Should mobile be your 1st priority when writing content?

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The writer of this LinkedIn post says that (probably he owns or works in an SEO company) 50% of their clients are receiving more than 45% non-PC organic searches. He also makes a rough prediction that over 65% of their clients may receive more than 50% of their traffic from mobile phones and tablets rather than conventional computers and laptops.

This is not one single isolated incident of an online marketer showing data indicating that more people are using mobile phones to carry out searches and use the Internet in general. If I’m not mistaken, around 60% Internet users in India have never used a computer or a laptop – they are using their mobile phones to access the web. In small towns and even in villages, there are some shops that charge Rs. 10 to set up a Facebook account on a mobile phone.

So as a content writer, should writing for mobile devices be your 1st priority while writing and formatting your content? Undoubtedly your content must be scalable. It must be easily accessible on devices of different screen sizes. But it has got more to do with the layout of your webpages.

What makes your content mobile-friendly?

Personally I believe every sort of content that is reader-friendly is also mobile-friendly. If possible, create shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. Confine one paragraph to one idea – a couple of sentences. Keep your images easily scalable so they can contract and expand according to the screen size. Use a font type that adjusts itself according to the screen resolution. But again, these are technical aspects.

As a content writer you should know that an average mobile user is more distracted than an average PC or laptop user. You can carry your mobile phone anywhere. You might be travelling in a train. You might be having a chat with a colleague in your office. You might be rocking your kid. For all I know, you might be reading this blog post sitting in a restaurant buzzing with activity and noise while trying to make sure that your coffee doesn’t spill over your screen.

Unlike with a computer or a laptop, you rarely see people using a mobile phone as an exclusive exercise. It is always done while doing something else. So there are greater number of distractions. Your content needs to compete with these distractions in order to keep your readers hooked.

Drab, uninspiring content naturally goes out the window. Your writing needs to be crisp, interesting, compelling and highly useful. But how is it different from writing content for computers and laptops? Not much.

Anyway, if you want to create content specifically for mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, here are a few things you can keep in mind:

Writing content for mobile phones and tablets

  • Use smaller sentences and paragraphs
  • Avoid using lots of hyperlinks
  • Focus on one message or one thought per page or blog post
  • Present the facts within your content rather than linking to them
  • Make your language interactive in the sense that you use lots of “you”, “I”, “me”, “we”, and “us” – in a sense that a person feels that he or she is having a conversation rather than reading a monologue
  • Link to extra pages at the end
  • Use visual formatting to highlight certain sections and expressions
  • Use simple language and don’t try to use lots of synonyms for your main keywords

Content Marketing Autoresponder Course On Avoiding Mistakes

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This is a 13-part autoresponder series on content marketing mistakes that you can avoid in order to maximise the effectiveness of your campaign. It is very important that you realize these mistakes and steer yourself in the right direction because if you keep on committing these content marketing mistakes they will cost you lots of money and time and of course, business opportunities.

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12 most important KPIs of content marketing

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A few days ago I wrote about the importance of knowing your content marketing KPIs. In that blog post I briefly wrote about the main KPIs that you should be aware of while creating and publishing content for your website and blog, but a dedicated blog post was needed, and hence this one.

In order to know and analyse your KPIs and make improvements accordingly you should know a mix of web analytics (something like Google Analytics) and some natural instinct about what’s good and what’s bad for your business. For example, you should know that your website needs to convert well and in order to convert well, it has to offer something highly valuable to your visitors. You know that, right?

The basic idea behind gauging the success of your content marketing effort in terms of knowing the KPIs is to keep yourself and your team thoroughly focused. After all, when you are making so much effort, when you are spending so much money, you should know whether your content marketing is succeeding or not, and the best way to know this is, to be aware of what factors indicate to you whether you are experiencing success or failure.

12 important KPIs of content marketing

  1. Increase in the number of unique visitors: An increase in the number of unique visitors means more people are able to find your content. A big reason why more people are finding your content is that there is more content to be found. Whereas, the possibility of people becoming your customers and clients is greater among your repeat visitors, the number of your repeat visitors will increase only when you have more unique visitors – after all, every existing visitor was once a unique visitor. The content marketing KPI for unique visitors may differ from action to action. For example, unique visitors subscribing to your newsletter or downloading your e-book are far more important in terms of KPIs than those who simply come to your website and then leave without doing anything.
  2. Increase in the social media and social networking shares: Vibrant activities on social media and social networking websites are a great part of your overall content marketing effort. Only exciting, useful content is shared and promoted voluntarily on these channels. Nobody would like to put boring content on his or her timeline. If people are sharing your content with their friends, family and colleagues, it means they find your content useful.
  3. Improvement in search engine rankings for important keywords: Content marketing also involves writing and publishing high quality content on your website and if you are persistent with quality and relevance, your search engine rankings for your important keywords begin to improve. It is an important KPI because the improvement in your search engine rankings doesn’t just reflect the quality of content on your own website, it also reflects the popularity of your content on social media and social networking websites, blogs and other websites.
  4. Increase in the number of newsletter subscriptions:
    Are more and more people subscribing to your newsletter and regular updates? This is a very good indicator of your key performance. When people subscribe to your newsletter it means that they are convinced that you are going to deliver quality. It also means that your content marketing is bringing targeted and focused visitors on your website, visitors who are actually interested in hearing from you on an ongoing basis rather than just stumbling upon your website mistakenly.
  5. Increase in the number of people downloading your e-book or case study: For some businesses, an increase in the number of people downloading a particular e-book or a case study is one of the most important content marketing KPIs, because this is what they are targeting for. Content is created, published and disseminated in such a manner that it convinces people into downloading the e-book or the case study. Do you need to create special content for that? Certainly yes.
  6. Increase in the number of people clicking your ads: If your website or blog revenue depends on more and more people clicking the ads that you have published on your blog or website, then more people clicking your ads is your most important KPI. It means getting highly targeted people to your blog or website – people who find the ads interesting and useful.
  7. Increase in the number of incoming links to your website or blog: This is an obvious KPI. If more people are linking to your website or blog, it means that they find your content useful and relevant. How is it an important content marketing KPI? More incoming links means more direct traffic to your website without having to depend on the whims of search engines. Although many SEO experts deny this, incoming links still contribute towards improving your overall search engine rankings.
  8. Increase in the number of people requesting guest blog posting on your blog: Nobody wants to waste time guest blogging for a blog not visited by many people. If your content marketing efforts are increasing the popularity of your blog this is an important key performance indicator. A popular blog means more people want to make use of it by writing content for it and then getting attributed for it.
  9. Increase in the number of people submitting your contact form: This is quite obvious. Why do people submit your contact form? They want to reach out to you, whether it is for business queries, for lead generation, or simply to send their suggestions and greetings. Whatever, it means your content marketing effort is getting the right people to your website or blog.
  10. Better response to your email campaigns: I have often written on my blog and website that email marketing is an important component of content marketing and its success and failure can give you a deep perspective of your KPIs. Content marketing doesn’t just mean publishing content on your website or blog and then distributing that content using various channels, it also means broadcasting your email newsletter at regular intervals and distributing your content via email marketing. When people begin to respond to your email marketing campaigns it means they appreciate your content and have faith in what you have to say.
  11. A greater number of people spending more time on your website or blog: When do people spend more time on your website? One, they find what they are looking for, and two, they find more of what they are looking for. Having valuable content means people are not distracted away easily and there is enough compelling content to keep them on your website. The more they stay on your website, the more inclined they are to do business with you. One of the best KPIs of content marketing is reducing your bounce rate.
  12. Decrease in the overall customer acquisition cost: Running a business also means accruing costs. Whether you are able to calculate or not, for every new customer in one way or another you are paying money. You are paying for your content. You are paying for your search engine rankings. If you are investing in a PPC campaign, you are also paying per click. When, by spending same amount of money, you are getting more customers and clients, you are reducing your customer acquisition cost and this is the ultimate KPI if you are able to achieve this by the strength of your content marketing.

I have listed above 12 most important KPIs of content marketing according to my own perception and your business may have totally different KPIs. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is, you know what you want your content marketing to achieve for you, and you know how to streamline your content marketing accordingly. This is the most important thing.

How to go from 0 to 100,000 monthly blog visitors in 1 year

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Every blogger’s dream is to get a ton of traffic as soon as possible, but the problem with blogging is, unless you have got lots of time and money at hand, it takes a prolonged effort to grow a decent flow of traffic. Most people abandon blogging because although they start with great ideas and lots of energy, gradually they start running out of ideas and the energy begins to ebb. If you go through the history of every successful blog there is one common trait you will easily find: persistence. I don’t know whether this is true or not, once I read somewhere that Seth Godin publishes a blog post everyday, without missing even a single day, even on Christmas Day. Many bloggers claim that the moment they decrease the number of blog posts they publish per week or per month, their traffic declines and so do their business queries.

How do you grow traffic to your blog? This Business 2 Community blog post explains how you can generate a monthly traffic of 100,000 visitors to your blog. Of course conditions apply. You need to stick to the following:

  • Write great headlines to increase traffic directly as well as from search engines. Remember that whenever people come across your link, it’s not the URL that they see, it’s the headline or the title that you have created. Search engines use your page title to display your listing as a hyperlink text. Even when people post your link on Facebook or Twitter, it’s your headline or title that is automatically extracted and displayed within the update preview. So spend ample amount of time coming up with a compelling, highly attractive headline or webpage titles.
  • Write lots of content on trending topics if possible. Well, this advise is not always applicable to your business, but it definitely helps if you write content on trending topics because people are already looking for such content. But do keep in mind that you need to give a unique twist to your blog posts because if it is a trending topic then you can safely assume that hundreds of thousands of people must be writing about it and there is going to be a tough competition on search engines as well as social networking websites. Create a unique title or topic and then write your blog post centered around the trending topic.
  • Always solve problems. Visitors will come to your blog in droves if you solve their problems through your blog posts.
  • Write in conversational tone. Remember that when you’re writing blog posts you are not trying to prove your literary credentials – you’re simply trying to hold conversations with your visitors. Write in a friendly manner. Write as if you’re talking to someone sitting in front of you.
  • Promote your blog posts. Simply writing blog posts all the time doesn’t help much, although sooner or later you will start getting search engine traffic. Start pitching your blog posts on various forums. Share your links on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other such platforms.

Is content marketing replacing conventional advertising

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What exactly do you understand by “conventional advertising” and how do you think it is different from content marketing? Contrary to popular belief content marketing doesn’t just happen on the Internet. Ever since the first corporate magazine or journal was published to raise awareness about a particular field of work and through that, awareness about the product or service itself, content marketing has been in action. You must have already heard the story multiple times, but do you know why soap operas are called soap operas? It’s because it was a series of TV dramas sponsored by a soap company. What was that? That was content marketing.

Content marketing means creating emotional stories rather than simply telling people to buy your products or services just because you’re selling them. Stories create a context. You show actual people being impacted by the presence or absence of the said products or services.

This EContent article explains with some examples how conventional advertising is rapidly turning into content marketing.