How to Crush Content Marketing, 5 Tips

Now that everyone is aware of content marketing it is a huge piece of any marketing puzzle. Due to the competitive nature of content marketing campaigns, not only does the content need to be unique but it needs to solve a problem for the reader. This not only keeps them engaged but will also keep them coming back and or following your posts, where ever they may be.

Check out these 5 tips to help you crush content marketing now:

1. BuzzFeed Style Headlines: Love 'em or hate 'em, BuzzFeed and its “Facebook crack” counterparts are generating obscene amounts of traffic. Their secret? Hypnotizing headlines… Although you don't necessarily want to pump out cute cat content, there are a few important takeaway lessons about headline development that we can learn from BuzzFeed:

Curiosity=Clicks: Remember when “7 ways to…” posts used to get clicked like mad? A huge part of that was the curiosity factor. There are too many “7 ways to…” posts right now. You really need to up the curiosity ante to get clicks today.

People read the entire headline. So make it great: Copyblogger states that 80 percent of people will read your headline, but only 20 percent will read the rest of the page. The genius of sites like BuzzFeed (and moreseo, ViralNova) is that they write very long headlines, like this:

These ultra-long headlines fly in the face of most headline-writing conventional wisdom. But it makes perfect sense: if people tend to read the entire headline, why not make it long? The more content you have, the more “click triggers” you can hit with your headline.

2. Paid Content Amplification: Here's the thing about “great content”: It's not enough anymore. Even mind-blowing, epic stuff needs a push to rise above the noise in 2014. A push like paid content amplification. Here are a few channels to add to your arsenal:

Twitter Ads: Twitter is finally getting serious about advertising. And just like in Facebook's early years, early adopters will reap massive rewards. Kristi Hines has put together an awesome primer to show you the ropes.

Zemanta: Zemanta recommends content to bloggers that have installed their WordPress plugin. This means you can actually get backlinks from your efforts. Although very promising, I've recently read mixed reviews.

StumbleUpon Paid Discovery: For cheap targeted traffic, you'd have a hard time beating StumbleUpon.

Reddit Ads: Reddit isn't for every industry out there (due to it's young, male demographic). But it's top 50 Alexa rank is hard to ignore.

3. Write ONLY In-Depth, 1500+ Word Blog Posts: I'm not a huge fan of the “X is dead” angle. But there's one thing I'm certain about when it comes to blogging: 500-word posts are dead. This isn't new. In 2012 Moz found a clear correlation between content length and links for their blog posts. And Neil Patel noticed that 1,500-word posts generated 68 percent more Facebook likes than shorter posts. Why do longer posts do so well? There are a few reasons:

Long content has a higher perceived value: When someone sees a long post they automatically think “wow, this must have taken a ton of work. I need to share this.” Post with 300 words don't have the same effect.

You can create the definitive guide on a topic: I can tell you from experience that having the definitive guide to something on your blog is the fast track to hands-off link development. But it's hard to cover an entire subject in 400 words.

More engagement and time on site: Reading 1,500-words of pure gold puts someone in a very appreciative mood. A mood that encourages them to share your stuff.

4. Design is More Important that Content: Most people spend way too much time agonizing over every word in their blog posts. Do you really think that misusing “their” vs. “there” is going to make any difference in the social shares, links, or comments that you get? Of course not! The fact is: people are going to evaluate your content largely on two factors:

Content length (see above)

Design

Sure, copywriting matters. But design matter more. So that's where you should spend your time and energy.

5. Use Outreach to Get Results: The first four strategies will only get you so far. To squeeze the most value out of your content you need to promote it via outreach. Yes, that means manually emailing dozens (or even hundreds) of people about your content. And not just email them: but send each one a personalized, non-pushy message. Now you don't have to follow this template exactly. But it's got almost everything you want in an outreach email: personalized, non-pushy, and gets the person involved with your content (which makes them more likely to share it). You can also outreach using Twitter, Google+, and even LinkedIn. The platform doesn't matter that much. It's just important that you do it!

It never hurts to write down a content marketing game plan to make sure you cover the requirements of putting out new content. What would you suggest to other individuals on how they can easily get started putting out unique, high quality, traffic driving content?

Article Source: Search Engine Watch

Image Source: Steffano Maggi on Flickr