So they say that content marketing is the “in thing” now. You might be already on to it or maybe you are not. Probably you are overwhelmed just how much there is to do when it comes to marketing your business today. All those content marketing predictions are good, but it’s not sufficient.
Such is the marketing beast. The predictions won’t do you good unless you have an action plan.
Content Marketing is evolving faster than we can care to acknowledge. Content Marketing? Correction: It’s multi-channel content marketing
Blogs won’t cut it anymore. You’d need a lot more than that. You’d need multi-channel marketing. You’ll a variety of content across media and channels. That’s just the way it is on the web today. If you are still generating nothing but your blog posts, you’d be exactly where millions of other businesses are trying to be. Grow out of routine. Develop more content simultaneously to fit into many other channels out there.
Here’s a run down on what you might need to start with:
Work on your blog
Set a frequency like 3 times a week, 5 times a week, multiple times a day. Repeat for life. Make sure you have some soul, character, attitude, and passion thrown in for good measure. Stop thinking about number of words, the length of the posts, keyword density, SEO, and all that junk. As long as you write content that’s valuable, you can skip all that SEO torture. Publish regularly. Always share your own content (just don’t make it too obvious).
Guest Blogging Campaigns
Make a list of relevant blogs in your niche, sort them according to metrics such as Moz rank, DA, etc., and then reach out each of those bloggers. Kristi Hines has a handy guide for Guest Blogging on Kissmetrics. Reach out bloggers and pitch them ideas. It doesn’t matter if they don’t accept. There are way too many blogs out there and every blog needs fresh content. You’ll always find a way. Start with small bloggers, if that helps.
Reverse Blogging
With a twist to the normal guest blogging campaigns, we now have reverse blogging where you’d invite prolific bloggers, entrepreneurs, celebrities, thought leaders, or influencers to create blog posts to be published on your blog. As I see it, this is harder than normal blogging but it’s well worth the trouble. Amanda DiSilvestro of Search Engine People wrote a post on Reverse Blogging and how it can help your business.
Curated Posts
There’d be a niche that your business relates to. It’s time to pick some of the best posts and other resources on the web and curate them into chunks of related content. Each chunk of curated content finds its home on a digital platform such as Scoop It, Alltop, Topsy, etc. Curating posts will take time and effort. Yet, you’ll create a following for your business since good content is hard to find and you’ll help your readers find it all.
Digital Magazines
Alternatively, you could create digital magazines with your curated content. Use FlipBoard and flip your favorite posts into your magazine. Kimberly Reynolds of Steamfeed.com has a helpful post on how to create your own magazine .Share the magazine as you’d share a blog post.
SlideShare
It’s the Youtube for content. It’s growing into a content sticky and tons of content is already shared in the form of documents; slide decks, presentations, and visually rich content. Create a free account and see how many visits your content gets. When you decide to go pro, you can check out analytics for your slideshare account, generate leads, and really make your content work for you.
Videos
Oh yes, we all know video is big. It’s also intimidating, resource-intensive, and a whole new type of content that not every small business owner, freelancer, or other businesses can do. Yet, you should. Use a beginner level DSLR or even a smartphone if you have to but get started with videos. Think about how to use videos for your ecommerce business. Maybe you can do a flash show of your products. You could take your readers “behind the scenes”. Perhaps, you might want to do video interviews with your customers.
Other video-based content
Now, production-intensive isn’t the only kind of video that’ll work. Short snippets of introduction, animated videos, explainer videos, logo reveals, videos created through Adobe After Effects, and even those little 6 second videos created with Vine will work. There are examples of small businesses and brands that are creating Videos on Vine that are rocking it today.
Webinars
The folks at Unbounce.com swear by webinars. Nathan Lanka of Heyo.com who mastered the art of using Webinars for lead generation. There are countless others Including Jill Konrath who use webinars effectively for lead generation. Are you going to do it too?
Social Media
Most people don’t realize it but social media is a part of your overall content marketing strategy. All those little tweets, Facebook updates, Google Updates, and conversations on LinkedIn Groups or Quora are all pieces of content that’ll work for you. Peel the layers and you can make each network work for your business. Whether you’d read posts like How to Make Twitter work for you, the Shortest Guide On Social Marketing ever.
What are you planning to include as your content marketing plans starting 2014? Tell me all about it.