Author: Summit Ghimire

Yes, your content is probably one of the most crucial aspects of your website. But in the end, content is just content. Unless you market your content effectively to an audience, you are never going to get returns. Content Marketing is as crucial as writing content. And while content marketing focuses on getting your content out there, it also considers what to write, when to write it, and when to publish it. In short, your content strategy depends on your content marketing strategy. If you want to get the most out of your content, the right place to start is building a content marketing strategy. However, building a content marketing strategy takes time and effort. If you find yourself at a complete loss from where to begin, start planning your overall goals. Here are a few examples of goals that are worth pursuing in your next content marketing strategy.

Building trust and rapport with your audience:

This one is obvious. The primary goal of any content and content marketing strategy should be to build trust and rapport with your audience. This includes creating useful and valuable content that your audience likes and appreciates. The longer you keep doing this, the better it is. Putting out highly relevant quality content over time increases trust amongst the consumers as they get a sense of what it’s like to work with your business and perceive your business as an industry leader. The sole reason why you are not seeing conversion is due to the lack of trust. And if you want to do something about it, start by putting out high-quality industry-relevant content regularly.

Attract new customers:

Another important goal that you must keep in mind is attracting new customers. While most companies focus on building a rapport with their existing customer base, they often ignore the fact that attracting new customers also requires an equally significant effort and investment of time and money. Your business cannot run on the existing customer base forever. It needs a regular supply of quality prospects at regular intervals. A good goal for any established content marketing strategy would be to attract new customers over time.

Explore the customer journey:

Exploring the customer journey helps you understand the paths taken by prospective customers to find your business. And more importantly, it enables you to find out about the roadblocks they face along the way. And once you know of the roadblocks, you can create content and deliver value in a way that eliminates the roadblocks. When you understand the problems of prospective customers, you know how best to help them. This could include guides, how-to, FAQs, or webinars, all designed to answer specific questions. While you are at it, also scan the market for any problems. What are consumers complaining about? This could be a great starting point for creating high-quality problem-solving content that also helps you rank in organic listings.

Illustrate the benefits:

Everything from finding new prospects to exploring the customer journey illustrates a simple thing: there is a problem in the market, and you can solve it. The only thing you need to do is illustrate why your solutions are the best way to solve them. This could include generating content along the lines of “10 ways you can solve your _____ problem” or “Why _____ is the best way of solving this problem.” When giving solutions, make sure you do not just tell customers that your product is the best; you show it to them. This might include creating guides for the use of the product. As long as you are illustrating the benefits of your product to solve the customer’s problem, you are good to go.

Overcome objections:

The market will rarely go in the way you want it to. Despite all your best efforts, there will be complaints and objections about your product. While most companies prefer to dwell on the good side of things and leave complaints all alone, avoid doing that. Listen to what the people are complaining about. If someone says that your product is too difficult to use, make detailed guides talking about how you can use the product in different ways. If someone is complaining about the price, talk about how a one-time investment can help them save money in the long run. Go after the objections and find how best you can soothe those complaints.

Deepen the loyalty of existing customers:

Up until this point, we have only talked about how your business needs new customers to survive and what you can do to ensure a steady flow of new prospects. But this doesn’t mean that you get a pass to ignore your existing customers. The quality of a business is not measured by one-time sales but rather repeated sales from regular customers. Think about how you can alleviate the experiences of people who have brought them from you. Create friendly guides about how they can multi-purpose your product and get the most out of it. As long as you keep your existing customer base happy and satisfied, you will start seeing new prospects turn up on their own.

Content marketing has a plethora of benefits. An effective content strategy leads to new prospects, better relationships with existing customers, and more revenue opportunities from the same audience. It also helps you boost your brand’s value in the market on different terms, including authority, thought leadership, and customer trustworthiness. And if you want a piece of the benefits, you need to start thinking about it the right way.

A content strategy is an essential part of any company’s marketing plan. If you are not utilizing a content strategy for your business, then someone else will be. This post aims to help you develop a content strategy from start to finish so that you do not have to worry about the details later on in the process.

Clearly define your content goals

What do you want to achieve with the content that you put out? Those goals need to be measurable so that you will know when your strategy is working or not. The content needs to help users with the problems they are looking for answers for and increase awareness of who you are as a business.

Researching your audience

The next step is to find a suitable audience for your content. You can do this through a simple Google search or by using the Facebook Audience Insights tool. Once you have found your audience, it is time to create buyer personas for them. A persona will help you understand where your content needs improvement and what topics need to be covered within that content to meet their demands better.

Writing compelling blog posts

Once all this research has been done, it is time to write some beneficial posts for your users/audience members! There are several great tools out there, such as Hootsuite’s Blog Topic Generator, which helps to brainstorm ideas on improving current website copy. The goal here is not just creating any old piece of writing but quality articles that solve real problems for the audience members.

Scheduling blog posts in advance

When you have all of your content written, it is time to promote that content! Social media platforms are a great way to ensure others see your content and share it with their friends/networks. You can also schedule any future blogging or social media marketing posts through Hootsuite’s Content Marketing application which will help keep up with all current projects even when you are not at your computer. Content put out regularly will drive more traffic back to the website over time by keeping visitors on-site longer due to informative articles they may read while there.

Understanding where to share

What channels do I want to use? Different channels suit different businesses, depending on their size and target audience. Are you going to use Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Try using them all! Be sure that whatever platform(s) you decide upon provide an easy way to share new blog posts across multiple platforms.

Focusing only on your niche

One of the worst things webmasters can do during their early days of content creation is focus on different niches. The primary purpose of content should be to either give information or solve a problem within your niche. In the longer term, this will establish your business website as an authority within your niche. Diverging your content during its early days can be detrimental as users might not grasp things about your business that you desperately want them to.

Focus on creating unique content

While basic and straightforward topics are crucial for new websites, you need to present them uniquely. Simply copying content from a different website won’t give users enough reason to visit your website. Try to focus on your product or service and present them uniquely to help users solve their problems.

Measure your results

How do I measure the success of my content? There are several ways to go about this, but they all depend on your audience. Some people want likes and comments, while others just need views or even website clicks. Remember that you can’t please everyone, so focus on what is essential for your business in particular! Clearly define your metrics, whether they be shares on social media or conversion rates.

Listen to your customers to improve your content strategy

Listening to your customers is a must. You will need to listen and integrate feedback from the people who matter most, usually, those who have purchased products/services from you before or engaged with content previously on your website. Look through the comments of blog posts, for example! This allows you to create more of what they want rather than throwing out random bits of content all over the place so that you can say that it exists.

Be consistent

While content creation is essential, it should be done consistently. Never stop creating new posts for the sake of doing so, as this can cause an audience drop-off rate that you do not want. Keep up with posting regularly, and never let anyone tell you otherwise! A good idea would be planning out future blog posts far before they are put into action, so there aren’t any hiccups during the process if possible.

The content strategy is an essential but often overlooked piece of any marketing plan. It’s the blueprint for how your company will develop and present its messaging to customers so that you can build customer loyalty to drive sales. A comprehensive content strategy should include all aspects of your business, including pricing, packaging, distribution channels, promotions, product development plans, and more. And while novelty and innovation should be at the heart of your content creation process, everything you do should be for the longer term.

Technology has brought us unrivaled benefits. But in return, it has also shortened our attention span. Today, people want something new every single day. They want to spend their time reading new content that is not only interesting but also explores new ideas. And while this has pushed many businesses to find new ways to sell their services, it has also created a mountain of old content that barely gets attention. But what if you could use that cluster of old content to generate new leads? Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. Here are a few innovative ways to repurpose your old content.

Turn your old blog posts into a toolkit

For every topic that you research on the internet, you are bound to find leads that have the word toolkit, or a comprehensive guide, or something similar. These are nothing more than old content that has been repurposed for better engagement. And the best part is, you don’t have to write most of it again. By simply reimagining your content, you can bunch a ton of old content together and create something that looks fresh and feels fresh. But in reality, it’s the same old content, just organized better.

Turn old articles into infographics

Infographics are a great way of sharing complex ideas with people who would only take seconds before moving on from reading text-based posts. And while creating infographics aren’t cheap or easy, finding someone skilled enough to do it will save you tons of time that could instead be used writing new ones. But make sure not to rely entirely on having them done by others because businesses run out of fresh ideas at some point in time. And at this point, you’ll have to start creating them yourself.

Turn your blog posts into videos

The good news is that there’s a way for businesses in any industry to create video content without going over their budget or hiring a professional videographer every time they need one. With tools like Animoto and Powtoon readily available online today, anyone can turn their old text-based post into an engaging animation with the click of a button. This saves you from having to write something new and gives more value to what people already thought was useless information before.

Repurpose your webinar into a podcast episode

There is something attached to the word webinar that makes it feel academic. On the other hand, Podcast feels like something You or I would listen to during our daily activities. No one goes on the train wondering what webinar they are going to listen to. But they do with podcasts. Repurposing your webinar into a podcast episode is one of the most creative things you can do with the media platform. With the growing popularity of podcasting, you can be sure that your old webinar will get more views and downloads.

Compile your blog ideas and launch them as an e-book library

To get more engagement from your old content, you don’t have to do anything fancy. You can visit a website like Amazon and publish them yourself in the form of an e-book library. This way, you’ll be giving readers something they would spend money on instead of being available for free online somewhere else. Or you can provide them with an e-book when they signup for your monthly newsletter. 

Using Pinterest and social media

A blog post can be anywhere between six hundred to a thousand or even two thousand words long. And unless you are an industry professional, nobody has the time to sit through two thousand words long blogs to find one bit of information they need. So, the best thing you can do is cut down your blog posts into manageable sizes and extract small and crucial bits of information from the content. This works best with data and figures. Let’s say your blog reads 80% of business owners believe that SEO has contributed positively to their business. You can use this data and present it in a, Did You Know That, format or something similar. This helps with engaging your audience in social media and also redirects them to your site if they want to learn more about the topic. Using old blog posts for this is an excellent way to increase traffic.

Re-fresh and re-publish

If you have a blog post that didn’t get as much attention as you think it should have gotten or is highly relevant to today’s audience, you can refresh the content re-publish it. Just make sure that you do not copy and paste the same piece of content. Try rewording it, change the intros, the outros, but keep the core information intact. This way, you can reach a whole new audience who wasn’t there when the post was first published.

Your original content will always be your best bet for getting more engagement from readers and prospects alike, but repurposing old posts is an excellent shortcut to get attention where it’s needed most. Find creative ways to present existing information in a fresh light and see how much traction it gets within days of being re-published online!

Let’s say you put out a new piece of content. How do you measure how well the content is doing? We live in a digital world where there are so many distractions. If you want people to read your content, it needs to stand out from the rest of the noise. This article is about 12 ways that you can measure how well your content efforts are doing!

Unique Pageviews

A new page view is counted every time someone visits the same webpage. When measuring something like website views, unique pageviews can be very useful because it tells you how many of your visitors actually read your content and shows that they were engaged with what was written on this particular article. You want to see a high number of unique page views since it means more people liked or shared what was published.

Social Media Shares

Social media shares show how popular the article is among social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc. If there’s an increase in social sharing for articles over months, this indicates consistency, which usually leads to long-term results!

Average time spent on the page

If your goal is to have people read through an article, you would want this number to be high. If someone spends a lot of time on the page, it means they are reading and engaging with what has been written. This can help determine if content needs more images or something else that could potentially increase engagement levels!

Average comments per post

Comments indicate that readers think enough about your posts so much that they take the extra step of commenting (which requires effort). It’s essential not just for SEO but also because it’s honest feedback from actual customers, which can be used as social proof in future marketing campaigns!

Behavior Flow

This is a great way to see how readers are navigating your site. If they are getting lost or not finding what they need, it can lead to frustrating experiences, which could cause them to leave!

Bounce rate

Bounce Rate measures the percentage of visitors who enter a website and only view one page before leaving again without engaging further with any other pages on the site. The lower this number is, the more engaged people were when visiting your blog post since bounce rates indicate if someone was satisfied with what they read.

Inbound links

Inbound links to your blog post indicate that people find it valuable enough to link out and share what has been written with others. This is an essential metric since search engines such as Google also use inbound links for determining the value of a webpage!

Views by Country

If you want to see how well your content is doing worldwide, then views by country can be beneficial because it shows where readers come from. You would want this number to be high in your targeted region since it means you are actively reaching people that you want to reach through your posts. 

Session Duration

The amount of time spent on a website is also essential since it shows how much time people invest in engaging with your content. If someone spends more than 30 seconds, then this means that they might be reading and taking the extra step of thinking about what has been written!

Returning vs. New Visitors

Returning visitors means that readers were engaged enough by previous articles so much so that they came back for another one. This can help determine if it’s worth writing similar types of posts or if something different would fare better based on current metrics.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate shows the percentage of interactions that lead to a desired action or goal that you define! For example, if someone signs up for your email list after reading an article, this indicates a high conversion rate since they valued what was written and wanted more. On the other hand, low conversions could mean people don’t find value in your content, so it’s best to make changes based on data from these reports instead of going with feelings.

Referral sources

Referral sources show where readers initially found your site so much that they decided to read posts. If someone is coming from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, then it means the content has been shared so much that people are finding out about it through other existing channels! This can be very useful when deciding what types of content should be written in the future since it shows successful strategies for getting more eyes on articles, which leads to long-term results!

Google search keywords

Google Search Keywords show words or phrases people use when searching online, leading them to click a link and visit your website. You want this number high because it would indicate an apparent demand for information related to specific topics that could be used as inspiration for future posts!

We all want to be more successful in our content marketing efforts, but it can feel like a daunting task. The good news is there are many ways you can measure the success of your content strategy and make adjustments for future campaigns. You may not know what is working or not at this point, but knowing what to keep an eye out for is key in determining if everything is going smoothly.

Google Scholar is a search engine best used for literary purposes. Revered by academicians, the tool shines when used by academicians to find new research. But what if you could use Google Scholar to find new content ideas? It could potentially open new avenues for writing and permanently change the way people work on content. And while some might put this off, let us be the one to tell you, this works. And this blog post will show you how.

Search by year to find trending topics

Google Scholar allows people to filter their searches by year. Searching by year will give you an idea of what topics are currently trending. You can then use this to your advantage and create content around these subjects, well, in time for them to be the next big thing on Google searches.

Explore additional articles related to a specific topic

Google Scholar has an inbuilt feature that allows its users to explore additional articles related to a particular topic. This means that you can search for a topic, click on the explore additional articles button and get up to five more Google Scholar pages of similar content ideas.

Explore the most popular articles and publications

Google Scholar allows you to explore the most popular articles and publications on any particular topic. This can help you get a feel for what works in content writing so that you do not have to start from scratch every single time when coming up with new content ideas.

Follow citations for additional ideas

Similar to how Google Scholar allows users to view additional articles related to a single topic, it allows them to see which other articles have cited a particular theme. This can give you a wealth of ideas for content to write about. Searching by year will tell you what is trending, and then searching through Google Scholar citations gives you an idea of how that trend has grown over the years.

Narrow your results by field

Like every other search engine, Google Scholar has a filter feature that allows users to narrow down their searches by field. This can help you find content ideas that have been created by experts in a particular field. It also means that the content ideas you find are highly relevant to your field.

Using keywords to research

Most of the articles on Google Scholar have their keywords listed alongside the article. That is how Google Scholar determines if a specific article is usable for you or not. So you can use this to find content ideas. If an article has a particular keyword, then there is a chance that the entire topic of that particular article will contain similar keywords and phrases.

Find Industry-relevant ideas and stay up-to-date with the latest developments

One of the benefits of using Google Scholar regularly is that it helps stay up-to-date with the latest developments in any field. This can be helpful if you are looking to create content around a specific industry. E.g., Someone conducted a study on the latest SEO trends and how they are impacting content creation. The conclusion from the article can be beneficial in creating new SEO policies and strategies.

YouTube videos on the same subject

Google Scholar allows people to search for YouTube videos related to their searches. This means that you can find video content ideas too by searching through Google scholar first and then using the YouTube keyword suggestions feature, which is available in the advanced search section of YouTube.

Using Google Research to expand your customer base

This is extremely helpful for B2B Businesses. If your customer base consists of businesses that are into coffee, then finding out who is writing about coffee is one of the best ways to find new customers. Writing about something is a clear expression of interest. And even if you don’t find new customers or businesses, you can always come off with a deep understanding of the subject and a brief idea about what your competitors are doing.

Explore research from top universities

Google Scholar also allows users to see what kind of articles are being published at the moment and by which institutions and authors. By doing so, they get an idea about where future trends might be coming from. This is useful for marketers who want to stay ahead of the curve and create relevant content marketing campaigns.

Google scholar has a lot more to offer than just these tips. Still, we believe that if used well, even these few points will allow you access to an abundance of quality content ideas that would otherwise take months or years to come upon organically through trial and error. While some people might think this takes away the fun of finding content ideas on your own, we believe that it makes creating new and relevant content much easier.