website content tips

Content marketing involves extensive research, the foundational documents (voice docs, buyer personas, editorial calendars, content mapping templates and more). From this research, we build a 12 month strategy, test what works, kill what doesn’t and adjust accordingly.

Once your strategy is defined, you have several content types you can employ to tell your story. In this article, we’ll discuss a few content types that you can use to market your business.

Hitting a Content Home Run

Content marketing is not limited to publishing blog posts and guest posts – change it up to make it more interesting for your audience. Making content fresh means choosing new ways to deliver interesting content, including creating infographics, presentations, social media content, podcasts, YouTube videos, and much more.

Though there are a lot of ways to create content, the truth is not everyone can produce every type of content and market it effectively. For example, if you are not good at designing or don’t have the budget to hire a designer, chances are you will find it harder to produce quality infographics.

Before jumping to create any content, make sure you can produce it and market it effectively.

Cross check whether you have enough resources (like money and time) to produce and market content. If you don’t have enough time to produce and market content yourself, consider hiring a content marketing agency that can identify your needs. (shameless plug)

For many years, guest blogging was the most commonly used link-building tactic. Last year, Matt Cutts, the head of the Webspam team at Google published a blog post titled The Decay and Fall of Guest Blogging for SEO. The article advices internet marketers to focus on increasing brand awareness while guest blogging, and to stop using guest blogging only for gaining links.

“If you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links, you should probably stop…”

“There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future.”

Though his words created a firestorm among many SEOs, if you read his comments closely, he’s actually just advising you not to spam (as he usually does). There are many spam sites using guest blogging as their link building strategy. While guest posting, you shouldn’t solely focus on SEO, rather focus on increasing the reach and brand awareness by using other people’s audience.

Here are 2 additional ways guest blogging can help you grow your business.

  • Establish yourself: Guest blogging can help you establish yourself as an authority in your industry. You will be seen as an expert on the subject, building trust among prospects.

  • Increase exposure: If you regularly publish guest blogs on popular blogs, you’ll be a well-known face in your industry, which will also help you increase exposure for your product and keep your name top of mind.

Creating Infographics

According to a fascinating design study, 90% of transmitted information in the human brain is visual. In addition, research at 3M showed that humans process visuals 60 thousand times faster than text.

Infographics are popular because they make data easier to process. Infographics run on data, so the first step of creating infographics is to create a great data set. We use FancyHands for our initial research. Once the data set is ready, you’ll need to work on designing the graphics. If you are not great at graphics, either hire an experienced infographics designer or use sites like infogr.am or PiktoChart.com, which help you create infographics yourself with ease. We’ve also had success with Fiverr.

Here are some compelling reasons to consider using infographics in your content marketing strategy.

  • Viral power: Infographics are more likely to become viral because they are easy to share on the web. These compelling images will get passed back and forth around social networks.

  • Quick attention: Unlike text, infographics gain instant attention because they’re easy to scan. Bright colors and a good design will attract viewers to the image which may drag them back to your website.

YouTube Videos

With 8 million unique visitors per month, YouTube is a potential gold mine for video based content marketers. As YouTube allows users to embed the videos to any website, YouTube videos help you to bring your brand anywhere.

The best thing about YouTube is you don’t need to have Hollywood style production set up for producing and broadcasting videos. Here are some easy ways to get started as a video based content marketer.

  • Tutorial videos: You can create tutorial videos either by casting yourself in front of the camera or using presentation slides to explain tasks.

  • Screencast videos: Simply use software like Techsmith’s Camtasia to record your screen and upload it to YouTube. Watch AppSumo for deals on software like this. We bought our version for only $50 via AppSumo.

Make sure you insert the logo of your product or website into each video. In addition, try to use the same theme for each video so that people can easily identify your brand.

While there are dozens of different ways to present content to your prospects, the important thing to remember is that your message shouldn’t change. Change your delivery mechanisms, but always deliver in the same voice, with the same brand, aligned to your personas.

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