These content tactics can help you win big in content marketing
1. Content Planning
No one can be a content all-star if you don’t make at least some time content planning
- These are as follows:
- Extensive brand knowledge.
- Specific target personas.
- Idea generation.
- Planning. There are dozens of free content calendar templates on the web
2. Content Auditing
A content audit is a little bit like spring cleaning for your content. During a content audit, you review and evaluate each piece of your website’s content. This allows you to locate and identify content that is irrelevant, un-read, or stale and replace it with content that helps your site draw traffic
While there are many complete tutorials on conducting content audits, I’ll give you a brief run-down here.
Conducting a content Audit in 3 Steps
Step 1: Create a Spreadsheet
At its core, a content audit is predominantly data entry, so it’s important to have a system to keep the process organized. One of the best ways to do this is to create a spreadsheet. Most marketers choose to use Excel or Google Sheets for this. The spreadsheet should contain the following categories: URL, date audited, page title, page description, page content, keyword(s) targeted, alt tags, last updated, and internal link(s).
Step 2: Compile a Full List of Pages
Once you’ve created your spreadsheet, you’ll need to organize the pages you plan to audit. The easiest way to do this is to head to Google Analytics. From the “Behavior” tab, navigate to the “All Pages” section. This will provide you with a list of the pages on your site. You may want to pull the URLs from the most popular pages first in order to assure that you’re auditing the content on your most visited pages first.
Locate the “page” column and navigate to the button next to the page title. This will provide you with the page URL, which you should then copy into your spreadsheet. Repeat this step for every page on your site. If you use WordPress, you can do this by pasting the edit URL for each page into your spreadsheet.
Step 3: Start Reviewing
Once you’ve compiled a full list of your pages, it’s time to start your content audit. To do this, you’ll want to review the following pieces of each page and mark the results of each evaluation on your spreadsheet:
- Page URL and title: Is your page title unique and descriptive? Does it use your target keywords organically? Is your page URL text rather than a random string of numbers? If you answered “no” to any of these questions, going back and fixing the problem can make your site markedly stronger.
- Page description: Is your page description succinct, easy to read, and informative? Does it read well for people and search engines? Does it use relevant keywords?
- Page content: For every page on your site, the content should be valuable, relevant, current, and helpful. It should be free of typos and grammar mistakes and, as a general rule, each page on your site should feature at least 300 words of content. This includes “About Us” pages and the like.
- Keyword use: Are you using target keywords often enough without keyword stuffing?
- Alt tags: Each image on your page should have a title and alt tag. These tags should use relevant keywords.
- Last update: As a general rule, pages should be updated every 24 months. If you find a page that’s been updated less frequently than that, revising it can help your site’s SEO.
- Internal links: Each page on your site should feature at least 2-3 internal links. These should point to other content-rich pages within your site.
3. Social Media Managment
Roughly 2.1 billion people maintain social media accounts and social networks earned an estimated $8.3 billion on advertising in 2015 alone. In light of that, it’s clear that social media is an important tool for marketers who want to improve their content strategies. By building and maintaining a variety of social media accounts (on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, for example) marketers can expand their content’s reach, earn new leads, make new connections, and conduct better industry research.
4. Custom Landing Pages
Often associated with bad promotions and over sales-y sites, custom landing pages have gotten a bad reputation for years. Fortunately, smart marketers know that, when used correctly, custom landing pages have the potential to provide a huge SEO and traffic boost for a website.
The reason landing pages are so important is they provide the essential function of giving users a designated spot external of your actual website to gain information and complete the desired action. Because of this, they’re essential to effective content marketing. Whether you’re trying to sell a workshop or generate leads for your email subscription list, a well-designed landing page can do a respectable amount of legwork for your overall goal.
To ensure your landing pages are working as well as possible for you, remember the following things:
- Shorter is better: In the world of landing pages, the less flowery language you use, the higher your conversions will be. Because landing pages are designed to be short, sweet, and to-the-point, an uncluttered design with nothing but the needed information will generally outperform a clunky page with too many extras.
- Actionable content rules all: A landing page is no place for wishy-washy content that fails to get to the point. Instead, ensure your landing page offers high-quality text and a strong CTA. This step, while it may seem simple, can be huge in terms of increasing your conversions and helping readers take desired actions.
- Coordinate your hyperlinks: Ideally, a landing page should be a one-stop shop, but if you must have hyperlinks leading away from your page, it’s important to be intentional about them. If you’re going to offer links that lead out of your landing page funnel, it’s important that the links you provide serve some other purpose, like leading readers into a separate yet equally valuable funnel.
- Make conversion obvious: Again, simpler is better. When readers come to your landing page, they should be able to determine, in a matter of seconds, what you want them to do. If your goal is to have them enter an email, make the subscription box prominent, obvious, and easy to use. If you want them to click, show them exactly where to do it. If you want them to share content, give them limited options and a strong reason for doing so. Being direct about your conversion goals will help them come true.
- Make it appealing: Above almost all else, your landing page should look great. This means it should be easy to navigate, free of broken features, cohesive with your larger site design, and generally well-functioning and attractive. Bad designs earn high bounce rates and keeping yours elegant will help you produce more conversions.
Conclusion
It’s never too late to beef up your content tactics. By employing these five innovative content tactics, you can ensure you’re getting the most value possible from your content strategy, while also providing useful and relevant material for your readers. While we’re sure to see the climate of content marketing undergo some big changes in the next year, these four tips provide long-lasting value for your content strategy.