How to Leverage Content Marketing to Boost Your Business - Part Two
This is the second installment of a two-part series. See the first part here – Content Marketing to Boost Your Business which covers planning and creating good content.
Content Delivery
Publishing your content is simply not enough. If you want to make sure you’re reaching your target audience, you will have to do a little more to get their attention on a regular basis. Making a conspicuous (and easy to use) email opt-in form for your site or blog is one way of doing this.
You can also work with Outbrain or other content networks which can place your content on other websites. Of course, you should also promote new content via social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, as well as urge people to follow you on these networks.
Finally, it’s a great idea to try to encourage readers to share your content on their own.
Relevant, high-quality content will, over time, establish your site as the one that provides value. Your readers will notice and search engines will start to rank your site higher as page visits increase, backlinks are created and your content is shared. Your content may not immediately turn your visitors into customers, but a pattern of repeat visits and positive associations with your brand can lead your audience to you when it’s time to make a purchase.
The Metrics
Content marketing is a subtle thing and it’s not as easy to measure your success (or lack thereof) as it is with more traditional strategies. This doesn’t mean that you can’t get a sense of your ROI, but you will need to use more than one metric to determine how much impact your content marketing is making.
Obviously, you can (and probably should) use Google Analytics, but that’s hardly the only way to keep track of things. You may also want to use some alternative analytical tools like Heap Analytics, Crazy Egg or any other tool that you prefer. Regardless of the tool you use, what you want to take a look at to see how well your content marketing strategy is performing is the following:
Is Your Content Engaging Visitors?
As much as it is essential for your business to engage your customers and make them loyal, it is also important to see how much you engage your online visitors who will then, hopefully, turn into customers. This question can be answered by looking at the total number of page views, bounce rate, average duration of visits, pages viewed per visit and the number of return visitors, all of which speak to engagement.
Is It Going Viral?
Watch how your content is being shared on social media platforms. Another possible indicator of your content going viral is the number of unique visitors to a given post, video, meme or other piece of content.
The Numbers
Finally, look at the numbers to see if your content seems to be increasing conversions and driving revenue generation.
Be Creative and Patient
It can be hard to make yourself stand out online; that’s why your content needs to be relevant to readers (so it’s useful and adds value) while being creative and out-of-the-box enough to capture their attention. Think of Burger King’s subservient chicken campaign. It was creative, clever, hilarious and it went viral almost immediately because this was content that their competitors weren’t offering. You don’t need to dress up in a chicken costume, but if you want your content to drive your brand into the future, you do need to think differently.
Remember that content marketing isn’t an instant fix for your marketing strategy. You need to plan for the long term and be patient. You need to provide people with high-quality content on a consistent basis in order to start seeing sustained results – incidentally, this is exactly the kind of pattern that Google and other search engines take as an indicator of a high-value site. If you’re not already using content marketing, it’s time to educate yourself and start making it an important part of your marketing efforts, as well as part of your brand’s voice. Boosting your business certainly doesn’t sound like a negligible result.
Continue reading here: The Cornerstones and Parameters of Social Media Marketing
Was this article helpful?
