Author Archives: Amrit Hallan

About Amrit Hallan

Amrit Hallan is a professional content writer who helps businesses improve their conversion rate through credible and compelling content writing. His main strength lies in writing search engine optimized content without compromizing quality and meaningfulness.

How to disseminate your content

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After you have figured out what sort of content your business requires and you have started publishing that content the next step is distributing and disseminating that content. Simply publishing content on your website or blog is not going to be very profitable unless people become aware of it and start accessing it. You may already have a steady flow of traffic to your website or blog and this can further gain traction once you produce more and more content but still you have to take measures to make your content accessible to as many people as possible. Listed below are some channels that you can use to disseminate your content

Publishing content on your website or blog

This is the easiest way of making your content available but for this people need to be aware of your website and blog. If you already have an audience, great, but if you are in the process of building an audience than along with publishing content under your website you also need to focus on other sources.

Publishing an electronic newsletter

Publishing an e-zine is one of the oldest and the most effective ways of spreading your content on a regular basis. Have an opt in e-mail list and display a subscription box on your website and on your blog. You can either just publish content in the e-zine or you can first publish it on your website or blog and then mail links to your subscribers. Services like MailChimp and Aweber have great features and they also provide you with ready-made subscription forms that you can straightaway copy/paste onto your website and blog

Making RSS subscription available

RSS feeds are a great way of regularly distributing your new content. If you are using a content management system to manage your website and blog the feature that generates RSS feeds must already be there (you can also use http://feedburner.com for better statistics and enhanced exposure). Once you have generated an RSS feeds link display it prominently on your blog and website and elsewhere so that people can easily subscribe to it.

Using social media channels

Although your blog is very much a part of social media you can use other avenues such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr. Many businesses publish content keeping such distribution channels in mind. Extensive research has been done on what sort of content goes viral on social media websites: what sort of heading and what sort of format attract the most attention and encourage people to share your content.

Submitting articles to article directories

There are many article directories that accept articles free of cost. It is a much outdated method but it is still being used by those who have just started spreading around their content, and to an extent it does work. The only problem is the quality of most of the articles in these article directories is not up to the mark and consequently they don’t carry much authority.

Writing for other blogs

Writing for other blogs exposes your skills in front of an entirely new audience and it also gives people an opportunity to visit your website or blog and know more about you and your business. There are many successful bloggers who are constantly looking for guest bloggers to provide them the much-needed respite and if you can write well you can approach them. With every blog post a small bio of yours appears carrying your credentials, primary URL and also a link to your RSS feed.

Submitting slides and PDFs

You can create information slides and PDFs and upload them to websites like SlideShare and Scribd. I personally feel compared to full-fledged blog posts and articles it’s much easier to create slides carrying main points.

Publishing white papers

White papers pack lots of useful information without beating around the bush. Writing and publishing white papers might be a difficult task because it requires lots of research work and fine tuning (most white papers are scholarly and detailed) so you may want to spend more than a couple of weeks preparing a single white paper. But once it is prepared and published on your website you will reap great dividends for a long time.

Attending meetups and workshops

If there are meetups and workshops happening in your niche you must try to attend them so that more and more people come to know of your presence. This may not directly help you expose your content in front of them but it will certainly bring you in contact with several influential people in your business and some of them may mention your website or blog through their blog or social media updates.

These are some prominent channels you can use to distribute your content over the Internet.

Creating a content marketing strategy specifically for your business

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Different businesses have different content marketing requirements because they have different markets. Some require visual content (videos, images) and some require textual content; it all depends on what sort of market you are trying to target.

Defining a content marketing strategy for your business

This involves understanding how you are going to use the power of content to spread the word around and get people’s attention. Content marketing, as I explained in my previous blog post (Content marketing pain points, and how to go about it), is not a one-time affair; it is not a campaign. It is an ongoing activity. You cannot do content marketing for a week or for a couple of months and then start evaluating the matrices. The effect takes some time and effort to manifests. Anyway, this has already been explained.

In order to create a content marketing strategy for your business you have to understand your audience. Content means there are consumers. Whatever content you decide to produce you must have consumers for it. You either reach out to them or they discover you, whatever is the case.

If you are marketing electronic gadgets to a comparatively younger audience then you most probably need visual content. For instance, lots of companies create short videos of how their gadgets are to be used and what features they have. They also promote images of their various gadgets. Textual content is there just as a supplement but it rarely plays a big part (of course there are headlines and descriptions but it’s the visual part that generates most of the traction).

Comparatively expensive gadgets such as high end cameras and other equipments need extensive reviews and this is where textual content plays a very important role. There are many gadgets review websites that maintain a commendable balance between audiovisual and textual content.

It’s not just the gadget industry that produces and markets content; it can be used by any business. Take for instance the real estate industry. I get lots of work from realtors and builders. New properties are being speculated upon, sold and purchased and older properties go through various hands, and all this needs to be put up on the website and this in return results in lots of keyword-targeted content.

So start defining your content marketing strategy keeping your audience in mind.

The two most important components of a content marketing strategy are

What contact to produce
How to make it accessible to as many people as possible

I have already explained how to produce your content. Now regarding how to make it accessible to your audience. Targeting is very important here. If you want to promote android phones then you must take your content in front of people who are eager to try out the latest android phones. If you want to market a new drug for tonsilitis then your content must reach people who are looking for such a cure.

In the next blog post I’ll talk about how to distribute your content.

Content marketing pain points, and how to go about it

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Defining content marketing

Many people talk about content marketing but very few understand what it exactly means and even the ones who understand it sometimes don’t know where to start and where to go. In order to benefit from content marketing you need to first of all understand what it means.

What is content marketing?

It is not marketing per se: you are not running an advertising campaign and it is not a media blitz. Content marketing is not an event, it is an activity stretched over a long period of time. Content marketing constitutes of the following core functions:

Generating and publishing high-quality content that informs and engages your audience
Spreading your content using various online channels (search engines, blogs, e-mail newsletters and social media profiles)
Generating new content based on the requirement of your audience

And the cycle continues if you function in a highly competitive business environment.

The main purpose of content marketing is keeping your customers and clients informed and educated in an engaging manner. It is not a one-way communication channel: you continuously obtain feedback from your audience and produce new content accordingly. Add entertainment to information and you have got yourself a winner. Take for instance the Will It Blend campaign where a person tries to blend everything he can get hold on. This campaign single-handedly has helped Blendtec increase its profits by a whopping 700%. This is not just an exception. There are many businesses that are leveraging content marketing to revolutionize their bottom lines.

Content marketing channels

You can use the following content marketing channels to publish and spread your content:

Blogs
Article directories
Social media and social networking tools (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.)
E-mail newsletters
Online forums
Your own website
E-books
White papers
Webcasts
Video series

You don’t necessarily have to focus on all the channels mentioned above; you can stick to 3-4 channels and create a compelling presence over there. For instance your company’s business blog coupled with Twitter and Facebook profiles can give a big boost to your content marketing efforts.

Where to start content marketing?

In content marketing too it is all about demand and supply, like any other product or service. Your customers and clients are looking for something and you provide it to them. Make it something that is not easily available. They will value your content if it is highly useful and if it is not easily found elsewhere. Quality and relevance is of great importance.

Before extending your content marketing reach to different channels thoroughly analyze your website and see what sort of content it has. Does it properly inform your customers and clients? Does it make them want to do business with you? Is it simply marketing hype or you really reach out to your customers and clients?

After you have made sure that content on your business website is up to the mark you can start spreading your content over your business blog, Twitter and Facebook profiles and other online channels. You can create content in any form suitable to your particular business needs. Some prefer text, some videos, some images and some a balanced mixture of all of these. It depends on your comfort level and your audience.

Don’t let content creation intimidate you. Taking an example from highly successful content marketing campaigns can seem a bit formidable so draw your own plan. Clearly define your audience and start creating content accordingly. You can start publishing small articles explaining various aspects of your product or service. A good start would be a comprehensive FAQs section. If you already have it perhaps you would like to expand it further.

Then you can create small blog posts dealing with various issues. Suppose there is a problem your customers or clients are facing constantly and they are talking about it on Twitter and Facebook. Aside from addressing the issue on individual channels you can also create blog posts on your own business blog and explain in detail how you plan to address the problem. This will instantly hit a chord with your customers and clients and they will be encouraged to reach out to you.

After creating blog posts you can post the links on your social media profiles. You can invite feedback from fans and followers and create further content based on that.

I hadn’t intended to create a very long blog post so I will stop here. In my next blog post I will try to write about how to create a content marketing strategy specifically focused on your business and your audience.

Generating content and being active on social media: striking a balance

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Life is getting tougher everyday for an online entrepreneur. There was a time when you could just have a website and do decent business. Then came in search engines and associated search engine optimization wars. Along came maintaining mailing lists and constantly promoting your website links on various forums and websites. Although initially blogging emerged as a leisure activity later on this too turned into a business promotion tool and hence you needed to spend lots of time maintaining and promoting your business blog.

As this was not enough now you have social media. You constantly need to engage your prospective and present customers and clients on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking and social media websites. As an online content writer I primarily focus on the following activities to continue getting work on the Internet:

Continuously generate new content on my website and my blog
Occasionally interact on other forums
Interact on Twitter and Facebook

So how do you strike a balance? Aside from taking care of your professional responsibilities (doing the actual business) you also need to remain active on social media and social networking websites and on top of that you need to constantly generate fresh and valuable content for your website and blog. There are 3 things that can help you

Planning
Persistence
Quality

Regularly plan your content writing and social media activities

Planning gives you a direction. Without a consistent plan you are clueless and end up wasting lots of time trying to figure out exactly what you want to do in order to promote your business. When you have a plan you know what you want to achieve and what all you need to do in order to achieve that. It helps you draw a clear picture of your activities and efforts.

Be persistent and have a schedule

It’s not necessary that you publish a new page or a new blog post every day. Similarly it is not necessary that you update your Twitter and Facebook profiles every hour and reply to every message. Just be persistent. If you have scheduled 2 new pages or blog posts every day then try to stick to this number. If you want to be active on social media and social networking websites for at least 1 hour every day at a particular time be there because your followers might be, unbeknownst to you, expecting updates from you.

Focus on quality rather than quantity

Quantity does matter when it comes to improving your search engine rankings quality always triumphs over quantity. Eventually it is quality that draws visitors to your website or blog and keeps bringing them back to you again and again. Even on social media and social networking websites don’t bother how many postings you publish; just focus on quality interactions and postings.

We end up wasting lots of time on content marketing and social media marketing by focusing on wrong or misplaced messages. Be persistent, do proper planning, and focus on quality and you can juggle multiple balls at the same time and get great results.

Why your website needs unique content

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This may sound mercantile coming from a professional content writer but your website definitely needs unique content, and in some cases, lots of it, if you want to have a competitive edge over other businesses, in terms of traction and search engine rankings.

Recently a client wrote to me that he simply wants to copy/paste content from other websites and I was amazed that even in these times people are unaware of the implications of plagiarism and publishing duplicate content on their websites and blogs. Fortunately I was able to convince him that straight copying/pasting content from other sources was a very bad idea and this could decimate his search engine optimization plans at the very least.

Why do you need unique content on your website or blog?

Simply because your business is unique, your voice is unique and so is your presence. If you have same sort of content like other websites and blogs how are people going to distinguish your presence from the others? What is going to be the difference? If you have got nothing unique and different to say about your business it means you have nothing different and unique to offer, and if you have nothing different or unique to offer why should people do business with you and not with someone else? And this can be a minor nag because people coming to your website or blog may not know that you don’t have unique content.

But the search engine algorithms will definitely know because that’s what they do: they rank well well-written and unique content and penalize duplicate and plagiarised content. You may ask why the heck they have a problem with non-unique content? It’s actually very simple. If they allow people to copy/paste each other’s content then all hell will break loose and very soon on every second link people will find the same content. Then what is the use of using a search engine? You use search engines to find relevant and useful content and you feel good when you get lots of choice. If the search engines don’t give preference to unique and relevant content you will stop using them and simply referred to a few odd directories.

Therefore it is in the interest of search engines to rank higher content that is unique and worthy.