10 Content Marketing Tips You Can Start Using Today
“Content marketing is like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won’t be a second date.” — David Beebe, VP Global Creative and Content Marketing for Marriott.
Content marketing may sound free, but in reality it requires a lot of time. You have to do research, plan and ultimately put in time to actually write articles for your website.
We want to help, and have prepared the following 10 tips to get you going. From keyword research and content ideas to organization and tech stuff — we’re covering it all. Let’s roll…
1. Select your keywords carefully
You will want to put in some serious attention into the process of selecting your keywords. Start with a big list with all the keywords you could think off and take it from there. Check out your competitors, as well as such services as Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner and Google Trends. These inputs should get you enough information to start trimming the big list — to get the “winning” keywords and phrases.
2. Talk to your customers
Ask your customers about their problems for content ideas. Use their input to create “how to” articles and lists which tend to be favored by social media users (they are easier to scan and understand). If you’re working in a large organization, you may want to talk to the people from customer service and sales departments — they know your customers best.
3. Involve others
Related to the previous point, you may want to include other colleagues to the content creation process. For start, ask as many people as you can, and in that sense — you could create an internal blog where everyone could add their two cents. An internal Wiki has also proven to work great for such endeavors, but you may just as well opt for a shared Excel file on a SharePoint server. The important thing is to get the input.
4. Create a list of article titles
Once you have gathered all the ideas — create a list of article titles, then sort that list in the order that makes the most sense to you and… start writing. Leave a few hours per week for content creation and follow thru. You could also consider outsourcing a part of article writing — there are quite a few organizations that could help you out with this.
5. Use software to organize your efforts
There are two pieces of software you’ll want to use: first, there’s the project management software, and second — note taking apps and services. In the former category, you can play with such services as Trello, Asana and Todoist. As for the second, consider Evernote, Microsoft’s OneNote and Google Keep. Each of these apps and services work in a similar manner and it is up to you to select the one that you like best.
6. Use a thesaurus to avoid keyword repetition
As you are trying to optimize pages for certain keywords, you will be prompted to repeat those words and phrases often. That’s not the issue until you start overdoing that — then it becomes a problem. You’ll want to strike a balance, and that’s where a thesaurus can come in handy — to show you what other words and phrases you can use. It could also help you rank for related keywords.
7. Pay attention to visual content
Go beyond text to also include some cool images and clipart inside your articles. There are many great services that could help you prepare images to be used inside articles — we prefer Canva, but you can easily “get away” with Photoshop if you know what you’re doing. In fact, if you have the skills, you can research your industry and create an infographic to benefit from free shares (of an infographic). There’s an idea…
8. Create interviews
This is one of those “easy content” ideas that people love. You can interview experts from your industry and ask them to share their wisdom free of charge. In addition, you can also create “customer success stories” series featuring interviews with your own customers where they share how your product/service has helped them.
9. Recycle content
You can make several articles for one topic. The content recycling will not only make your content creation process easier, but will also help you improve your rankings in search engines — presuming you are targeting the same keyword/phrase. Let’s face it, you can tell one story from a few different angles — use that to your advantage. And start by focusing on those topics your (potential) customers are mostly interested about.
10. Use your phone to record content ideas
Every modern smartphone comes with a built-in voice recorder app — use it to record ideas when the inspiration comes. You don’t want to forget them, so save them when they hit you. Then, you can type them in the comfort of your office/home when you have time. Related to that, you may also want to experiment with voice-to-text apps to record entire articles with your phone.
Final word
It takes time to first create and then execute on your content marketing strategy. The tips from this article should help you get going and prepare great content for your website from one week to the other. Good luck!
