Does Content Live in a Silo? Hell NO!

The whole marketing industry is going crazy behind Content Marketing these days. But what actually content marketing is? Does it make sense to say that it’s a strategy to use content for great marketing results. But that’s not what it is.

Content does NOT live in silo. It only fetches results for businesses when used in combination with other marketing channels and innovative marketing practices. It’s one of the planets of the vast inbound marketing solar system. Confused? Read further.

Content can fall flat on its face (or be ineffective)  if NOT used with:

SEO – Many marketers think content marketing is all about creating more content and the easiest way to do that is through regular blogging. However even great content can deliver no value, if it goes unnoticed or if your target audiences are not able to find it. SEO is a surefire way to ensure that your remarkable content gets found and read by the right set of people i.e., your target audiences. Marketers should ensure that the helpful content that they create must be optimized well for keywords used by their target audiences to locate certain products or services on search engines. That’s how content attracts organic traffic.

Social Media – With social media euphoria gripping humans across all age groups, geographies and business sectors, almost every brand wants to tap this huge real estate and engage with their target audiences across varied social media channels. For enhanced content reach and visibility, it needs to be distributed imperatively across relevant social media sites (only those where your target market hangs out frequently). Popular social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. are the online avenues, where readers love to share the infotaining content that you create. Hence as a smart marketer, make it easy for them to do so by integrating social media sharing buttons in each content piece that you push out on the Web. Not only does it increase your content’s reach or effectiveness, but can also help you engage with your target audiences easily and help them address their challenges with your useful content. If your content succeeds in solving their challenges/pain points, no wonder these readers can also become your brand evangelists. So keep feeding them with awesome content on their most favorite online destinations!

Email marketing – Some businesses see email marketing as the most powerful tool in their marketing arsenal to connect with their contact database. Email can really help your content get out there and grab many more eyeballs. Without email marketing, your content’s reach is constrained drastically and can make all your content creation efforts go waste.

It’s damn simple. Content forms the beating heart of your inbound marketing strategy but ONLY when it’s used along with other channels (a few of them listed above!). Don’t sandbox your content. Give it wings and let it soar high and wide to cover the complete horizon of your target audiences.

 

 

 

Decoding the Secrets of Successful Content Writers

I love to strut around poofy-chested, when my work wins me plaudits. All inbound marketers do. Content creation and marketing go hand in hand. Content forms the core of inbound marketing methodology today.

Though many content creators buckle under the pressure of hammering out content real fast, and produce boring, mediocre quality content, there are some, who’re real good content creators. So what are those habits that help these content builders produce top-notch, relevant and remarkable content?

So before you run your fingers on the keyboard next time, take a glance at few habits, which only successful content creators have. Those you’re not going to cultivate these overnight, still if you start realizing their importance, you’ll be starting your journey to become a rockstar content creator.

1)    Read, Read and Read

Creating valuable content calls for extensive reading. Reading what? Industry-related news, insights, reports, case studies, competitors’ content and lots more.  A good content creator skims the entire web for the most relevant industry news and squeezes the same to craft a stellar copy, back with cues and facts. Such content is most likely to resonate with your target audiences.

Start bookmarking and using saving all the data on cloud. Set Google alerts of industry-specific keywords to receive relevant content in your Inbox daily. Figure out where your target audience spends most time online, and monitor those online destinations daily.

2)    A Copy a Day Keeps the Writer’s Block away

Losing the knack of writing is quite easy. If you don’t write for long, next time when you sit up to write, you might end up gazing at your computer’s screen without the cursor moving by even an inch. It’s vital to flex your writing muscles every day. This keeps up the constant inflow of ideas, and your fingers churning out good content regularly. If in the humdrum of corporate marathon, you don’t get the time to write a well-structured blog post every day, you can at least set apart half an hour every day, when you can pen down your thoughts, ideas or something of your choice. Grab a coffee and do some free style writing every day so that you don’t have to face that most dreaded, big monster anytime – Writer’s block.

3)    Network

It’s useless to highlight the profound significance of networking in this digital marketing era. A good content creator is one, who’s open to connect with seniors, peers, thought leaders and industry experts to listen to their ideas and observe their work methodologies. Seize the zillion opportunities of networking on different professional networks and forums. Keep an eye on the posts shared by them and skim these to filter out useful information to enrich your knowledge, and use the same while you produce content in the future.

4)    Curate Only Good Content

Today, anyone and everyone is curating content . What distinguishes successful content creators from millions of self-proclaimed content wizards is their zeal to cement their stature as experts, who love to interact with their target community effectively on the Internet. Add a layer of value, when you curate content, and give your community remarkable, engaging and useful information. They are going to love it, and you’ll see your content sparking debates and discussion thereby making your content curation turn into an interactive session (Bonus!)

5)    Be Curious

Great content creators crave for more and more information to quench their curiosity. It’s their  solid analytical abilities that help them to decrypt the gained knowledge and draw inferences and valuable insights to craft useful content. Curiosity, deeply embedded in their nature, is something that makes them stand out from the crowd as they dare to question the status quo of anything and everything that’s happening around them. Critical thinking stems from their curious nature and makes them great content contributors.

Post your opinion in the comment box below if you want to add some more habits of successful content creators. Your suggestions are precious to me and would help me hone my content writing skills.

 

Top Tips for Effective Content Curation

Flurry of excitement about content curation in the online industry. Many B2B and B2C companies have queued up for spreading their reach through this digital channel. Only a few ones are able to hit the nail?

If you wish to play long innings on the online marketing landscape, you need to brush off your old marketing concepts. Throw away the thought that you’d publish some content on the Web, and there’d be a natural in-flow of trackbacks, social shares, inbound links, page views and all of that. Don’t give that amazed look if you observe some silent returns on your publishing exercise.

Content Curation: Spread your Story Naturally

For a swashbuckling digital marketing reach, remember the golden rule – Create fresh, remarkable and relevant content. With all social media marketing platforms at your disposal, it’s all the more an easy task now, provided you know the way to do it right.

Here are some tips for you that can help you cut through the entire hullabaloo and make sure your content spreads naturally and effectively on the World Wide Web.

Avoid being overly experimental.

What’s that? Don’t tax yourself by fiddling too much with the approach every time you pen down your content. Analyze your past content trends and figure out some sweet content spots. Evaluate which types of content have fetched you the maximum number of likes, shares, comments and links. Now go for some serious, smart work. Try to replicate this success and create a fresh editorial calendar based on content analytics.

Ignite emotions. Shock your people (I mean your target audiences). Shoot content that delights, frightens or even annoys them. Do you know what content goes viral? That ignites strong emotional reactions in your readers. Why? It kindles some key emotions like sadness, happiness, wrath or even disgust in them. This steers social sharing and hence increases reach of your content on the Web. So, now is the time for you to consider creating some emotion-evoking content.

Hammer a captivating headline. Though a bit startling, social media referrals generate the most traffic for a website now. It’s the new SEO on board. The more is the social sharing of your content, more is the opportunity generated for you to get found online. How can you arrest the attention of your readers in the first place? An engaging headline would do the magic and lure your readers to click and spread your content in their networks. Now, what constitutes a good headline? A title that’s unique, relevant, thought-provoking, and contains some surprise value for your readers.

Love social media. In this inbound marketing age, you can’t overlook social media platforms and form a content strategy, devoid of these key elements. Marry your content with social media. Do remember to embellish your content with multi-media ingredients as these are rewarded greatly on such platforms in the form of shares and engagement.

Content Curation: Get your Story the potent SEO juice

Turn your blog into a social media marketing machine. Use your blog’s real estate to showcase your content and ask for feedback from your readers, which will eventually help you refine your product further. A fine-tuned product, tailored to target audiences’ expectations, has multiplied scope of recommendations and henceforth, virality.  Don’t forget to incorporate social media sharing and blog subscription widgets on to your blog. Publish relevant and engaging posts and see the charm of social media sharing.

So let your target audience give a rousing reception to your content on the Web. Get started with spreading your great content naturally.