4 types of Social Media influencers that can Help You Reach Your Marketing Goals

4 types of social media influencers

4 types of social media influencers

Around 91% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing.

And we agree with them, which is why we have put together a list of 4 types of social media influencers that you should work with to reach your marketing goals effectively.

You have done your research on influencer marketing but now your biggest challenge is to pick the right influencer for your marketing campaigns.

We have got you covered. In this article, we will take you through different types of influencers and also talk about the different attributes to help you make a decision.

Read on, as we empower you with the right information to take your influencer marketing to the next level.

The 4 types of social media influencers

We bet you have heard almost everywhere that influencer marketing is the next big thing to promote your brand.

According to Mediakix Influencer Marketing Survey, 89% of marketers say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.

This gives you enough compelling reasons to jump on this opportunity to reach your marketing goals.

But before you start your marketing initiative, you should know the different kinds of social media influencers available and which one to pick for your particular marketing initiative.

We are going to cover 4 types of social media influencers based on their follower count. A detailed description of each of these influencers will help you decide which one to pick to reach your marketing goals.

1. Celebrity Influencers

Celebrity influencers or mega influencers usually are people with more than one million followers.

They are typically known for their careers as singers, actors, athletes, or internet personalities.

Since these types of social media influencers are celebrities, you will need a hefty marketing budget to afford their services.

They can help you reach the maximum possible audience with their celebrity status.

If your marketing goal is to reach a massive general audience and gain major exposure, collaborating with a celebrity influencer is your best bet.

Work with celebrity influencers when you are working on a brand awareness campaign and have a large budget for it.

With the help of these social media influencers, you can get your product or services in front of as many people as possible which can do wonders for your brand.

Mega influencers are usually famous and hence finding them is not super hard.

2. Macro-Influencers

Macro-influencers are influencers with a follower range of 100K – 1M.

These social media influencers are typically people who rose to fame due to the internet.

These internet-made celebrities include bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, and social media stars.

Since they have acquired fame by creating content constantly in the last few years, they have the required skills to use social media platforms creatively.

These social media influencers can help you create highly engaging content that will help your brand gain visibility and recognition.

You can use them to build awareness for your own brand and increase your engagement rates.

Owing to their healthy number of followers, they are a perfect medium to achieve your marketing goals.

To find these influencers on social media, use the hashtag that relates to your brand, industry, or niche.

3. Micro-Influencers

Micro-influencers are influencers with a follower range of 10K to 100K.

Even with such a high number of followers, micro-influencers are trusted by their followers and are able to engage with them on a regular basis.

These social media influencers usually specialize in a particular niche such as solo travel, lifestyle, technology, fashion, etc.

Due to the high relatability factor, they have a huge engagement rate and a targeted audience.

As a brand, you can find someone who is in the same industry as yours, to reach your marketing goals.

Micro-influencers are perfect for you if you have a clear understanding of your target audience and are ready to generate more focused leads.

Social listening tools are the best way to find a micro-influencer that fits your marketing needs.

Another great idea is to look for an influencer who is already a huge fan of your brand and follows you on social media.

4. Nano-Influencers

Nano-influencers are the influencers with a follower range between 1K to 10K.

These social media influencers usually have a great engagement rate and highly engaged social media following owing to their small audience.

They have a very close relationship with each of their follower and take time to connect with the audience to nurture the relationship.

Due to their highly interactive social presence, their followers trust their recommendations and are more likely to make a purchase.

Collaborating with nano-influencers is ideal if you are a small business with a limited marketing budget.

Using social media listening tools, you can easily find these influencers on different social media platforms.

Using nano-influencers works ideally for those whose marketing goal is to test a new product launch.

Find the right influencers to represent your brand

With so many influencer options available, it can get confusing to find the right one to represent your brand.

We have listed down some of the factors that can help you make this decision easily.

  • Take a look at the kind of people following the influencer.

    Do they look like your target audience?

    If they do, then this is the right kind of influencer to talk about your brand.

  • Go back to your marketing goals.

    The kind of goals you have set are very much important to deciding whether you should go for a macro, micro, nano, or celebrity influencer.

  • The platform where these influencers are present is another important factor to take into consideration.

Wrapping up

As we have discussed in length, there are several kinds of social media influencers available in the market that you can collaborate with based on your marketing goals.

If you want to get the widest possible reach without any budget limitations then working with macro and celebrity influencers should be your best bet.

Else, if you are more interested in driving conversations and engagement, then micro and nano influencers should be your pick.

Also, picking an influencer with similar goals, ethics, and followers as your brand is crucial to having a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship.

 

The top-down approach to writing blog posts

Top-down approach to writing blog posts

Top-down approach to writing blog posts

Optimizing your content for very broad topics can be difficult, especially when too many websites have already done the job.

Take for example “blogging tips”, or “how to blog”, or even “SEO content writing”.

When people are searching for Google, normally they are not looking for broad topics.

They are looking for specific information.

They don’t want to sift through pages and pages of information before they find precisely what they are looking for.

Hence, a person is more likely to search for “blogging tips for generating blog topic ideas”, or “blogging tips to improve SEO”, or “SEO content writing tips for an accounting website”.

Writing blog posts on broad topics doesn’t just fail to help your readers, it also poses problems for you when you need to come up with lots of blog writing ideas.

Hence, if you write a blog post on “blogging tips” then you have sealed the topic for ever and if you write on the same topic, you create duplicate content.

On the other hand, if you create a blog post on the title “12 blogging tips for an accounting app startup” you have more scope for similar blogging ideas, such as “7 blogging tips to improve engagement for a web design website”.

What is top-down approach to blog post writing?

When researching on the topic I came across this informative blog post that talks about the top-down approach to content planning.

This further brought to my mind the concept of creating topic clusters and pillar pages.

Topic clusters work on the same top-down approach.

Suppose you choose a broad topic “blog writing”

  • Then you choose a tool like Answerthepublic to generate a list of topics such as
  • Can writing blog posts make you money?
  • How to quickly start blog writing without wasting time in learning the ropes?
  • How can you use blog writing in business communications?
  • How to calculate the ROI of blog writing?
  • Which is the easiest blogging platform for writing blog posts?
  • How to make it easy to write a blog post every day?
Answerthepublic screenshot

Answerthepublic screenshot

Frankly, the list goes on and on.

This top-down approach to writing blog posts can give you practically unlimited blog topic ideas.

These are also called creating content clusters.

You choose the main topic, write an introduction for the main topic in a dedicated blog post, and from that blog post, you start linking to all the subtopics that you create.

Why not create a big, humongous blog post covering all the possible topics instead of creating content clusters?

Most of your readers don’t want to read 5000 words just to find out how to start a blog for business communications.

People use precise queries on Google.

For example, people searching for “how to calculate the ROI of blog writing” may not be looking for blogging platforms which you will include in a 5000-word blog post.

Instead, you create highly targeted blog posts addressing individual topics so that it’s easier for people to not just find the topics on Google but also go through them without having to sift through a ton of information they don’t need right now.

The top-down approach in blog writing prevents you from solely focusing on very broad topics and then wondering why you are not faring well on search engines.

Even big websites that have published thousands of blog posts find it difficult to rank for broad topics because there is too much competition.

Even if they rank well for broad topics (how to SEO your blog, for example) it is simply because for years they have been following the top-down approach for blogging and content writing which has enabled them to publish hundreds of content clusters and pillar pages for highly targeted topics.

What are the benefits of the top-down approach to blog writing?

One of the biggest benefits is that you can go deeper and deeper.

Content cluster screenshot

Content cluster screenshot

There is practically an unlimited supply of topics that you can cover when you follow the top-down approach to blog writing.

One of the biggest problems in content marketing in general and writing and publishing content in particular is a lack of ideas.

People start with great fanfare and then very soon they run out of blogging ideas.

When you follow the top-down approach to blog writing, how many blogging ideas you get simply depends on your ingenuity and creativity.

Content clusters also give a reason to your readers/visitors to stay on your blog for a long time.

While they are not forced to go through a very long blog post, they are free to explore as many links as they want that you put on your main topic blog post.

This reduces your bounce rate and this in turn improves your search engine rankings.

It is also easy for people to find the relevant topics when they are visiting your blog.

What about search engine rankings?

When you write blog posts on specific topics it’s easier to rank them compared to the broad topic.

You can write and publish blog content faster with the top-down approach because writing on a single idea is much easier than writing a magnum opus.

It is also easier for you to organize your content.

You can create a list of topics and subtopics using either a dedicated content management software or something like Google Sheets.

You can even use a Google Docs document.

For that matter, you can simply create a folder using your File Explorer and then go on adding sub-folders and then store the relevant documents in these sub-folders.

You will need to keep track of the hierarchy so that in future if you need to make some changes, you can easily reach the right document and make the changes.

 

How important are keywords when writing content?

Are keywords important for content writing

Are keywords important for content writing

Keywords are needed for SEO content writing.

Although there are many SEO experts who have begun to say that keywords no longer matter because Google these days focuses on natural language processing rather than keywords, if you search on Google, you will observe that keywords still matter.

I will give you a small example: suppose you are looking for “SEO content writing” and the keyword does not exist on my website.

Will you be able to find my website?

Suppose I’m constantly writing web pages and blog posts on “SEO writer”, “SEO writing”, or “writing for SEO” – will you still find my website for “SEO content writing”?

You may or you may not.

It depends on how well I have been able to optimize my website and what is the nature of rankings my content enjoys on Google.

If lots of people link to my website, my blog, and individual blog posts and on those websites, they have repeatedly used the keyword “SEO content writing”, then, maybe, Google may infer that my website is about “SEO content writing”, otherwise, it is all guesswork.

On the other hand, if I have multiple blog posts and web pages talking about the topic of “SEO content writing” then there is a great chance that one of these days, you will be able to find my website for this particular search query.

Therefore, you shouldn’t ignore the keywords when writing content.

Keywords have significance other than SEO

Whenever my clients send me content writing specifications, they also send me a list of keywords.

They may want me to optimize a single blog post for 5-10 keywords, or they may want me to focus on just a single, longtail phrase.

I prefer focusing on longtail phrases.

They are easier to optimize.

They don’t dilute your optimization process.

Whenever my clients ask me to optimize a particular piece of content for 5-10 keywords, I refuse to do so.

This is because then I need to write lots of unnecessary content to cover all the keywords unless the blog post or the web page is actually comprehensive enough to be able to accommodate all 5-10 keywords.

Even when the client doesn’t mention SEO, I advise to compile a list of keywords.

Keywords are not just needed for SEO – they also give you an idea of the language people use when they are using Google.

People use conversational language when they’re searching for information.

Again coming back to my own example, I may end up spending lots of time optimizing for “SEO content writing”, whereas, clients might be searching for “need an SEO content writer” or “looking for SEO content writer”.

Maybe only those people look for “SEO content writing” who want to learn about writing SEO content.

Therefore, the language that you are using when writing content may be completely different from the language used by your target customers and clients.

For better conversion rate you must write in the language used by your visitors.

Hence, keywords are needed for two purposes:

  1. Help you write optimized content so that you can organically improve your search engine rankings.
  2. Help you get a sense of the language people use when talking about your business so that you can write your content in the same language.
  3. Help you get content writing ideas – you need to create lots of topics to write on based on the keywords you want to optimize your website or blog for.

How to find the right keywords before writing content?

When writing content, keyword research can either be done by the client, or the content writer writing the content (it depends on whether the client is ready to pay for the time or not).

There are free as well as paid methods to find the right keywords.

There are three elements you must pay attention to when finding the right keywords before writing your content:

Relevance of the keywords

How relevant the keywords you’re planning to use are?

Here I would quickly like to add that when researching for keywords, focus on probable topics of search rather than keywords like “SEO content writing”.

For example, should you optimize for “looking for SEO content writer” or “what are the benefits of hiring an SEO content writer?”

This is where search intent comes into picture.

The intent of the first search query “looking for SEO content writer” is transactional because the person submitting the query wants to hire an SEO content writer.

The intent of the second search query “what are the benefits of hiring an SEO content writer” is that the person may be thinking of hiring an SEO content writer but he or she needs more convincing.

This is commercial intent.

You may like to read Why search intent is most important when writing content for your website

Authority of the keywords

It is the depth of expertise your keywords or topic represents.

You build topical authority by writing lots of content on your chosen topic.

For example, if I have multiple web pages and blog posts talking about “SEO content writing” and if the content is relevant and many people link to it, Google will think that it is an authority keyword for my website.

Keyword authority is more about choosing a key phrase or a longtail keyword and then building authoritative content around it.

Keyword search volume

For this you may need to use a keyword tool like Google Keyword Planner.

The Google Keyword planner is less for SEO and more for bidding on Google AdWords advertisements, but if you enter your keywords, it gives you such volume.

Search volume tells you whether the keyword you want to use is popular or not.

You may rank on the first spot for your chosen keyword but if people are not searching for it, there is no use of it.

You must choose keywords for which there are a decent number of search queries being done.

Also, highly competitive keywords may be difficult to optimize.

Hence, you should use keywords that are relevant to your business, but they are not extremely highly competitive (thousands of people searching for them per day.

In conclusion, finding the right keywords are important for your content writing process both in terms of improving search engine rankings as well as helping you write in the language your target audience uses.

Can you immediately start blogging?

Can you start blogging immediately

Can you start blogging immediately

Yes, and it depends.

The starting part is not difficult.

Whether you want to host your own blog under your own domain or you want to use one of the existing blogging platforms, and depending on your Internet speed of course, you can start blogging within the next 10 minutes.

You can start both business blogs or personal blog based on your preference.

You can start blogging immediately in two ways:

  1. Install a blogging platform such as WordPress under your own domain name.
  2. Use a third-party blogging platform by simply opening an account with them.

Immediately starting a blog with WordPress

Installing the WordPress blogging platform may seem like a daunting task because it involves “installing”.

WordPress is a set of PHP files that you need to first download from WordPress.org, and then using an FTP program, uploaded to your web hosting server.

But it doesn’t have to be this complicated.

Most of the web hosting companies allow you to install WordPress on your server with a single click.

Well, single click is just a way of putting it; it takes a few clicks.

But the interface is quite friendly and even if you have never installed WordPress on your server, you can install it and start blogging immediately.

Web hosting companies like GoDaddy also offer dedicated WordPress hosting services.

If you opt for a WordPress hosting package, WordPress comes pre-installed.

Once you have made the payment, you are given a WordPress username and password.

You can immediately log into the dashboard and start blogging.

You don’t even have to install anything.

You don’t need to deal with FTP servers.

You don’t need an FTP program on your computer.

You will simply need to go to the URL recommended by the web hosting company and once you are on that URL, you will be able to log into the dashboard and start blogging immediately.

Don’t you need a custom WordPress theme to run a blog?

Not necessarily.

Yes, a theme matching your main website does look good, but the focus of my blog post is telling you how to start blogging immediately and for that, I’m going to skip the part of installing a WordPress theme.

The default installation comes with standard themes that you can use to display your blog.

After logging into the dashboard, you can use one of the default themes.

After that, there is a very neat WYSIWYG editor that you can use to write and publish blog posts.

There are many tweaks that you can make to your WordPress installation, but right now that doesn’t matter.

What matters is, how fast you can start blogging.

Even if you want to start a business blog and you don’t want to waste time getting a custom theme designed, the default theme is sufficient enough.

The important part is creating content.

It may take two or three months to get a nice theme but in the meantime, you should start writing and publishing blog posts as soon as possible, and this is the quickest way.

Don’t worry about the theme yet.

The content is the important thing.

Just set the ball rolling.

Immediately starting a blog with third-party blogging platforms

I’m not going to discuss multiple blogging platforms because that becomes confusing.

The difference between a self-hosted blogging platform and a third-party blogging platform is that when you use a self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress, it is under your own domain.

A self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress is good for your search engine rankings.

With a self-hosted blogging platform, when the traffic begins to build up, it comes to your own domain name rather than another website.

The only problem is that it may take you many months to build decent traffic.

This brings me to the topic of third-party blogging platforms.

One of my favorite third-party blogging platforms is Medium.com.

You can immediately open an account with Medium using your Twitter account or Google account.

In fact, it may take less than five minutes to start writing a post on Medium.

One of the biggest benefits of publishing your blog posts on Medium is that you can get exposure faster, unlike a self-hosted blog.

The Medium platform is ready-made.

People can follow you and receive notifications whenever you publish new blog posts using Medium.

You can build traffic faster on your Medium blog, but the only problem is that most of the traffic comes to your Medium blog instead of your own website.

For building faster visibility, Medium is a great platform.

If by chance your blog post is picked by their editorial team and featured on the homepage, your blog can get massive exposure in terms of hundreds of thousands of views, in a single day.

It also makes it easier to immediately start blogging.

What about other third-party blogging platforms?

LinkedIn allows you to publish articles using its platform.

Publishing LinkedIn articles or blog posts is a good way to build your leadership over the professional networking platform.

It is said that LinkedIn promotes blog posts and articles published on its own platform more than the usual smaller updates.

Aside from Medium and LinkedIn, there is also a WordPress.com, but somehow, I have never liked it.

It doesn’t look professional.

If right now you don’t want to immediately start blogging under your own domain the best options for third-party blogging platforms are LinkedIn and Medium.

You can use LinkedIn for professional blogging.

You can share your thought leadership blog posts using LinkedIn.

LinkedIn these days also allows you to run a newsletter.

This way, whenever you publish a post over LinkedIn, your newsletter subscribers immediately receive an email with the contents of your blog post.

Medium too has such a facility.

What do I recommend if you immediately want to start blogging?

If you ask me, I would highly recommend the self-hosted WordPress blogging platform.

It may seem difficult in the beginning, but it will be worth the effort.

Your search engine rankings will improve if you publish regularly.

All the traffic that your blog generates will come to your own website.

You will own the content – all the blog posts are stored in a MySQL database and anytime you can take backup of this database and store it locally on your computer.

Even for self-hosted blogging platform, you don’t face many hurdles.

As mentioned above, WordPress hosting is available with every hosting service these days.

All you need is access to the admin/dashboard, and you can immediately start blogging.

Third-party platforms definitely have their benefits, but I would recommend that you first publish your latest blog posts on your own, self-hosted blog and then share them or syndicate them on the third-party blogging platforms.

Are you committing these 5 content marketing mistakes?

Are you committing these 5 content marketing mistakes

Are you committing these 5 content marketing mistakes

Content marketing allows you to promote your business without aggressively promoting it.

You offer useful, entertaining, or engaging information to your audience in the form of blog posts, web pages, videos and social media posts.

Through your content you become a day-to-day part of their lives.

They begin to associate you with positivity and value.

Finally, when it comes to doing business, they choose you over your competitors who is not regularly engaging them.

In content marketing, instead of constantly pitching your products and services, you publish relevant and useful content that helps people solve their problems, or in some manner, makes them happy and feel good about themselves.

Why is content marketing called “marketing” when all you seem to be doing is publishing useful content?

Just like any other marketing campaign, content marketing requires strategy.

You need to promote your content using free and paid channels.

You need to aggressively put your content in front of your target audience.

You need to analyze the performance of individual pieces of content.

Based on their performance, you either revise your existing content, or make changes to your future pieces of content.

How is content marketing different from conventional marketing?

Many businesses use conventional marketing, and it works for them.

Unlike many content marketers, I don’t downplay the importance of conventional marketing.

As long as there are conventional channels like TV and print media, conventional marketing is going to exist.

A big problem with conventional marketing is that it is one way.

You are constantly telling your target customers and clients to buy your product without establishing a lasting relationship with them.

Content marketing doesn’t focus on direct selling – although in some cases businesses do aggressively promote their products and services.

Content marketing goes through different customer journey stages, such as

Awareness stage in content marketing

This is one of the first stages of the customer journey when the customer becomes aware of your existence.

Content at the awareness stage must be educational and helpful.

Selling comes at a later stage.

At the awareness stage you can publish blog posts, videos, e-books and newsletters.

Here are some examples:

  • An amusing video by a restaurant on how to choose the right dress for a dinner outing.
  • A blog post on what all to pack on a bike trip by a biking tour company.
  • An e-book by kitchen chimney installation company advising people how to buy the best kitchen chimney and how to take care of it (I recently revised an e-book on the same topic).

During the awareness stage people become aware of the existence of your business and off your expertise and knowledge.

They are repeatedly exposed to useful information in the form of social media updates, videos and blog posts from you.

For example, there are many people who don’t even know that they need kitchen chimneys.

The book helps them become aware of the need.

It not only helps them become aware, it also helps them to choose the right kitchen chimney for different kitchens and after that, how to maintain them so that they can use the piece for a long time.

Through the awareness-related content marketing material, your prospective customers and clients not only become proactively aware of the benefits of using your product or service, they also have a choice when finally they are ready.

Consideration stage in content marketing

In this stage your prospective customers and clients are ready to buy your product or service.

You just need to provide them more information.

This information can be a mix of awareness and technical specifications about your product or service.

Some examples would be:

  • You explain your content writing and copywriting process through a detailed blog post or web page, or an infographic.
  • A case study describing how your SEO copywriting services helped a company improve its search engine rankings in just 6 months.
  • A legal consulting service publishing testimonials from its clients where they describe how the consulting service helped them solve complicated legal problems and saved them a ton of money.

Closing stage in content marketing

The closing stage is quite critical.

Do you know that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is almost 69.57% (source)?

You put so much hard work and money into bringing people to your e-commerce website, and when you see almost 69 people out of 100 abandoning the shopping cart, it can be quite heartbreaking and crushing.

People may decide to not to do business with you just in the nick of time.

Your content marketing effort in this stage can help you remain with your prospective customers and clients till the last step – making the payment.

People abandon the last step due to many reasons including:

  • Getting distracted
  • Developing doubts at the last moment
  • Getting confused
  • Not being able to follow exactly how to do business with you
  • Postponing so that they can spend some more time taking the right decision (right decision according to them)

You can use the following content marketing material to remain with your prospective customers and clients during the closing stage:

  • As an architecture firm, you can produce a quality video showcasing a portfolio of work you have done so far.
  • As a virtual reality company, you can show a high-profile virtual reality environment people can roam around.
  • A research report by your consulting company explaining people how your strategic approach has helped many businesses grow in leaps and bounds.

Although content marketing has arrived late in the game (compared to other forms of marketing) there are many companies like Coca-Cola who have completely eliminated their conventional marketing budgets and are now focusing entirely on content marketing.

Content marketing is effective compared to traditional marketing, but some mistakes can be costly in terms of money and time.

In case you are committing these 5 content marketing mistakes, I hope after reading this blog post you will be able to take corrective measures and enjoy the full benefit of content marketing.

Here they are

Not being regular with content publishing

This is the first mistake I have observed my content writing and copywriting clients committing when they implement their content marketing strategy.

They think that publishing 5 blog posts that they can then display in the footer is enough.

Content marketing is an ongoing process because you need to remain in front of your target audience.

There are multiple reasons for that.

There is too much information on the Internet.

If you are not consistent with your content marketing (in the form of consistently publishing content) your competitors definitely are.

You see, content marketing is not the magical wand.

You can’t publish a few blog posts and case studies whenever you have budget or inclination and then expect content marketing to work for you.

Even highly successful businesses who choose to depend on content marketing, publish high-quality blog posts, podcasts, and infographics on regular basis.

You need to remain in front of your audience constantly.

Even if you are absent for a few days, they lose track.

You must have seen advertisements from famous brands on TV.

Why do they need to promote themselves when their brands are already well-known?

Because the competition is constantly round the corner.

People’s memories are short.

They easily get swayed.

Someone can always out-inform you.

When you are implementing your content marketing strategy, consider the expense of publishing and promoting content as an essential business expense.

Not focusing on the target audience for content marketing

If you’re not focusing on the target audience, you are not going to generate target response.

Whom are you planning to attract to your business?

Of course, your customers and clients – a simple answer would be.

But what happens with your content might be completely different than what you want it to do.

This is especially true if you want to attract search engine traffic to your content.

Remember that how well your content is received doesn’t depend on your desire – it depends on how useful your audience finds your content.

Therefore, choose your topics carefully.

All your topics might be able to deliver value to your readers, viewers, and prospective customers and clients.

By mistake, sometimes you may also end up targeting people who are just looking for free content and they will never turn paying customers and clients.

For this, you need to publish content for all stages of customer journey, as mentioned above.

These days I’m publishing content that attracts traffic from people who are looking for

  • Useful information to spruce up their content strategy.
  • Useful blog posts to link to (consequently, improving my SEO).
  • A blog where they can pitch their own guest posts.
  • Businesses looking for platforms to publish sponsored content.

What about work-related content?

I have already published enough content that tells people how I can help them with their content writing and content strategy.

Through this blog, I’m also helping my main website content improve its search engine rankings.

Not promoting the content you are publishing

There is a reason it is called content marketing.

You don’t just publish content, you also need to market it to make sure it reaches the right audience.

Where is your audience?

Your audience may be on Google.

Your audience may be on social media websites like LinkedIn and Twitter.

Your audience may prefer receiving email updates.

But it isn’t as simple as it is often made out to be by digital marketing experts.

Even if you want to use these platforms to promote your content, you first need to build an audience on these platform by constantly engaging people over there.

The same holds true for Google.

You need to improve your search engine rankings and help your content appear in search results before people can find you for relevant content queries.

For creating a presence on various platforms, you need a consistent effort.

Simply posting your links on LinkedIn, for example, doesn’t help you much, if not many people click the link.

If you don’t have a mailing list, how can you publish your email updates?

Hence, you need to follow a multipronged approach.

That is, not just, regularly, publish high-quality content, but also build different platforms where you can promote your content.

I know, it seems overwhelming, but most of the businesses who want to leverage content marketing, follow this multipronged approach.

Not repurposing existing content

There is massive potential in content repurposing.

You may like to read: Should you delete or re-purpose your existing content?

What does content repurposing mean?

It means either creating multiple blog posts from a single blog post that you have already published, or creating social media feeds, videos, content mashups and infographics from already published content.

I regularly go through my existing blog posts to get new blog post ideas.

Sometimes, from a single heading or subheading, I can create a completely new blog post.

You can also extract sentences and paragraphs from your existing posts and publish them as updates on social media websites like Twitter and LinkedIn.

You can create small email marketing campaigns by taking content from your existing posts and web pages.

If you have published videos, you can create small clippings that can be viewed on their own and then publish them on social networking websites.

Benefits of content repurposing include

  • Saving time and money because you already have the content you need.
  • Getting diversified audience for the same piece of content.
  • Making your content available to people who prefer to receive it in another format.
  • Getting more exposure to less successful content.
  • Reaching your audience.
  • Expanding your reach to a diversified audience.
  • Improving your discoverability by making it easier for people to find your content.

Having a short-term content marketing goal

Content marketing pays big time, but it takes time.

It is not something that will suddenly improve your search engine rankings in 2-3 months or build you a loyal audience in a few months.

People who benefit from content marketing have been using it for years.

It is a rewarding, but a slow process.

Even for small traces of success, give it around six months to one year.

One of the biggest reasons why content marketing fails is that people have very short-term goals for it.

Content marketing has to work against many odds before it can give you some results.

You need to create your own presence.

You need to develop channels so that you can promote your content.

You need to be regularly in front of people you want to influence.

Search engine rankings in themselves take a lot of time because search engine crawlers are crawling and indexing millions of pieces of content practically every hour.

You need to have faith – only if you have faith, you can spend an appropriate amount of time.