure engagement to optimize user activations and plan future campaigns.

Challenges to Consider When Building a Metaverse Marketing Strategy

It’s a good idea to be aware of the difficulties you can encounter before you begin marketing in the Metaverse to be prepared to deal with them.

While none can be completely removed, knowing them helps you safely plan your marketing. Let’s go through some pointers you must keep in mind:

• Choosing the right Metaverse platform: There are some misconceptions about the Metaverse, such as the idea that it is all in one location. Instead, it’s an ecosystem of interactive virtual worlds in direct competition for players, events, and play-to-win games. It is siloed into various worlds, such as Decentraland, Sandbox, and Roblox, which all cater to different demographics.

• Finding new ways of engagement: Marketing in the metaverse includes being creative and presenting users and their avatars with something exciting and novel they haven’t seen before. No matter your industry, you’ll need to raise your marketing game, as this is uncharted territory for most marketers.

• Concerns with security and data privacy: Statista reports that tracking and exploiting personal data in Metaverse is a major issue among internet users. 55% rated data privacy as a big issue, so any violation of data privacy might undermine your potential audience’s faith in the platform.

As the Metaverse evolves, your brand has a better opportunity of engaging with its audience.

But, to thrive in the ever-changing Metaverse, content marketers must adapt to cutting-edge technologies like augmented reality (AR) overlays and spatial computing, unlocking new opportunities for engaging and interactive experiences.

Even beyond marketing, the metaverse has a bright future. To succeed in your marketing tactics, think of Metaverse as the future of creating value throughout your organization.

The post How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy for the Metaverse appeared first on SiteProNews.

According to the recent survey reports, content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, all while costing 62% less. Apart from this, a significant 70% of consumers prefer to know about companies through articles rather than advertisements. This change in consumer behavior highlights the significance for businesses to modify their marketing approaches and dedicate resources to content marketing, enabling them to actively connect with their audience and establish valuable relationships.

What Exactly is Content Marketing?

In simple terms, content marketing is a practice of creating and distributing valuable content to entice targeted audience. Content marketing involves the creation of several content types including blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, podcasts, and more. Well, the objective content marketing is to provide valuable information to the target audience and boost sales. By implementing content marketing, businesses can build relationships with targeted audience which ultimately drive profit.

This flexible tactic encompasses a range of content formats, such as white papers, blog posts, podcasts, e-books, and digital videos. Through these channels, brands can build long-lasting and sustainable connections with their customers, fostering trust and loyalty. By consistently providing valuable content, brands can nurture their audience and generate multiple opportunities for sales.

How is It Different from Digital Marketing?

In today’s digital landscape, the line between content marketing and digital marketing has blurred, with the distinction often boiling down to the technicality of the terminology used. Content marketing is a unique approach that centers around leveraging the power of content, while digital marketing encompasses a wider range of online promotional activities. It is important to understand that content marketing is a subset of digital marketing, and the two work together. Implementing both can help you reap astonishing results for your business.

While content marketing and digital marketing are closely intertwined, there is one area where they may not directly align: paid advertising for websites or services. This form of advertising, although it often involves explaining a product or service, extends beyond the realm of content marketing. However, it is important to acknowledge that content marketing plays a remarkable role within digital marketing strategies, with content serving as an important component in many digital marketing campaigns.

What are the Different Types of Content Marketing?

As mentioned above, content marketing offers a plethora of possibilities and creative avenues. Clearly, there are several methods for crafting captivating content tailored to the target audience.

Let’s dive into some different content types that have proven to effectively engage users:

1. Blog Posts: These are informative and engaging articles published on a business’s website, designed to provide valuable information and capture the interest of readers.
2. Infographics: Visual representations of data or information that combine text, images, and charts, aiming to convey complex concepts in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand format.
3. Videos: Creating and sharing video content that entertains, educates, or showcases a business’s products/services. This can include tutorials, interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, or animated videos.
4. EBooks/Guides: Comprehensive and downloadable resources that offer in-depth information on a specific topic or provide step-by-step guidance to help audiences achieve their goals.
5. Case Studies: Sharing success stories and real-life examples that demonstrate how a business’s product or service has benefited customers. These highlight the challenges faced, the solutions provided, and the achieved results.
6. Podcasts: Creating audio content that features discussions, interviews, or educational sessions related to the industry or niche, providing valuable insights and engaging the audience through audio format.
7. Webinars: Live or pre-recorded online seminars or workshops where marketers can present valuable information, answer questions, and interact with their audience in real-time.
8. Social Media Posts: Brief and concise updates, tips, quotes, or visuals shared on social media platforms, aiming to engage and interact with followers and create a sense of community.

These various content types offer diverse ways to captivate and connect with your audience across different platforms and mediums, allowing you to engage them effectively and cater to their preferences.

Advantages of Including Content Marketing in Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Helps You Attract Targeted Audience

High-quality content is a valuable resource that can effectively engage your audience and keep them captivated. It has the ability to create positive experiences for potential customers, encouraging them to continue interacting with your brand. Exceptional content acts as a key element in capturing your audience’s attention and consistently reinforcing a positive brand image.

Helps You Get Better Engagement Rate on Social Media Platforms

While it is important to build a strong social media following, it is equally important to prioritize the creation of engaging and relevant content. If your business has amassed a large following but is not experiencing substantial results, it is time to harness the potential of content marketing. Exceptional content can have a profound effect on your social media presence and enable your business to gain the recognition and engagement it deserves.

Helps You Generate Quality Leads

Content marketing serves as a powerful strategy for generating leads. When your audience actively engages with your content, it enhances the chances of future purchases from your business. Moreover, strategically incorporating calls-to-action (CTAs) within your content can effectively generate new leads. By consistently leveraging high-quality content, you can drive lead generation and bolster your overall marketing initiatives.

In The Nutshell!

It’s no secret that content marketing is extremely important for all businesses. If implemented strategically, content marketing can help you increase your brand awareness, boost website traffic and expand your customer base. Well, you need to focus on the right content marketing strategy to gain desired results. Content marketing can help you shine your business in the digital marketplace. If you haven’t included content marketing in your digital marketing strategy, then it’s big time!

The post The Power of Content Marketing in Digital Strategies appeared first on SiteProNews.

However, not every platform is the right fit for your business. In this article, we’ll explore some of the most popular social media sites and explain why each one may or may not be the one that can grow your brand.

Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business

Content marketing on the right social media platform is one of the most effective and affordable means of growing your business. Conversely, if you choose the wrong social media platform, you stand to waste valuable time or even damage your brand. First, consider your target audience. Think about the people you want to reach with your content and where they spend their time online — are they spending most of their time on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn?

Next, consider how much time and money you have available. Each social media site offers different levels of access, from Facebook’s free accounts, allowing basic posting privileges, all the way up to LinkedIn’s premium plans providing additional features and benefits. If budget constraints are an issue, consider getting started with one free account. You can always invest resources into a more expensive site later.

Some of the Best Social Media Platforms for Growing a Business in 2023

Facebook

Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform, boasting 2.96 billion monthly active users at the end of 2022’s third quarter. If you want to reach a massive audience and capitalize on the benefits of social media advertising, Facebook is an excellent choice. In fact, anytime a business owner comes to me and wants more leads and sales, I almost always start them on Facebook. It provides a wide range of features that make it easy for you to engage with customers and build your brand. You have access to a variety of targeting options for reaching different audiences, a newsfeed to alert followers to what you’re doing, and the ability to host live video events or create custom ads leading to your website.

Instagram

Instagram is another tool that can grow your business. It is primarily a visual platform, allowing you to share photos and videos of the products, services, or events that you offer, and boasts an audience of over 2 billion active monthly users who will see that content if you post it in an appealing way.

Given these numbers, Instagram is ideal for building brand awareness and generating leads since it allows businesses to showcase their products in an artistic way and generate attention with catchy hashtags. Because users engage with each other through comments or likes on posts, it’s also a great place to build a community around your business, generate customer reviews, and sell products.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an excellent platform for B2B businesses that want to find leads, boost sales, increase brand awareness, and network professionally. This social platform has 875 million users worldwide and 310 million monthly active users. The platform allows users to create profiles and connections based on their specific industry role or level of expertise. To get started on LinkedIn, ensure your company page is filled with relevant information about what you do and why people should hire your services or buy from you. The more complete your profile, the better your chance to grow your business.

YouTube

YouTube ranks as the world’s largest video-sharing platform and second-largest social media platform. It has over2.6 billion users and over 122 million active users each day as of 2022’s third quarter. YouTube also makes up a huge part of Google’s revenue, making it an important platform for any business that wants to reach people globally.

The key to growing your business on YouTube is generating creative content that engages viewers. The more engaging your content is, the more likely people will watch it and share it with their friends.

Some of the worst social media platforms for growing a business in 2023

Twitter

Twitter is a popular social media platform that provides an opportunity for businesses to connect with customers on a non-business level. This can be useful in strengthening relationships, although Twitter doesn’t offer the same level of personalization that social media platforms like Facebook do. 

Twitter may help you get your business’s name out there, but it’s not a good platform for growing your business. The platform has so many users that it can be hard to get noticed if you aren’t already well-known. It’s essential to understand how Twitter can be used in combination with other platforms rather than trying to use it alone.

Snapchat

Snapchat is not an ideal platform for business growth. Each month, the platform’s Spotlight feature sees125 million active users, and its Snap Map feature sees 250 million. In terms of social media reach, that is a small user base. In addition, Snapchat primarily appeals to younger users. As of July 2022, users aged 13 to 17 made up 20.5% of Snapchat’s total audience, and users18 to 24 accounted for 39.1%. Given these demographics, Snapchat may not be the best place to advertise if you’re trying to reach older audiences.

TikTok

TikTok is a video-sharing app that allows users to create short videos for followers. The platform boasts 1 billion active monthly users, making it less popular than Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. In addition, the majority of people viewing a post on TikTok will only watch the first 15 seconds before scrolling away. Before your business puts a lot of time and resources into video creation for this platform, be sure it is worth your investment. 

Each social media platform comes with its own audience and its own set of pros and cons. The goal of using any medium is to reach new customers and grow your audience through content marketing. No one social media platform is best or worst for everyone, but some will be better suited for your business needs than others. It all depends on your audience, the time you can invest in social media management, and your business goals for the marketing content. Investigate each platform and make an informed decision about which ones work best for you.

The post Best and Worst Social Media Platforms for Growing a Business appeared first on SiteProNews.

Wait, why are we talking about digital marketing, again? Oh yes, James is preparing for his next meeting, and collecting data for it. His new content marketing strategy should be doing great,but his data doesn’t agree.

His data indicates that he simply doesn’t have enough leads from his marketing efforts. But, that shouldn’t be possible, he’s invested so much in his content marketing strategy. Except….it’s very much possible and it happens all the time. But, it’s natural for James to wonder why this should be happening in the first place.

Today, even the biggest companies in the world have to up their marketing game. If they don’t follow the latest trends, they’re likely to fall behind their many competitors when it comes to lead generation. Content marketing is one of the most popular digital advertising trends these days.

This marketing technique involves giving your viewers useful information to promote your products. Sure, this information can be promotional. But, the main idea here is that viewers should find solutions to their problems with your content.

For this, you would need to have a well-thought-out content marketing strategy. But, it’s not easy to craft this strategy if you haven’t done it before. So, here are some of our best tips for leads generation through a content marketing strategy.

What Makes a Good Content Marketing Strategy?

Before we get started with our tips, let’s first talk about what makes a good content marketing strategy. A good content marketing strategy starts with understanding your audience. Different brands cater to different target audiences. For instance, Nike products don’t appeal to those over the age of 40.

‘Does that mean people over 40 won’t be buying Nike products?’, James wonders aloud at the meeting. ‘No’, replies Sheryl. an SEO expert, ‘it just means that Nike doesn’t consider people over 40 its target audience. Its marketing campaigns are aimed towards a younger, more athletic audience.’

Sheryl is right, of course. Nike ads are both engaging and inspiring. If you don’t have the resources for it, it can be challenging to create such content. You can find a content marketing consultancy to make useful content for your audience.

A dedicated marketing consultant can create an effective marketing strategy for your brand. You need to publish regular and engaging marketing content for your brand to stay on top of the marketing trends. Hence, hiring a content marketing consultancy can be the best investment for your company.

These marketing consultants improve your ROI by helping you reach your audience. They are aware of the nuances of the niche and have experience in creating engaging content to design marketing strategies.

Also, it’s helpful to note that the costs of this kind of marketing are less than outbound marketing. Besides, lead generation is better with content marketing than with outbound marketing.

For those wondering, outbound marketing is the conventional marketing method. This marketing method involves using promotional techniques to reach your customers. This is often time-consuming and ineffective in the face of changing trends.

Instead, content marketing will allow you to keep up with these changing trends.

Content Marketing Tips for Leads Generation

Now let’s talk about some content marketing tips that will help you to boost your lead generation.

1. Use Personalized Content as Much as You Can

Engage your audience better by using personalized content. The first step in this direction is to understand the needs of your target audience. This is the key to creating meaningful content for them.

James knows how to make content interesting, but doesn’t know how to make it meaningful. ‘The things I find entertaining aren’t always very meaningful. How can I make content that’s interesting and meaningful for our marketing campaign?’, James asks no one in particular.

Roshan, a display advertising expert, perks up. ‘Understanding how to make meaningful content isn’t easy, but it starts with listening to our audience’, he says.

‘This doesn’t mean that we need to speak to each customer individually. It simply means that we would need to bear their needs in mind for our advertising campaign.’

‘But how are we to do this?’, asks Sheryl. Roshan replies, ‘One way to do this is through user surveys in which you ask them questions related to our campaign. This will help us to understand what they want to see in our ads. We can use Google Analytics to understand what your customers want.’

Roshan really seems to know what he’s talking about! Knowing your customer demographics can help you improve your content. Think about it, content that would appeal to teenagers wouldn’t appeal to an older audience. Likewise, content that appeals to a male audience wouldn’t appeal equally to a female audience.

A fantastic example of a personalized marketing campaign is Cadbury’s campaign in Australia. The brand matched chocolate flavors to elements from Facebook user profiles. Once users connected with the brand, Cadbury used their photos and information to create content.

2. Pick the Right Channels to Promote Your Content

You would need to pick the right channels to promote your content online if you want to generate leads. After all, it doesn’t matter how good your content is if it’s not reaching your target audience. The right channels help you connect with your audience like never before.

This can lead to increased lead generation in the long run. You would first need to research about channel preferences of various audiences. Research would tell you that Instagram is a popular choice for younger audiences. But, Facebook is popular among those aged 25 and above.

‘What?!’, James exclaims. ‘I don’t even use Facebook anymore…I only see my parents and their friends on it these days’. ‘Shhhh. That’s not what the data indicates. Pay close attention to this next bit’, whispers Sheryl.

You need to consider which channels help you connect with the right demographic. Once you pick your channel, think about the format for your content.

Some channels like YouTube run ads in video format only. Other channels like Instagram use video ads and static ads. Music streaming ads run audio ads that are reminiscent of radio ads. A mismatch between your product and ad channel can make your ads ineffective.

For instance, if you’re selling machinery, your first choice for an ad channel shouldn’t be Instagram. You’d be better off using sites or blogs to feature articles on your machinery. You can create a blog for yourself and promote the links online.

Use relevant sites (such as construction-related sites) for link promotion. This will give you a good chance of improving your online lead generation.

3. Find Ways to Optimize Your Conversion Rate

Remember that the aim behind content marketing is to increase conversions. Conversions take place when a user takes the desired action upon viewing your ads. In most cases, these desired actions are clicking your ads and buying your products. But, there are other ways to measure conversions as well.

For instance, YouTube uses Engaged View Conversions (EVC) to measure conversion rate. This rate measures how many viewers viewed your ads for at least 10 seconds. So, it allows YouTube to show you how many users were interested even though they didn’t click on your ads.

‘But why do we care about users that say our ads but didn’t click on them? Wouldn’t it be a waste of time to view such stats?’, James asks Roshan. Roshan has some experience in PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, so he answers, ‘This is a useful measurement method because viewers don’t always take action immediately.

A user might want to check out our website after they finish watching the YouTube video they’re interested in. So, it makes sense for us to measure how many viewers are likely to buy our products.For this to happen, our content should inspire actions in users.’

Let’s tell James A few ways in which he can inspire action in viewers:

• End your content with a CTA (Call-To-Action). These are usually small lines of sentences that encourage your viewers to convert. An example of a CTA would be ‘Click Here to Find out More!’
• Use attractive thumbnails for your video ads. A thumbnail is an image on display before a viewer clicks on your video.
• Allow your viewers the option to learn more about your products after they’re done viewing your ads. For instance, add a ‘See More’ link on Linkedin posts. Viewers interested in your post will click on it to know more about your company.

These methods should help you optimize the results of your content marketing strategy. This is because they help you inspire curiosity in your audiences.

4. Consider Keyword Research

The best content in the world is of little use to companies that can’t reach their audience. And, to reach your audience, you should know exactly what they’re looking for. This is only possible if you take part in some keyword research.

Keyword research deals with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), an important digital marketing technique. It is crucial to use SEO techniques for all kinds of advertising content. Know which keywords will get you a high amount of traffic online.

You can measure your traffic using tools like Google Analytics. This tool can help you understand how your SEO techniques are affecting your traffic. Then, think about how you can optimize your use of keywords.

An SEO expert can help you with your keyword research. And, a PPC specialist can help you use these keywords in the right places to boost traffic. So, you can have these experts design your display ads for you.

Keyword tools online can give you results on which keywords are popular. They also let you know which key phrases are gaining attention online.

Remember to check keyword difficulty (KD) when viewing keywords. This statistic will let you know how difficult it is to rank for a keyword. The higher the KD, the harder it’ll be to bid for it on a Google Ads campaign. Also, you should know that more popular keywords are priced higher than others.

Pay attention to these stats before you design your content around a keyword.

Conclusion

Designing a content marketing strategy should be easy if you follow the right steps. If you use each of our tips, you’ll be able to generate leads in no time. This in turn will help you boost your online conversions.

Remember to mix things up every once in a while. Marketing trends change quickly and your content should be able to keep up with that. Your target audience may display more interest in your competitors’ ads if yours miss the mark.

The last thing you should want is for your marketing efforts to fizzle out with insufficient leads!

The post 4 Tips for Generating Leads through Content Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

Having realized the importance of a website, you decide to go ahead and create a website for your business. What next? Is it enough to just create a website and do nothing after that? Will creating a website alone ensure success for your business? The answer, of course, is “No”. You need web traffic. You need to ensure that people visit your website in order to grow your audience and market share.

Online traffic can come from different sources; however, for most sites, the largest source of traffic comes from organic search. Getting organic traffic can be difficult, which is why so many businesses use search engine optimization (SEO) to gain organic visitors.

There is no doubt that SEO is a very effective method to drive traffic; however, a downside is that it could take a very long time to achieve a high ranking for your targeted keywords. So, if you are in a competitive niche and want your website to rank on the first page of Google, it could take months or even years.

You don’t need to get disheartened, as there are other non-SEO-related methods to bring more traffic to your website, thereby building your audience for your business.

However, let us be clear here: Having an SEO-friendly website is never a bad idea. This blog is not an endorsement of neglecting SEO entirely; instead, think of these tips as ways to drive traffic while your SEO takes time to kick in.

How to Increase Your Website Traffic Without SEO

There are various methods that will help you drive traffic to your website without relying on SEO-driven organic clicks. Here are some of them:

Social Media Marketing

• Social media marketing has the potential to bring more traffic to your website, raise brand awareness, and ultimately connect your target audience with your website.
• Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have more than a billion monthly active users. This means your website could be seen by a large number of people.
• Each social media platform has its own set of unique features, so you should plan and carefully choose the right platform to execute your social media campaign effectively.
• Treat your social media campaigns differently depending on your industry. If you’re a software company, for instance, focus on providing details about your offerings and the benefits they provide. On the other hand, if you sell dresses, make sure to include pictures of the clothes you’re selling, since people will want to see them first! Here, you are looking to capture traffic by sharing images, so Instagram should be your go-to option. By contrast, the first business might see better luck on Twitter or Facebook.

• LinkedIn is ideal for those who are looking to collaborate with other businesses and Twitter is ideal for those whose business requires them to share updates quickly on a regular basis.
• Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, and LinkedIn are some of the most popular and widely used social media marketing channels.

Email Marketing

• Email marketing is a tried and tested method that can both drive traffic to your website and increase repeat visits from quality leads. An effective email marketing strategy can help you connect with your target audience in a personalized way, regardless of which age group you’re targeting or where they are located.
• It is true that email marketing is a very powerful tool to generate traffic; however, there are certain rules you need to follow to maintain good ethical conduct.
• The first basic rule is to seek permission from users before sending them emails – have them “opt in” rather than purchasing external email lists. This can be done through a call to action button on your website.
• You should clearly explain why you are asking for their email address and what they will get by signing up. You can give them access to certain offers or articles that they might find useful.
• Once they have signed up, you can start sending them emails; however, you should make sure that you do not send more emails than what was promised. If you had told them that you will be sending only one email every week, you should stick to that.
• If you want users to open your emails, you should offer value in every email that you send. If you have launched a new product or service, you can promote it in your email and include a link to your promotion so that users can easily locate that on your website.

Content Marketing

“Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue” – Andrew Davis, Author.

• You can build a strong relationship with your audience if you deliver high-quality content. High-quality content means the information that you provide should appeal to your audience and should be impressive enough to get them to visit your website again and again.
• Content marketing may not be an ideal option if you are looking for quick results; it’s like SEO in this way. However, it is a great strategy to drive more traffic to your business in the long run.
• PDFs, audio files, infographics, case studies, books and ebooks, and so on are some examples of content marketing. While each one is effective in its own way, infographics are preferred by many for two reasons. Firstly, showing statistics, charts, and graphics to support your data and numbers increases the trust factor among your audience. Secondly, many readers prefer visual content, as the human brain tends to process visuals better than text.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is an effective strategy to display your content in front of an audience whenever they search for keywords online.
• PPC requires you to spend money on ads, unlike SEO; however, it can be an ideal strategy for those who want to gain more exposure for their brand in a short period of time.
• Many users click on a site only if they know what the site is about. PPC allows you to utilize ad extensions on your ads while advertising on Google. Ad extensions help users gain a better understanding of your site, thereby making your ad stand out.
• Another benefit of using PPC is that it is measurable and trackable with the help of things like the Google Ads tool combined with Google analytics. You can see how your campaign is performing including impressions, clicks, and conversions.

Display Advertising

• Display advertising is not the same as PPC, which displays ads based on a keyword search in Google. Display advertising is a mode of online advertising where marketers advertise their products or services in the form of banners, images, and videos on relevant third-party websites based on users’ search behavior or the keywords that they have used in the past
• Site placement advertising, contextual advertising, and remarketing are the three basic types of display ads.
• Display ads can be a boon for those who are looking for quick results, as they can trigger conversions at a faster rate for the brands being advertised.

Other Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website Without SEO

Here are some other methods that you can use to increase your website traffic without relying much on SEO.

• Promotional giveaways
• Guest blogging
• Influencer marketing
• Pinterest marketing
• Referral marketing
• Inbound marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Video marketing

Final Thoughts

Now that you know there are several methods to increase website traffic without using SEO, you can plan and utilize them and also mix these strategies to attract more users to your site, thereby increasing awareness of your brand online.

Remember, SEO increases website traffic and ensures your website gets higher search rankings in the long run. Therefore, you should make sure that you actively work on it with your website, even if you are utilizing other non-SEO strategies.

The post How to Increase Your Website Traffic Without SEO appeared first on SiteProNews.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be an excellent middle ground. It helps you make more content without hiring an entire team with far more expensive fees.

That said, is it really suitable for your content marketing strategy? Are there problems you might run into? And finally, is it even effective?

Why Would You Use AI for Content Marketing?

Content marketing continues to yield significant ROI for a lot of websites. However, you can’t just make whatever you want and expect immediate results. To generate the most ROI, you need to consistently produce high-quality content.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an easy feat. High-quality content isn’t easy to make, after all. As a result, content marketers can’t produce as much content as they want. Hence, many marketers hire content writers and site managers to increase content production.

Big companies might have an entire team of editors, researchers, and writers to ensure they’re publishing new content multiple times a day. If you’re new to SEO or a small business, you might be unable to keep up with your competition.

AI content creation tools can make long-form blog posts from scratch. In most cases, you only need to provide a title, list some keywords, and do a few tweaks to get an instant 1000-word blog post. For small content marketing operations, this seems like a great way to compete with bigger companies.

The Potential Problems With AI Content Creation

Google is cracking down on AI-generated content. As a result, several websites that used to do well in the past couple of years stopped getting traffic altogether. Google has essentially punished AI content to clean up the SERPs.

Remember, Google prioritizes the end user. Therefore, they want searchers to find high-quality and relevant content. AI-generated content tends to be robotic, stiff, or outright plagiarism. Bot-generated content tends to be less coherent (as opposed to ones written by real content writers), so Google wants to avoid it altogether.

Even the most expensive AI content tools occasionally create nonsensical, outdated, or irrelevant text. Sometimes, the generated content isn’t even relevant to the title and keywords you input. So, if you’re not careful, you might post gibberish content that none of the end users will appreciate.

Can You Still Leverage AI for Content Marketing?

Surprisingly, yes.

Despite all the negative things I’ve mentioned, there is a way to use AI content generators to streamline your content creation. However, you still can’t rely on AI content tools to create content from scratch. You’ll still get penalties if you use a generator, copy-paste the result, and publish it without a second glance.

Instead, you can use AI content tools to help you make better content. Here are some ideas on how to incorporate them into your content creation strategy:

• Get content ideas. If you’re running out of ideas, AI content tools can suggest titles, keywords, and talking points for you to expound on.
• Use it as an outlining tool. Instead of letting the AI generator do all the work, just generate an outline with potential talking points. You can add and remove points from the outline as you see fit. This will reduce the time you need to research a topic.
• Add a “human touch” to your AI-generated content. Google can detect nonsensical, almost robotic sentences in AI-generated content. To avoid the penalties, you can use your AI tools to generate a draft and thoroughly do edits. Here, you can write more conversational phrases, use a relaxed tone, and add realistic examples.

Do note that you still need to invest significant time and effort into making AI content less spammy and robotic. In this case, your AI content tools are no longer used for instant, copy-paste content. Instead, it’s now an additional tool to improve and streamline your creation process.

Should You Purchase an AI Content Generator?

You can, but you must understand the possible risks of posting unedited AI-generated content. If you’re a small business looking to invest in content marketing tools, a good word processor, grammar tool, or plagiarism checker might be a better first option.

If you already have all the basics, you can consider getting an AI content tool to boost your creation process.

That said, Google still prioritizes content that appeals to real people using the searches. So, it would be best if you were very careful about your use of AI.

You can’t let it churn out content for you. Otherwise, your site might suffer from penalties and lost traffic.

The post Should You Use AI for Content Marketing? appeared first on SiteProNews.

In short, you should apply digital marketing tactics that fit your goals, target audiences, and industry. SEO experts continuously manage, audit, and improve every aspect of a website or blog to ensure consistent ROI. Sometimes, it takes a few changes to get the right keywords, design, and structure to climb up the SERPs.

If you have an underperforming blog, you likely didn’t make the best choice somewhere in your implementation. The key is to audit your underperforming blog posts, look at the data, and spot the aspects you can improve.

Remember, you don’t have to delete or replace a blog post. You just have to revamp the content and SEO to start getting more out of them.

Here are a few easy optimizations you can do to boost an underperforming blog post:

1. Do a New Run of Keyword Research

Keyword rankings depend on how audiences conduct their searches. Hence, new keywords may appear, and high-volume ones fall off. That’s why it’s best to regularly perform a fresh run of keyword research every so often, so you can replace and optimize for new and more desirable keywords.

That said, changing search volumes isn’t the only reason to reoptimize your keywords. In some cases, it isn’t the search volume that’s the problem but the relevance of the keywords with the blog post’s content.

This can happen when the blog post’s topic and discussions aren’t relevant to the chosen keywords. Search engine algorithms aim to deliver the best, most relevant, and most informative content to the searchers. So even if you’ve strategically chosen a high-volume keyword, an irrelevant blog post isn’t going to get as much traffic or conversions.

2. Compare the Data With Your Best-Performing Blog Posts

If a few of your blog posts are getting less traffic than others, look at your best-performing posts and see what others are missing.

That said, there could be many reasons one is doing better than others. You can start by looking at and comparing the following:

• Writing style (tone, language, niche slang, etc.)
• Click-through rates
• Bounce rates
• Word count
• Formatting (font styles, text size, sectionings, headings, etc.)
• Images and videos
• Audience targeting (who you’re writing for)
• Keywords (search volumes, relevance, stuffing, cannibalization, etc.)
• Promotion (social media, email lists, newsletters, and so on)
• Backlinks
• Internal and external links
• General content quality (Is one more complete or informative than the other?)

As many factors are at play, you want to be thorough with your auditing. You can use tools like Google Search Console to get as much data on your blog as possible, allowing you to better analyze and compare the differences.

As a general tip, if one of your blog posts are doing way better than the rest, you should use it as a reference for how to make new content and reoptimize old ones.

3. Update Outdated Information

Outdated information is a one-way ticket to falling off the SERP rankings. People have little to no use for them, so a blog riddled with them will be ignored by search engines and audiences alike.

New laws, trends, technology, and products can affect your niche. For example, a new law might change a few legal processes in your state, so you should update your legal guides accordingly. Likewise, a new software update means it’s time to add new information to your tech posts.

If your competition publishes more relevant and timely in formation, they’ll eventually overtake you in the SERPs. So updating your older posts should be done even before they start to fall off. This way, you won’t have to wait for site crawlers to pick up on the changes made after slipping down the rankings.

4. Pay Attention to Formatting and Design

If people can’t properly consume your blog post, it won’t matter how good the actual text is. Blog posts that are hard to read and difficult to understand aren’t going to keep site visitors on your page. Likewise, you don’t want your website to be buggy, slow, or user-unfriendly.

So, pay attention to the following:

• Site speed or loading times
• Color schemes
• Navigation and menus
• Links and anchor texts
• Text style, size, and color
• Headings and lists

Basically, website optimization can affect the consumption of your content. You want to make it easy for people to read your blogs and explore your website.

5. Promote Your Underperforming Blog Posts

Some blog posts need a head start. Directing traffic into newly-optimized posts is a great way to get things going. You can do this for posts with newly-updated information, high-quality posts that fell off, and older posts that might be relevant to your newest content.

So, link and promote them on your social media, newsletters, and email drips. You can also add links to older posts to newer ones, as long as they’re relevant and can be incorporated into appropriate anchor texts.

The post How to Reoptimize Underperforming Blog Posts appeared first on SiteProNews.

Fame is not really your speed?

There are countless other reasons to build a personal brand:

• It will help you land a better job.
• A personal brand can help you advance at your current workplace.
• A personal brand is essential for solopreneurs, startup founders, coaches, and more.
• You can grow your existing business through personal branding. Even if you are not a solopreneur and you don’t run a small startup, your (potential) clients still prefer to put a face to the company they make business with. Through personal branding, your face doesn’t just become better known; it also becomes more trustworthy.
• A personal brand will help you build a valuable network.

You can do all that with a minimal investment – more often than not, all you need to invest is your time. And I promise you will be rewarded for it.

Here’s how to do it.

Building a Personal Brand through Content Marketing – the Basics

As with every marketing tactic, you need to start with the most important thing:

What Goals Do You Want to Achieve?

Are you looking to further your career, to land a new job, to build a business, or to improve your current company’s brand awareness? Your end goal will dictate your approach and the platforms you use.

For example, if you want to land a better job, you can start by improving your LinkedIn profile and post more often on the same platform. If you want to pad your company’s bottom line, there may be other platforms where your potential clients spend more time, like Twitter, Instagram, or Reddit.

Create a Mission Statement

Who are you? What do you stand for? What are your values? Do you have a cause that you’d fight for endlessly?

All of these things should appear on your public profiles on every platform.

This is my contributor profile here on SiteProNews:

And this is my Twitter bio:

They are pretty similar and they both talk about my businesses and my love for the tech industry and my experience in working with companies in this field. These are the messages I want to get across on all platforms.

Of course, the exact wording needs to change depending on where you publish your content. But it’s useful to have some consistency across the board.

Define Your Target Audience

Now that you’ve written who you are and what you excel at, let’s talk about your audience.

• Who can benefit from your knowledge the most?
• Who is the ideal person to support your goals – bring extra ROI to your business, promote your startup, get a new/better job?
• How can you best reach these people?

Out of the three criteria above, the first two are crucial – and they work best together, so always (always!) make sure that your audience’s needs are aligned with your goals. Let me give you another personal example: for me, it’s very easy to network with other content marketers and agency owners. We have a lot in common.

These connections are very important: I learned (and still do!) a lot from my peers. Sometimes, we even found opportunities to work together or promote each other’s businesses.

But the type of connection that brings actual ROI to my business is not exactly this. I need to reach business owners, so I hang around where they do and write and talk in a way that makes sense to them, not to my marketing peers.

Which brings me to my next point:

Choose Your Platforms Wisely

Despite constantly-dropping organic reach on all social media platforms, they are still a great place to make your voice heard. But you have to choose them wisely.

For example, if you work in financial services (the scruffy kind, not the startup kind), you may want to replace TikTok with something more “serious”.

Go where your audience is. You’ve defined it above, so you should have an idea about where they hang out most often.

You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be where it matters.

Talk About What You Know Best

Everyone is good at something. If you already have a few years of work experience or if you run a business, you surely know a few of your strong traits already.

Write on a blog. You don’t even need to buy a domain, you can simply publish on platforms like Medium or even LinkedIn. Record a video and post it on YouTube or Vimeo, write in Facebook groups, join Twitter chats, create TikToks – the possibilities are endless.

The key here is to leave a digital footprint behind – the kind you want people to find and follow. You don’t have to spend ages creating content – even twice a month is enough. Consistency is far more important.

You can write about the processes you use, the strategies you create or implement, your success stories, the mistakes you learned from – pretty much everything will resonate with someone, somewhere.

Plus, you can use solutions like Sendible to schedule your posts in advance and see your personal brand grow even while you’re on vacation.

Assume that everyone you will ever do business with (or work with) will Google you after they first meet you – because they do! And it’s not just recruiters.

I’ll admit – I have a bit of a detective inside, too. I’ll vet any new clients for my agency and any new hires. My Google Fu is strong and I’m not ashamed to use it to make sure that I don’t go into business with a very good scam artist.

Whenever my detective work unveils a decent personal brand, I’m already half way convinced. I’m more likely to hire a content writer that has a visible personal brand a more likely to respect a client who has invested some time in building a brand – and not just for their company, but for themselves too.

Finally: Take Your Time with Building Your Personal Brand

Internet fame is fickle. Almost everyone wants it, so you’ve got some competition.

Don’t assume that one or two posts on LinkedIn are going to turn you into an overnight sensation. That happens extremely rare. And when it does, it usually lasts too little to reap real benefits from it.

Take your time. Write. Speak. Test. Redo, do better. Rome wasn’t built in a day; you can’t expect it from your personal brand.

The post How to Create a Personal Brand through Content Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

The Importance of Content Marketing

Content marketing, when done right, is a great way to build trust and engage your customers. Whether it’s blog posts, videos, infographics, or long-form content, a successful content marketing strategy can lead to long-term business growth.

No matter what stage a potential customer is at in the buyer’s journey, content marketing is vital. It can help increase web traffic, generate leads, and help convert those leads during the decision stage.

By providing relevant and valuable content that helps solve your customer’s pain points, you can form connections that were never previously possible with traditional marketing. Tailoring your content and experiences, as part of an inbound marketing campaign, helps provide even greater value.

As well as being extremely important for your customers, content is one of Google’s top-ranking factors. Not only will you be helping to give value to your customers, but a successful content marketing strategy will help your search engine rankings too!

74% of businesses experienced an increase in the quantity and quality of generated leads. Through successful content marketing, your business could be achieving 27% higher win rates and 18% higher quota attainment.

But with 82% of marketers using content marketing, there’s no room for making mistakes. To be successful, you need to get it right. Otherwise, you risk resulting in low traffic, fewer quality leads, and unengaged customers that may go to your competitors instead.

If you are just starting out, or finding your content marketing efforts haven’t had much success, here are some common mistakes where you could be going wrong and how to avoid them.

Content Marketing Mistakes

1. Not Knowing Your Customers

One of the most common content marketing mistakes is developing content without knowing who your customers are. How can you know whether you are addressing your customer’s pain points if you don’t know what those pain points are?

Now knowing who your customers are and who you are creating each piece of content for, can lead you into the trap of churning out material that means nothing to your customers. It’s a mistake made all too often, with 55% of customers receiving content from brands that are not relevant to them.

The solution is to develop your buyer personas. A semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, a buyer persona will provide you with important details about your customer’s goals and challenges, their online habits, and traits such as behavioural and demographic.

To obtain this information, you’ll need to do some research. Using your analytics and information about your customers, combined with surveys, will give you all the information you need to tailor content and avoid creating content that doesn’t appeal.

Use HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool to get you started

2. Not Having a Clear Content Marketing Strategy or Goals

What do you want to achieve with your content marketing? If you can’t answer that question, you’re potentially making another mistake.

Not creating a clear strategy is like entering a dark cave without a torch. You won’t have a clue where you’re going. Simply coming up with ideas ad hoc is not an effective way to do content marketing.

You should always base your content marketing strategy on data. Data is the key to success. No content marketing strategy should be based on your gut instinct, but on the insights you gain through your data from previous interactions and feedback.

Once you have gained insights from your current data, you can start to craft goals for what you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy. These should be SMART; specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timebound, for greater clarity and focus.

You also need to regularly check and review the performance of your campaign. By doing this you can find out which content items performed well and which didn’t. You’ll also be able to see if you reached your goals and calculate your return on investment.

3. Creating Content That’s Too Promotional or Sales Focused

Another content marketing mistake is being too promotional and trying to push sales of your product or service. Trying to sell something every time you publish a new piece of content is a big mistake and a bore for your target audience.

Apart from the fact you are not providing relevant and valuable content, people have become very clever at blocking out promotional messages. Pushing content to directly increase sales is obvious and often has an adverse effect.

When you develop content don’t think about what your business can get out of it. Instead, think about what your potential customers can get out of it.

The golden rule here is always to consider how the piece of content you are developing will help your customer. If you can’t answer that question, you need to reconsider. Promotional or sales content is advertising, and that doesn’t give value to your customers.

The 80-20 rule is good here. Consider posting 80% of content that is helpful and useful to your potential customers, while 20% openly promotes or publicises your business. That way, you don’t run the risk of putting people off.

4. Not Developing Content for Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Another content marketing mistake you could be making is not creating content for each stage of the buyer’s journey.

You may be creating content that does a great job of increasing awareness and attracting potential leads, but then failing to create content that moves these leads further along the sales funnel. Without continuing to provide content that nurtures these leads, you’ll fall by the wayside.

To avoid making this mistake, consider these content options at each stage of the buyer’s journey:

Awareness

• Blogs
• Videos
• Guides and eBooks
• Interactive social media posts

Consideration

• Email
• Newsletters
• Podcast
• Whitepapers

Decision

• Testimonials
• Product comparisons
• Case studies
• Product literature

5. Using the Same Form of Content

Is your business putting out a new blog post every few months or updating social media once a week? If so, you are making another content marketing mistake. The content you develop should range between written, image, and audio based.

There are so many different forms of content that extend beyond just posting a new blog post or updating social media with a standard post. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking content marketing is all about updating a blog when there are many other avenues to pursue.

Blogs are a great way to drive organic traffic and boost your SEO, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. We’ve all probably created a blog post about something that may have worked better as a video or infographic.

When developing content, you should consider the range of types available:

• Blog posts
• Whitepapers
• Guides and e-books
• Videos (both short-form and long-form)
• Infographics
• Case studies
• Images and GIFs
• Podcasts
• Interactive social media posts
• User-generated content

Think about the different content forms when planning your next piece of content and try something new.

Creating a successful content marketing strategy is not easy and will take time to get right. But being aware of some easy content marketing mistakes and how to avoid them can get you on the right path.

Check out a step-by-step guide to developing a content marketing strategy

The post 5 Easy Content Marketing Mistakes and How To Avoid Them appeared first on SiteProNews.

Google news first launched the new way of viewing news on mobiles in 2019, but it has been rolled out to desktops more recently. Many brands are now finding that news articles appear top in search results rather than their content. Google has put the focus on useful and relevant content from third parties rather than from brands themselves. 

Principles of a Great Content Marketing Strategy 

Content marketing has rapidly become a core discipline of forward-thinking marketers and brands. Rather than pushing products and services in an outright plug for the brand, content marketing exists to support customers with relevant, insightful and consistent content to help them solve their issues. The result is far more engaging, and it builds that all-important brand loyalty, a marketing panacea. But content can also drive sales for a business, and the best part is that it is a cost-effective approach that works for both large and small brands. 

Of course, there are different ways of using content marketing in a PR and communications strategy. Whether it’s lead generation or brand awareness, having the right content show up in the right places can be extremely powerful, no matter the size of brand.  

Content Marketing and Google 

There are many common themes between the way that we approach content marketing for brands and the way that Google selects which news to feature in Google news. Brands should think of themselves as ‘content publishers’. They are creating and distributing valuable content that will insight and inform their desired readers. Choose your platform carefully, whether it is your brand’s own blog, a third-party website or social media. If you’re consistently leading your industry as a thought leader, the chances are it will boost your chances of being picked up by Google. This will help with maximising exposure and your chances of resonating with even more readers. 

And it’s not just the news search function in Google that will display Google news, or News.google.com. The Google App, discover page and even YouTube also has Google news coming through as breaking news topics.  

So How Can My Brand Appear in Google News? 

Firstly, let’s look into how Google decides which news articles to display. This article provides a good explanation about Google news article rankings and how they are determined algorithmically. It explains that the following factors are taken into consideration: 

• Relevance: whether the story is relevant to the user’s query. This factor is key to determining what users see in query-based experiences such as in Top Stories. 
• Interests: the interests that are defined when a user sets up Google News, coupled with the user’s reading behaviour, will determine the content that appears on both Google Discover and the “For you” section in news.google.com. Google ignores political or ideological perspectives when ranking content. 
• Location: this factor helps to surface stories relevant to the user’s geographical location in the “Your local news” section. This setting also factors in regional nuances in search queries, allowing a query such as football to return different results in different countries. 
• Language: the audience and how they consume news content is important to tailor for that particular language result. 
• Prominence: this reflects both the number of articles a publisher is producing on a certain topic — with more being better — as well as whether the topic itself is trending. 
• Authoritativeness: Google’s algorithm is set up to search for authoritativeness and trustworthiness signals to prioritise the most reliable sources. This system is designed around feedback from search results, click-through rates (CTRs) in search engine results pages (SERPs) and backlinks. 
• Freshness: recent articles that provide additional information on an evolving story have a higher chance of surfacing than older articles. 
• Usability: Google considers how usable and accessible a website is when presenting search results. Loading speed, responsive design and cross-browser compatibility are key requirements. 

Prominence, Authoritativeness and Freshness 

Prominence, authoritativeness and freshness of content is valued highly by the Google algorithm. They are also the common denominators of any successful PR or communications campaign.  

News hijacking and thought leadership has long been an effective way of getting your brand noticed. It allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding on topical events going on within your sector by sharing views and opinions within relevant publications and news outlets. Articles based on topical events increase the ‘shareability’ and credibility of a brand and help to build a reputation.

When it comes to getting noticed; being quick to get your comments out there and keeping them brief and on topic will increase your chances of them being picked up, not only by a news outlet but also by Google news. The effect of this could be incredibly advantageous for a brand.  

The post Content Marketing – How Being More Useful Pays Dividends With Google appeared first on SiteProNews.

But here’s the thing: most blog articles go viral for unknown reasons. Everyone who’s ever had a “viral happy accident” happen to them subsequently tried to re-create that scenario. They rarely succeed.

There are two major problems with chasing online fame (and nothing else):

1. It rarely happens. Most blog posts get fewer than 10 views.
2. As cool as it may be, fame doesn’t pay the bills.

While views and shares are important, they are not the most important metrics you should be tracking for a business content marketing strategy. The only bloggers who should focus excessively on these two metrics are the ones who run ads on their blogs and get paid by the number of views.

If that’s not your case, read on.

3 Better Metrics to Track Instead of Views, Shares, and Likes

If you run a business blog or create any other type of content (like 91% of B2B marketers do), you have to evaluate your performance regularly, right? Cool! Here’s where to begin:

1. Brand Awareness

I’ll be the first to admit: this one is tough. Extra tough!

There are very few ways to measure brand awareness and most of them are unreliable. Plus, you’ll need to correlate them with other factors. Some of my favorite (albeit imperfect) strategies include:

• An uptick in overall web traffic – correlate with the amount of people who discover your website through one of your content pieces.
• An uptick in organic visits – a great way to find out which types of content perform better in terms of SEO.
• Referral traffic – how many people link to your content?
• Search popularity – are people searching for your brand? If so, can you track it back to content?
• Earned media value – does your content bring in earned media? For instance, do media outlets reach out to you for an interview or for an expert take on a topic because they consider you an expert thanks to the content you publish?

Again, all of these are very, very hard to quantify. It’s why you’ll rarely see a CMO say something like “our content strategy brought a 23% YoY increase in brand awareness”. It’s next to impossible to determine exactly how many people know about your brand and how many of them found it via content.

I run two digital marketing agencies and I only have a vague idea about it. I know that our content attracts readers and customers, as well as social media followers. I also know that it has earned me personally spots on lists like the top 100 content marketing influencers by Semrush.

Of course, all of these things are very important for a business. But I could never tell you exactly how much cash they brought in.

I can tell you, however, without a doubt that any business will thrive on a spike of brand awareness – especially if people become aware of your brand for the right reasons.

2. Lead Generation

This one is much easier to track. Simply look at your analytics account to see how many people who read a blog post of yours (or any other type of content) subscribed to your newsletter or left their contact information in any other type of form.

An in-depth look at this metric will also tell which types of content perform better and should be replicated. Look for patterns: are “how-to” articles performing better than customer stories or is it the other way around?

Last but not least, look at the quality of the leads. A huge email list is worthless if most of the subscribers will never convert to buyers – which takes us to my next point.

3. Conversions

Yes, this is the one metric to rule them all. Your conversion rate tells you how much money your content is bringing in. This is the ultimate goal of every marketing activity, so I hope you’re measuring this regularly.

[Side note: in my experience, not even this can be measured accurately. My agency has had plenty of clients who read an article on our blog, closed the page and took no action…then. But when they needed someone to help with content or copywriting, they remembered us and went straight to our website. In Google Analytics, this falls under direct traffic. I only discovered the real source of our conversions after asking the clients directly.]

Now, about what I mentioned earlier: not all leads gained through content are ideal. Sure, a blog is a great way to get some street cred. 68.5% of users think blogs add credibility to a website.

However, in order to move from street cred to money in the bank, you need your content to match not just your users’ needs, but also your business goals.

Here’s a how-not-to example from my own business: when I first launched my agency, our blog was filled with in-depth articles about copywriting and content writing strategy, tips, tricks, and pretty much anything you can think of. They check all the boxes: they ranked well, they offered thorough explanations, and they were fun to read.

They even brought in leads.

But they weren’t the kind of leads we were looking for. Our leads were fellow copywriters looking for the next hot industry trick. Needless to say, leads were pouring in, but conversions rarely happened.

Now, I love to educate, but I also love paying my bills.

So I changed the strategy: the articles we published were designed to meet our potential customers’ needs AND our business goals. For instance: “How to hire the best SEO copywriters” brought in a lot of qualified leads, while “How to write an About Us page that converts” brought us street cred alone.

Do learn from my mistake: make sure your content checks both boxes if you want it to convert (and I know you do!), not just get shared massively.

Final Thoughts

Write well, write often, but most importantly write with a purpose. If you feel like you’ve strayed from your purpose and your content isn’t performing as expected, I suggest you revisit the KPIs you use to measure it.

Those KPIs can vary widely from business to business. Check out this list of 15 content marketing KPIs that you can add to your tracking list for a more comprehensive view into your content’s performance.

The post Beyond Views and Likes: How to Choose Better Metrics to Measure Your Content Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

Firms and businesses must adapt to these changes; otherwise, it can be detrimental to their growth. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 80% of B2B marketers have a content marketing strategy. However, a content marketing strategy is not enough. 

Marketers should implement the right content marketing strategy according to the changing times. This may include AI content creation, targeting your audience’s emotions, maintaining good quality content, and more. 

Best Content Marketing Tips for 2022

Here are the content marketing trends that every marketer should focus on for more and more conversion in 2022:

1. Using Interactive Content

The more your audience engages and interacts with your content, the better content experience they have, resulting in conversions and leads. 

How can you offer them content that is engaging and interactive?

You can use infographics, quizzes, questionnaires, polls, and interactive ebooks. Adding them to your landing pages or social media platforms can be a great marketing strategy. 

2. Moving Towards Empathetic Content Marketing

Audiences engage more with empathizing and emotional content. That is why it is essential to know your audience inside out. You need to view them not just as customers but as humans with emotions, perspectives, and lifestyles. 

This will help you create a content strategy that ideally suits the needs and desires of your audience. When the audience feels seen by you, it engenders more authentic relationships. That is why empathetic and emotional content is the key to any successful content marketing strategy. 

3. Utilizing AI Technology

Artificial intelligence is gaining a lot of attention when it comes to content marketing, and its usage will only increase in the upcoming years. AI content writing helps build a much more effective and efficient content strategy when integrated with human efforts.

Numerous content writing tools employ AI content creation to save time and resources and better the customer experience. Instoried is a content writing software that helps you add empathy to your content, making it more engaging. It also comes with an article plagiarism checker that will help you write original content for your blog.

4. Prioritizing Quality Content

Customer experience is one of the essential criteria for digital marketing strategy, and when you prioritize quality content, you ensure a great customer experience. Providing quality content to your audience is possible when your research is up to the mark.

Staying up to date with the latest happenings in the industry and what your target audience seems to be interested in at the moment is critical. Instead of churning out mediocre content every day, make sure your content is unique, even if that means you share content weekly. Do not forget to check your content for plagiarism and grammatical errors. 

5. Webinars and Live Videos

During the pandemic, viewership for webinars and live videos saw rapid growth. Due to the convenience and ease involved with them, they will be a top trend for years to come. 54% of B2B professionals watch webinars every week. They also add authenticity to content and help brands offer an interactive customer experience. 

Businesses can succeed with webinars and live videos when they provide a genuinely engaging experience without promoting their products and services. 

6. Video Marketing

Video has been the rising star in the last two years. 76% of marketers called ‘video’ the most effective content format in a recent survey conducted by Hubspot.

In fact, video marketing is only going to become more important. Brands need to learn to stand out in this content marketing format. You can do that when you create videos that form deeper connections with your audience and capture their attention instantly. 

Conclusion

As the world has almost completely shifted to digital, there will be a lot of new and innovative content marketing strategies gaining momentum in 2022. 

Brands will be shifting towards empathetic, interactive, and quality content and using AI for various content marketing needs. Video marketing has been one of the top trends in the last few years, and it is likely going to stay that way because of its ability to drive high engagement. As an extension to video marketing, webinars will grow exponentially, and businesses will use them as a marketing channel.

Marketers should keep track of these content marketing trends and incorporate them into their marketing strategy. The earlier you prepare for these trends, the more you will stay ahead of the competition.

The post How to Do Content Marketing in 2022 appeared first on SiteProNews.

It may be fun to create TikToks with your friends or share your latest travel adventures on Instagram, but what about the type of content that moves the world (and the money) around? Sure, social media content can become a business. However, I’d like to focus on the opposite direction: you’ve already got the business, now you need the content to support it and to grow it.

Where do you turn to?

You Can’t Be Everywhere

Trying to find out if you should put the bulk of your money in social media, PPC ads, or SEO content can be daunting. If you settled on SEO content, you’re left with the next choice: which type of content?

Every choice you make can be split into dozens of others and so on. To add insult to injury, everyone has a different opinion.

Care to hear another one?

My professional opinion is that we have so many opinions about everything because everyone tends to be hyper-specialized these days. Just like in Isaiah Berlin’s essay The Hedgehog and the Fox, – everyone is a hedgehog with one big idea these days.

A social media specialist will tell you that social media is the answer to all your problems and to a wealthy future. A PPC marketer will explain how they can take $1000 and create a campaign that will sell at least 10 times that much. An SEO expert will tell you that, unlike all the others, SEO’s results will last forever (well, not forever, but for years, which is essentially forever in the online world).

This is one of the many reasons why I obstinately avoided hyper-specializing and why my agency offers more than one service. Hedgehogs and hyper-specialization have their advantages. But very few things can beat a multi-disciplinary bird’s-eye-view.

In a well-rounded strategy, everything has its place. The cases where you can definitely say that SEO content doesn’t work or that PPC ads don’t work are so few that they become statistically irrelevant.

Just like you can’t create a comfortable home with a single piece of furniture, you can’t create a strategy with a single tactic. When it comes to content, there are quite a few tactics you can choose from.

What Are the Types of Content that Can Spark Sustainable Growth in the Long Run?

After spending more than 10 years in this space and advising countless companies on their content or marketing strategy, I can easily identify those types of content that work well for the long run. This is not to say that other types of content are irrelevant.

Again, even an ephemeral tweet can have an important place in your strategy. The ones below, however, are what you should invest in if you want content that keeps on giving ROI for months or years to come.

1. Long-Form SEO Blogging

This is what my business was built on. In turn, this is what built many of our clients’ businesses. Seven years ago, I built my first agency from scratch.

I had no reputation, no connections in the industry, and no large initial investment. I had a domain name and a few clients I had gotten through freelancing websites.

Long-form blogging helped me built a real business. Within a few months of our first post, organic leads started coming in. And they haven’t stopped since.

We have blog posts that have been ranking consistently in the first ten results for more than three years and they keep on generating leads too. They are optimized for long-form, yet high-value keywords for our industry, like “how to hire SEO copywriters”. This is actual, quantifiable ROI – you can put a number of leads and conversions next to your articles and see if they were worth the time or the fee.

The same results have happened consistently for all our clients who stuck to blogging for at least a few months. You can see our case studies here.

This week, one of oldest clients told me that they have too much traffic coming from their blog and they now want us to work on their landing pages as well to have them optimized and attracting eye balls.

Yes, blogging can help build a sustainable business and can deliver results for years to come. However, you have to keep at it. Posting a single article and expecting dozens of leads to fly in doesn’t work.

2. Whitepapers

Whitepapers can be the rock stars of your strategy. They are high-level, premium content that you can use as a lead magnet. Or that you can actually sell (although that rarely happens).

They can be the next step of your funnel that starts with SEO blog posts. The flow is simple: you attract organic users through blogging. They like what they read and they see your pop-up asking for their email address in exchange for a high-value whitepaper. And now they’re on your mailing list, ready to be converted.

You can also use whitepapers to convert leads that are already on your list. Whitepapers that showcase how you’ve solved a common problem in a unique way are excellent at doing just that – sealing the deal for leads that are still on the fence. We’ve seen it happen time and again, especially for our clients in the tech industry.

Whitepapers have a shorter lifespan than blog posts, though. Since they usually present new approaches or new technologies, they tend to become obsolete very fast – usually, a few months to a year.

However, this takes nothing away from their value. Since a whitepaper is a far more complex type of content than a blog post, it is expected to bring bigger and better results. And, if done properly and marketed to the right audience, they do!

For the long run, whitepapers are one of the best way to establish your innovator reputation.

3. Video Content

Whether it’s live or recorded, video can be a powerful tool in your arsenal. From webinars to YouTube videos, everything can help you establish a reputation and build a brand.

Video comes in handy for humanizing your brand too. Your (potential) customers get to see you and hear your voice, which establishes a rapport no type of written content can.

While videos may take longer to rank, they are also a good SEO investment, especially if you bet on evergreen topics.

Are You Making the Most Out of Content?

There is no pre-set mix of content types that works for everyone, especially since execution plays an important part as well. However, one of the most important rules of thumb in marketing is testing.

I encourage you to test and see what the perfect mix for your business is. Just make sure to give each tactic enough time to work before gathering the results.

And if you need help with any type of content, my team of content experts and I are just a click away. Let’s talk about a ROI-oriented content strategy!

The post 3 Content Types that Deliver Real, Sustainable, Long-Term ROI appeared first on SiteProNews.