If you want to market your business online, content marketing is the key to making that happen. As the most effective form of online marketing, understanding how to work it to your advantage – AKA hack it – is critical to your success. Today, we’re going to look at 5 content marketing hacks you can put in to play right now.
Content Marketing Has Shifted The Way Business Thinks About Customer Acquisition
A short time ago, content marketing wasn’t on most business’ radars. The idea of using blogs and social media seemed like wasted effort. The perceptions around the tools of content marketing weren’t positive, often being attributed to things teenagers did with their evenings and weekends.
You need to understand how to hack content marketing and make it generate the leads you need. Share on XNow that most business’ understand the need for frequent, simple, and actionable content that engages their audience, the whole playing field has shifted. It can be tough to break through the noise of content published by so many companies every day. That’s why you need to understand how to hack content marketing and make it generate the leads you need.
If You’re Going To Have Success, You Need To Get Ahead Of The Competition
Most people, including me and you, rely on the internet for information on the things we’re interested in. Not just personal interests either. Business ones as well. As a result, content marketing can make or break a company’s marketing efforts. If you’re not willing to take the risk, you’ve already failed.
Most marketers recognize that blog content has a direct impact on their ability to gain new leads. However, they also tend to be really bad at it, mostly because they don’t track the data and make the adjustments that get more of their target audience paying attention. Creating content for the sake of it alone does little for your results.
Hack Your Content Marketing To Break Through The Noise
There is a lot of content out there competing for the attention of audiences everywhere. It’s easy for yours to get lost among it. That’s why you need to put together a solid strategy to hack content marketing into more visitors, more viewers, and especially more leads.
Here are 5 content marketing hacks that you can put to use right now that will redirect your content marketing towards strong results.
Answer The Questions Your Audience Has
If you want to hack your content marketing, you need to start with value. Whatever topic you’re going to write about, it needs to inform your readers and answer the questions they have on the topic. That means putting in the work to understand what your readers want to know.
It also means being totally thorough with your content marketing. That value that matters is in the amount of information as much as it is in the relevance. While you always need to focus on creating content that is entertaining, it should also offer as much information as possible. Don’t be afraid of writing too much. The average piece of content that land’s in Google’s number one result is about 1800 words.
In reality, when people want to learn about something, they want to learn it all. Stick to your topic, but make sure that everything you write gives them all the information they’re going to need.
Find The Topics That Interest Your Audience
Akin to informing your audience, your content marketing has to be about the topics they care about. That’s not always going to be something original. Sometimes it’s going to be a collection of other information from around the web.
A great way to hack your content marketing is to take advantage of what’s already on the web. Find information from other blogs and online resources about a particular topic, then share it through your content. If you’ve ever read an “Ultimate list of” article, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The reason this works so well is that it maximizes your audience’s time. Like yourself, your viewers don’t want to waste their time trying to vet the information they’re looking for. The list you put together suggests that you’ve taken that step for them, and they’ll appreciate you for it later.
Focus On A Catchy Headline
The reason for this content marketing hack is going to be tough to swallow. Mist people – 8 out of 10 – are only going to read your headline. Based on that info, you need to write a headline that’s going to make them want to read the content and share the article.
Be careful as you plan your content marketing headlines out, however. Facebook and other social networks have made a huge effort to eliminate clickbait from your feed. If your title too closely resembles an article like that, you may lose out on the reach and exposure you could be getting from your social distribution.
Create Content In Multiple Formats
Content marketing is competitive as it is. There are a ton of companies creating even more content every day. So trying to compete in written format alone is going to be incredibly difficult. After all, most companies have someone that knows how a keyboard works and can manipulate the English language to get a point across.
Hack your content marketing with different media types.
Content marketing through video is an effective way to stand apart. The majority of people are either auditory or visual learners, so they get more from video than they do from written content. It’s also got the added benefit of introducing a face to go with your company. That’s going to help build a connection through familiarity.
Podcasts allow your audience to tune into your content while they do other things, like driving to the office or working at the computer. Share on XPodcasts are great content marketing as well. Unlike video or text, podcasts allow your audience to tune into your content while they do other things, like driving to the office or working at the computer. Because listening to content doesn’t interrupt their workflow, they get more exposure opportunities. As a bonus, like a video, they get familiar with the voice on the podcast, which helps build trust.
Make Your Content Easy To Share
Obviously, social distribution is content marketing’s best friend. However, you shouldn’t only rely on people exposed through social media to share it on social media. You want the people who found your site organically to be able to share it as well. The easier it is to do that, the more likely they will.
Add easy to see and access share buttons to your website. They should be non-intrusive, but stand out. Check out ours to the left of the page (if you haven’t already noticed them). They’re out of the way, but they follow you as you read through the content. They’re never lost.
Similarly, using “click-to-tweet” quotes reduces that difficulty to share. Your content marketing is going to get a ton more engagement from Twitter users, who overall are more active with content. When there is a quotable line from your content that they can Tweet with a click, they’ll almost definitely do it.
Before You Can Hack, You Have To Plan
You can definitely use the tips we went over to hack your content marketing, but that’s only going to work if you have a content plan in place. You’ve got to know when and how you’re going to craft the content your audience wants, and you’ve got to know how to get them to take action once they find it. If you can manage that, your marketing will soar.
