Creating productive content

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Content marketing demands that you continuously create and publish quality content for your website. The primary purpose of creating content for your website or blog is making your visitors more aware of the qualities of the product or service you provide.

Somewhere publishers forget this basic purpose and simply start publishing content for the sake of improving search engine rankings, covering all the keywords and creating link bait content. Although these reasons are not out of line the problem manifests if these are the only reasons for which content is published. They might think they are doing something great for their business but actually they are not achieving much. There is a difference between random, aimless activity and actually being productive.

In order to carry out a more effective content marketing campaign you need to create productive content. What makes your content productive? It should achieve the following for you:

Educate your visitors about what you are offering
Make you stand out in comparison with your competitors
Inform your visitors of new developments vis-a-vis your products and services
Establish yourself as an authority in the subject dealing with your business and consequently help people trust you
Provide help textually, in audio or visually as much as possible so that they don’t have to call you or write to you in case they are facing a problem regarding some purchase or the usage of your product or service
Organically improve your search engine rankings so that people can easily find you for the right keywords
Maintain fruitful buzz around your online presence whether it is your own website/blog, on other websites or blogs (people linking to your content) or on your social media profiles such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and YouTube
Act as a PR tool in case there is a misunderstanding or a communication gap, or even a smear campaign against your business

The features listed above make your content productive. They actually achieve the objectives defined in a well laid out content marketing strategy. Simply creating content based on your keywords and key phrases might get you some good traffic but you won’t be able to convert that traffic into business.

Creating productive content obviously requires more effort and sometimes also money, so you don’t need to rush. Take your time. Rather than publishing 5 blog posts or articles in a week, publish just a single article, but make it highly useful and productive. I guarantee you it will fetch you multiple times more traffic than your 5 articles/blog posts per week.

When do you outsource to a content writer instead of hiring one full-time?

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You obviously need high-quality content if you want to base your marketing on the content that you publish on your website and your blog. In fact your entire content writing strategy hinges upon the ability of the content writer (or a team of) that works for you.

Most of the businesses don’t think of hiring a full-time content writer at the time of assembling a team of workers. In more than 90% of cases the need for a professional content writer is perceived at a much later stage when decision-makers realize that the content published on their website or blog is going to be an integral part of their overall web marketing strategy. Mostly it is an afterthought.

But the good thing is most of the businesses are eventually realizing the overwhelming importance of high-quality content. Consequently they are always looking for experienced and well qualified content writers who can not only provide well-written content but can also help them improve their overall search engine rankings.

Anyway, after realizing that you need an experienced content writer do you

Hire a full-time in-house content writer or outsource your work to a freelance content writer for an independent content writing agency?

Despite being an independent content writer I never force my opinion on prospective clients because eventually it is your internal business policy that decides what sort of content writer you are looking for. The purpose of this blog post is not advising you whether you should outsource your content writing work or not, it is about when to outsource your content writing work.

Here are a few case scenarios in which you would outsource your writing job to an independent content writer:

You don’t have a big budget: Hiring a full-time content writer can turn out to be a costly affair. Whether that person is writing or not you have to pay him or her a fixed amount by the hour. On the other hand if you outsource your content writing to an independent content writer you simply have to pay for the work that you get done.
You don’t have the needed infrastructure: When you hire a full-time content writer he or she is going to need a computer or laptop, a separate workstation and some comfortable space. He or she will be using electricity, office equipment and other resources. Even for a single page of content you will end up spending a lot. This is not a problem with an independent content writer. He or she can work remotely on his or her own computer without putting a strain on your resources.
You don’t want to restrain yourself with a particular content writer: Working with an independent content writer doesn’t mean that you cannot get full-time services. After you have tested out multiple content writers you can even hire an independent content writer as a full-time writer. The problem with hiring a full-time content writer at the outset is you might end up with someone you don’t want even after investing lots of money and time.
You want to access the global talent pool: No matter where you are located these days you can hire exceptional talent from any part of the world while sitting in your basement. Whether you are in Uzbekistan, Mongolia or USA you don’t have to settle with whatever talent you can locally avail.
You are looking for a content writer who can work independently: An independent content writer is used to working on various assignments on his or her own. You don’t need to breathe down his or her neck in order to get what you are looking for. After giving basic instructions (provided you have found yourself a qualified content writer) you can easily depend on your content writer to come up with just the stuff you want for your website or blog.

These are just a few reasons why you would outsource your work to a content writer rather than hiring a full-time content writer. Can you think of more reasons? Please share them in the comments section below.

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.