Great Content Marketing is Actionable
In your efforts to draw more attention and increase traffic to your website and its offerings, it’s becoming more and more critical that you have a great content marketing strategy. And because SEO is becoming more about what people do, you need to do everything possible to make the content you market offsite (anywhere other than your own website) be worthy of sharing. Social signals will be refined and fine tuned to the point that they will be increasingly integrated into Google’s algorithm and will be a significant factor in how your website ranks for different queries.
5 Links Are Better Than 500
Whereas in the past website owners were more inclined toward a “shotgun approach” to get their content spread around the web by publishing anywhere and everywhere, you are now much more well-served taking the time to research high quality websites that would be willing to publish your unique content (nothing spun, either). Even if you spent one month obtaining only 5 links back to your site, you will be much further ahead of the game than if you received hundreds of lesser quality links that produced no buzz or social interaction.
The Authority Rub
After the Google Penguin Update, Google is on the prowl for well-curated links, and these take time and real elbow grease to obtain. Internet marketing and building backlinks is evolving to become more social, and that means you need to establish relationships and contact real people, instead of using freebie websites to publish spun content with a backlink in it that never generates any traffic to it. What you are looking for now is websites to contribute your content to that actually have a decent following. Google can tell whether a blog has readership, to some extent how those readers interact with the blog, what kind of buzz or social signals the site creates, and to what extent that blog has authority. Just like in the real world, when you start a new profession you will want to network and “borrow” from the wisdom of colleagues in your field until your wisdom bucket is full by itself, in content marketing you are looking to make associations with blogs that have trust built up and do it enough times until that trust “rubs off” onto you.
A Socially Engaging Content Marketing Example
Coming up with something unique and different to market in terms of high quality content gives you an edge. If you can create something that is interactive and socially shareable, you’ve got something that can take on a life of its own. Sharing will take place naturally, and though you should still expect to do outreach and contact blog and website owners to offer that content on their sites, some of the heavy lifting might already be done, since you put a lot of thought and effort of making something that is engaging. One example of such type of content marketing is a widget.
This web widget gives the user an opportunity to do something that is quite popular currently on the web – social photo sharing. And believe it or not, people posting pictures on the internet of their bed head is a social activity that indeed does happen. Fun little ideas like this integrate our desire to share photos as well as encourage a unique and different approach to it. Remember the “Obey Your Thirst” ad campaign by Sprite? A groovy little call to action can also help to stimulate interest in your socially shareable content.
Brainstorm
The art of brainstorming is one that not enough people engage in. It’s simple enough, but too many people write themselves off as not being creative, or they just don’t know how to do it. All it takes to come up with great content marketing ideas is to get your key people in a room together around a whiteboard and have them rattle off ideas, preparing them beforehand with the rule that nothing is stupid, nothing is going to be criticized during the brainstorming session, and everything will be written down. The critiquing can come later, but during the brainstorming everything is basically fair game to allow for the free flow of ideas. Often one of the ideas that is written down may not be the one chosen, but some kind of offshoot of it or simple twist that makes it a real winner. Brainstorming sessions often become the brainchild of some great content marketing ideas, and blog owners love new ideas, fresh approaches, and a unique style to share with their readership. With higher quality content to market you’ll find a much greater acceptance rate, your reputation will build and expand, and you won’t have to pull teeth to get backlinks anymore.
Nedra Batey is a blogger who enjoys quality over quantity and exploring unique ways and styles of content marketing.
I'm an avid fan of your blog, and the content is always top notch - great reading. I'm always impressed with the variety of content and the way you get all the important steps outlined for processes, but still manage to keep it short and simple - few people do that quite as well.
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