Essential Tips for Extraordinary Content

The key component that fuels the inbound marketing engine is fresh, engaging content. Blogging is a great way to get started building your goodwill content.

Blogging increases the number of pages indexed by search engines and the number of keyword ranking opportunities. Search engines love fresh content and reward those who provide it with higher rankings. Additionally, blog content provides a basis for building and engaging your social media following.

Key benefits of blogging:

• 55% increase in website visitors
• 97% more inbound links
• 2x as many Twitter followers

source: HubSpot, 100 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts and Graphs for You

Blogging should form the foundation of your content base. As you advance in your content marketing strategy, you will want to mix in other types of content such as:

• Video (YouTube, Vimeo, Blip, private CDNs)
• Audio/podcasts (iTunes)
• Photos (Flickr, Pinterest)
• Presentations (Slideshare)
• Forums
• Wikis

…just to name a few.

Building extraordinary content

The ubiquitous battle cry for online marketers is “content is king”. However, traditionally most content generation is focused on quantity over quality. The idea is to churn out volumes of cheaply created web pages optimized to exploit search engine algorithms. The web is littered with this search engine spam.

Anyone who wants to maximize the long-term value of inbound marketing must be oriented at the other end of the spectrum. You must be focused on building remarkable content that delights users and search engines alike.

There are four keys to building extraordinary content that gets long-term results:

• Relevant
• Engagement
• Optimization
• Continuous

First your content must be relevant. It should be well correlated to what you offer and what users want. It must speak to specific user needs, pain points, wants and desires. All your content should pass the “what’s in it for me” test.

A unique advantage that content on the web has over more traditional formats, such as magazines and books, is that it is interactive. Move your readers from only passively reading your content to interacting with it.

To maximize site traffic, all of your content needs to be optimized for search. For each piece of content, select a targeted keyword phrase. Then optimize the title, body and other page elements around that keyword phrase.

Producing content frequently is vital. A steady stream of content assures you always have something fresh and interesting for your site visitors. Frequent posting is also a traffic multiplier. Regular posting enhances your search engine rankings, gives you more social media mentions and drives your followers to come back regularly. 

Content Checklist

• Add a blog to your website
  • Add additional content types as needed such as video, podcasts, events, press releases
• Generate a list of topics for posts
  • Review the target audience for your site. What would they be interested in? What are their questions and pain points?
  • Do keyword research. Select topics based on quality keywords
• Build an editorial calendar around topics and key events. Plan to post twice a week.
• Craft engaging headlines for each of your posts.
• Optimize each post to place well in the search engines.
• Share your content on social networking sites.
• Give your audience ways to engage more with your content such as related article links, commenting and ratings.
• Add social sharing links to your content to easily enable readers to share with their friends

photo by munhitsu