When speaking with clients about Search Engine Optimization, the conversation inevitably comes back to content marketing.
In the modern definition of content marketing, most business owners interpret immediately think, “Oh, great, now you’re telling me I need a blog.”
Follow the thought process far enough and it comes to a blazing halt at the mountain of “I don’t have time to blog, and I don’t have anything to talk about”.
Think outside the box to streamline your content marketing
You’ll be surprised to know that you may already have all the content you need. A little bit of outside the box thinking can get you there. Here are two examples:
Example #1: John Linney of School Climate Institute
Our client John Linney hosts a regular podcast and each episode becomes a blog post on his website that serves as a resources page for that particular episode. He is also turning that blog post into a facebook post that’s shared with his audience on Facebook and other social media sites.
With a little more effort, the podcast content can become:
- A series of full articles (blog posts) on his website
- An email shared with those on his email list
BTW, my favorite episode is Homework: Too Much of a Bad Thing?
Example #2: KB Your Real Estate Experience
Recently we’ve been providing marketing support for KBYREE real estate brokerage. In our discussions about blogging, we’ve realized that they have a great source for content – their weekly realtor meeting. I can attest to the fact that their meetings are:
- Inspirational
- Educational
- Entertaining
Their weekly realtor meeting meets the criteria for fresh, relevant content to help your site show up in Google search results.
With minimal effort, the content shared with the realtors every week can be turned into blog posts to inform and attract prospective home buyers!
How to write highly shareable content
Buzzsumo has identified four elements that can help make your post more likely to be shared:
Their recommendation is to:
- Surprise people with facts and figures, like how champagne prevents Alzheimer’s disease.
- Leverage trends, especially zombies
- Inspire people with quotes, memes and heartfelt stories
- Create stunning picture list posts
- Exploit cute animals and babies.
- Be amusing. Even a small portion of tasteful humor can go a long way
- Be controversial. Don’t be afraid to take a strong stance. David Kneip does this with his philosophy on health and fitness
- Quiz people, like polling for your favorite baby names
- Provide warnings
- Tell them the secrets of success
- Health, diet and fitness tips
- Tell them secrets of love and dating. We can help you find the angle for your business 😉
- Share the secret to a long life. Ditto for the angle!
- Share a heart warming story
Get SEO advice from trusted sources
You want to be particularly careful who’s giving you SEO advice. We still see a lot of poor practices that will get you penalized, such as keyword stuffing, poor quality backlinking. The surest way to grow your SEO rank is by creating content that is shared and adds value to your customers.
Joost de Valk over at Yoast has this to say:
“You won’t believe this, and it’s a correlation only (so don’t say I’ve said this is true), but I’m seeing a high correlation between the keyword(s) being the first word(s) of the slug (the URL) and the ranking.”
He goes on to explain that other factors might be at play and ends with a solid recommendation, “So… This might be a good time to revisit your Category SEO tactics.”
We’ve covered different aspects of content marketing in previous articles:
Part 1: Build a Blog and Content Marketing Strategy is a big picture look at how to get started and what things to consider when you get serious about marketing.
Part 2: An Example of a Curated Blog Post is what we consider the path of least resistance to getting started, especially if the thought or writing makes your head spin.
Use these free articles as a resource to help you get started on the road to content marketing.
