Tag Archives: Content Publishing

Incorporating content marketing in the earlier stage helps

Leave a reply

One of my clients recently asked, “Would it have been better if I had incorporated my content marketing strategy while I was planning my business website?”

Of course, was my reply. And this is not just about content marketing or content writing; every good strategy has an advantage if it is implemented or incorporated from the beginning. There can be some pitfalls if a particular methodology or strategy hasn’t been tested well and in such a case it is better to wait rather than take a big risk.

But everybody knows what an important role your content plays towards promoting your website and generating targeted search engine traffic. This has been known for more than 15 years (at the time of writing this it is 2010). When you implement content marketing strategy earlier you get an edge; you save lots of time and effort when you decide to aggressively promote your website through your content.

Although most of my clients come to me when they have already had their websites for a long time there are some clients who come while they are launching their new websites. They are lucky as they already comprehend the overwhelming importance of targeted content and related marketing from search engines and social media and networking websites. Publishing content regularly on your new website immediately gets attention from the search engines. This is one of the greatest advantages of publishing clearly defined content either on the main website or on the blog. If you create a blog under your main website and start publishing at least two posts everyday your links can start appearing on search engine result pages within two weeks and this has been proven with multiple websites and blogs.

Early adoption to content marketing is more beneficial these days when you can attract lots of traffic from social media and networking websites since people love to post interesting links they come across while browsing the Web. Your targeted content can get you much needed attention at a very low cost.

But it doesn’t mean it is a hopeless case for older websites. You just need to be more aggressive. One pain points can be the quantity of your content. If you already have hundreds of pages indexed for wrongly targeted content you might have a problem refocusing the search engine results. This can be achieved, though, by streamlining the existing content and at the same time adding fresh content.

Content marketing defined

Leave a reply

Content marketing is different from conventional marketing; you can call it as pull marketing in which you make so much content available all over the place (the Internet) that it becomes very easy to find you. It is about building long-term relationships with your visitors and followers, on your website/blog, or on social media and networking websites. Through your content you are constantly seeding new conversations. You not only educate people about your products and services you also provide them solutions through your experience and expertise.

So where does the marketing fit in?

It’s not like the conventional marketing. Instead of promoting your products and services you promote your content, and it doesn’t always have to be about your business. There can be lots of information that is, although not about your business, but is useful, and is indirectly related to your business. Your information should solve people’s problem instead of pushing your marketing message. Does this mean you totally ignore your business and simply focus on solving people’s problems? No, it doesn’t mean that.

When you are providing your content, make it amply clear what business you are. Create contexts in which you can talk about your business. While trying to explain something, take live examples from your business. For instance, on this website I provide content writing, marketing and strategy services. For me it’s easier to refer to my services because they are closely related, but most of the content on the website is educational and informative.

Content marketing involves:

  • Constantly generating and publishing highly useful content
  • Making it easier for people to find your content through search engines and social media and networking websites
  • Engaging people in conversations regarding your content
  • Providing people a platform for exchanging ideas vis-a-vis your content
  • Reaching out to people in other forums and social media and networking websites

Content marketing is an inexpensive, highly effective method of establishing and promoting your brand. It’s also a double-edged sword. Since your content marketing effort is closely attached to your brand identity, you have to be very careful about what sort of content you publish and promote.

So do you have a content marketing plan? If yes, please share your experience and wisdom. If no, why do you think it’s not an important part of your marketing strategy?

Does your content engage your readers?

6 Replies

The most important job of your content strategy is to engage your readers in a continuous manner. This is how they remember you. This is how they become familiar with you, and what you can offer them.

In order to engage your readers, you need to talk and listen and respond, instead of just talking at them from your lonely, isolated part of the universe. Ask them questions, and give them answers, or even probable answers, when they ask questions. Don’t just focus on establishing your authority — although that is important if you want people to listen to you — but along with that also talk in their language and be approachable.

In order to engage your readers in conversations,

Encourage them to interact on the comment section of your blog

The best way of letting people interact on your comment section is to let them share their thoughts. If you have, say, 10 points to discuss on a particular topic, publish just 7 and let the remaining 3 come from your readers. Does this leave your post unfinished? Wait for a couple of weeks, and if nobody talks about the points that can make your post complete, you can always update it.

Publish sometimes things that are relevant to your users even if they’re not directly related to your product or service

Is there some public debate going on on your part of the world and you would like to know what your readers think about it and how it impacts them? Take for instance global warming and rapidly melting polar ice caps. It may not help you sell more network security devices or get you more web hosting customers immediately but it will certainly provide you with an opportunity to reach out to your readers and convey to them that you are not merely interested in promoting your business. Varied topics also encourages those people to come forward and express themselves that are though interested in your field but have got nothing much to say.

Highlight suggestions made by your readers

Sometimes readers/visitors raise very important issues and they need to be highlighted. Talk about them by updating your existing blog post or writing a new one. Give full credit to the reader who gave you the idea and if he or she has a website, link to it. This will give an incentive to your other readers too.

Make good use of social media

Some of your readers may be active social media users. They may like to share their thoughts on Twitter and FaceBook rather than posting them on your blog. If you find it difficult to express what you have to say in the limited number of characters, write a small post on your blog and then just mention the link on your stream.

What more can you suggest?

How to use your business blog content to promote your business

Leave a reply

The greatest benefit of your business blog is that it increases repeat traffic to your website — that’s why I advise my clients to host their business blogs under their main domain rather than using a separate, dedicated domain (even if the dedicated domain contains their keywords). If you regularly update your business blog with useful and relevant content you automatically cover the keywords you require to get targeted traffic from major search engines.

The key to turning your casual visitors into loyal customers and clients is, make them familiar with you, your product or service, and provide them all the information they require in order to want to do business with you, and you can easily achieve this through your blog. Although there is nothing particularly wrong or offensive if you occasionally publish your marketing or promotional messages on your blog (after all it’s a business blog), restrict them to one or two in a month. Don’t also make it highly personal unless people have become familiar with you and respect your knowledge and play close attention to your thoughts.

The basic purpose of your business blog content is to inform your visitors what you can do, convey to them how much you know about the product or service you are offering, and create a comfort level. Your business blog also creates opportunities for you on social media websites. If you want people from these websites (Twitter, FaceBook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit…) to visit your website on a regular basis, you can’t just go on posting the same old links again and again; your followers and friends will grow tired of them and start ignoring if in the interesting stuff you may post occasionally. Post something fresh on your blog regularly, and then promote those new links using social media and social networking websites.

Engaging business blog content also encourages conversation and herein lies the true power of your content. If people talk about what you publish on your blog and share your links with each other, your business blog has crossed a major milestone. After this you simply have to maintain the momentum and keep feeding them with new thoughts. That’s the human side.

On the search engine side, maintain a certain frequency so that the search engine crawlers know when your blog should be crawled and new content indexed. I’ve personally observed that your website or blog gets crawled and indexed depending upon your frequency. When I publish on a particular blog multiple times a day for a couple of weeks the blog posts begin to appear in search engine results within 40-50 minutes of posting.

Quality business blog content encourages other bloggers, social bookmarkers and online publishers to link to your blog if they find something worth linking to. This doesn’t happen the moment you start publishing your business blog; it takes time because you need a certain level of presence for topics concerning your field. People in the first place should know that they can find good, reliable content on your blog if they want to link to it. If they are looking on the search engines they should be able to find your relevant blog posts for the related search terms. If they are sifting through social media and networking websites then your links should be present under appropriate categories.

Maintaining a business blog and generating quality content for it on an ongoing basis of course takes up lots of time. But when you see the results, it’s worth the effort.

Content strategy before social media strategy

1 Reply

A major part of social media interactions involves promoting interesting and valuable content. Whether it’s blogging, Twittering, Facebook updates, Digging, Stumbling or simply forwarding email messages with engaging links, people are basically promoting content. That content can be in any format: videos, images, animations or text. If it’s interesting and useful, it is valuable.

In this post titled Social media starts with a content strategy the author has rightly stated that on social media nobody cares about you; they care about the content you can provide. People will promote your content if they find it interesting, relevant, topical or useful. So if you thinking about launching your social media campaign you better have some solid content production and content marketing strategy in place.

How do you formulate an advantageous content generation and marketing strategy?

Identify your market and recognize what it is exactly looking for. Does you content meet their requirement? Does it convey the right message? Do you promote your content in front of the right audience? Selling combs to bald people may be an accomplishment but in the long run it neither benefits your customers or clients nor it benefits you.

A successful content generation and marketing strategy involves three fundamental questions:

  • What?
  • Why?
  • Where?
  • How?

What sort of content should your website or blog have? What purpose does it solve and why you should publish it? Where should you promote your content – in front of whom? And what strategy and methodology you should follow in order to promote your content in front of the right audience.

Once you’ve answered these question, you can kick start your social media strategy.