There are many elements to consider within the scope of content marketing. Today we will look at the blog aspect. As a startup, you are facing many challenges when it comes to marketing in general as well as promoting your blog and making it work for you. Thankfully, by following the tips listed below, you will be well on your way to making your business blog earn its keep and getting ahead in content marketing in general. These tips brought to you by Tech Crunch:
1.) Write Fewer, But More In-Depth Articles: Aim For Quality Over Quantity
If you know anything about content marketing, you know you need content to promote. It’s kind of common sense. However, when it comes to your blog and today’s Google algorithms, your goal should be high-quality posts, not necessary content that seems constructed by robots but tons of words and numerous posts. The idea is to get rid of the articles created primarily to “trick” the search engines into finding your site through keyword stuffing and other abhorrent practices that aren’t fun for your readers. Today, Google is monitoring when your site visitors hit the back button. If they do this quickly after settling on an article, Google will note this. Therefore, you want me to make sure your readers have something high-quality, engaging, educational and entertaining to read, to keep their eyes on the page instead of searching for their back button. One way to ensure this is to hire a professional writer to create the content for you. This is especially important if you aren’t gifted yourself in the literally arts. After all, you have a business to run.
Tips For Creating Great Articles:
- Understand Other Features Are Worthwhile As Well: While your blog will primarily be composed of articles, that isn’t the only thing of value. Your blog can actually benefit from videos, quizzes and the like. It doesn’t have to contain only articles.
- Make Sure You Deliver What You Promise: Have you ever clicked on a title of an article only to arrive at the content and learn nothing related to what was promised in the title? This is so frustrating! You almost feel betrayed. The engaging title gets you all excited to learn the dirt on someone or the secret to something, and then wham, you find yourself hood winked into reading an ad for wrinkle cream. Lame! Instead, deliver on your promises i.e. your title and create an accurate description of the content which you plan on providing.
- Give Your Reader What They are After: According to Tech Crunch, your objective for any site visit should be “to be the last site a visitor visits in their search journey.” This means when they land on your page, they stay put, not go right back out to the search engine to give it another go. The way to ensure this happens is to include all relevant subtopics relating to the article. Then, link to any relevant posts that can cover additional tangential topics.
- Avoid The Fluff: Fluff is exactly what it sounds like, content full of very little substance and a lot of gratuitous blather. Avoid it! Instead, aim for short paragraphs, concise content. If this means doing several posts instead of one on a given topic, fine. Do that. Make it easy for your reader to get what you are saying, quickly. Again, hiring a professional writer can help immensely with this aspect.
2.) Emphasize Engagement More Than Backlinks
For years, the marketing community prioritized getting backlinks and domain ranking. Today, backlinks and domain rankings don’t matter as much as they used to, which means you need to focus on the content itself more than achieving several backlinks. Google will still rank your site well, even without an abundance of backlinks. Of course, backlinks do serve a purpose, just not in the same scope.
3.) Prioritize Conversion Over Volume
Believe it or not, though important, engagement shouldn’t be your end goal. Your goal with any blog post is to get a customer to sign up, subscribe or purchase something. This is a term many marketers simply call the “conversion event.” This is your goal. You can achieve this end goal in a few common ways:
- Your site visitor reads what you posted and immediately converts, hurrah success!
- Your site visitor reads your post and a few others before finally converting. Again, great job.
- Your site visitor subscribes to your newsletter and returns at a later time. Unfortunately, the most common.
How to Encourage Conversion: Few Notable Tips
- Segue naturally to your pitch. Yes, you need a pitch, but just don’t do it too early in your content. Data confirms the best pitches are located at the bottom half of your content.
- Don’t sell your customer something. We all know how annoying “the sale’s pitch” can be. We all have friends on Facebook trying to sell us products we don’t need or want. No one likes to be “sold” anything. Therefore, keep in mind your pitch shouldn’t look like an ad. When it does, data indicates it is often ignored. Instead, opt to include your pitch with no fanfare or special text link.
The above are just a few helpful suggestions to get you headed in the right direction with regard to your content marketing strategy as a startup. Feel free to reach out for expert help on transforming your current blog content into the money making tool it should be with the expertise of a professional writer.
Brandie P‘s career as a freelance writer spans several years and encompasses an abundance of niche specialties. Before beginning her writing career, she was an office manager and worked in the medical field. Her experience in these two fields have come in handy when writing topics pertaining to these fields.
