* Content marketing is the currency for free online traffic. Find out how to capitalize on it.
* You need more than content. You need to establish a connection with your audience.
* You can grab attention with your emails, blog, and social media even in a competitive marketplace.
Content is similar to currency online. It opens doors for you. It brings in visitors from both search and social sites. It becomes a foundation to the relationship you’re building with your visitors, subscribers, and customers.
Here are 10 quick tips for using content marketing:
1. Own Your Content
The home base for your content must be a website you own. It can be WordPress, Joomla, or any other content management system, but it must be on a domain you control.
Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, and other social media sites aren’t owned by you. Don’t build your business on them. Build a profile. Share your content there, but your home base is at your website/domain.
Even YouTube has kicked out business owners with zero warning and sometimes no explanation. Of course, people use YouTube as a search engine, so make sure you have videos there. I’m saying that you need to have a home for your content. Then expand out from your home by sharing across the web.
2. Find Your Message
This is your core message and the story behind your business.
What primary benefits can you help people achieve? And how does your viewpoint differ from others in your market?
Everyone wants an audience. Be as specific as you can with your message. Your message attracts the right audience to you and you want it to be as targeted as possible.
3. Stay Consistent With Your Brand
Once you find your message, stay consistent with it. Keep coming back to it in the content you produce.
One of the key elements is making sure your content is leading somewhere. Meaning leading visitors to become customers and clients of yours. You’re often better off eliminating the overt pitch. Instead be subtle while sharing and adding value to people’s lives, but stay with your core message of the benefits you provide.
4. Share your content on social media
Take advantage of the extra exposure social media can bring to your content. Share your content on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, and others. The center of everything is your website, but these are additional spokes in your wheel.
Grow your email lists and customer lists first, but also grow your followers, likes, and other contacts. Every social media site is another entry point into your content funnel.
5. Connect With Other Brands & Websites
You’re not an island. Find ways to team up with others. Write a guest post for a popular blog in your field, linking it back to your website.
One of the best ways to generate traffic is to create a list of influential bloggers in your field. Write a short comment about each and the content they produce, along with linking to their site. This is one of the best introductions you can make, when they see the visitors coming over from your site in their stats.
And what happens if they decide to share this post with their audience? More targeted visitors!
6. Write For Your Customers
You’re not writing for everyone. You’re writing for your customers and your future customers. You can’t and shouldn’t please everyone. Some people won’t like you. So what?
Be bold with your message. Attract your audience. Be controversial. And be willing to “turn off” the people who shouldn’t be your customers.
7. Share Yourself
Your audience is overwhelmed by content. You need more than content. You need a connection. Tell stories from your life. If someone has read 5 emails or posts from you and still don’t have a clue about your hobbies, interests, your family, etc., you’re missing out on an opportunity.
Share your opinions on your industry. Use analogies from a hobby. Remember connection, not just content.
8. Grab Attention With Headlines
Concentrate on your headlines. Grab attention. The best results are usually a mixture of benefit + curiosity.
What’s the best way to come up with great ideas? Pull ideas from what’s already working.
The front cover of any popular magazine is a great secret weapon. The cover blurbs are highly researched and popular topics that draw interest in the market.
9. Write In Simple Terms
It doesn’t matter if your audience is full of rocket scientists, they’re in a hurry when they’re online. Everyone feels rushed online because there are so many places they can go and more content is just a click away.
Write in short sentences and short paragraphs. Eliminate jargon. Add white space. Make it easy to read and understand.
10. Become A Reader.
The best writers are voracious readers. They can’t get enough.
It’s tougher to come up with the ideas if you don’t read as much. They just don’t flow as well. Fill yourself up and it’s easy to share. Everything that happens in our life and business becomes a possible story to tell.
These are just 10 principles to getting started with your web content, but they are the most important. Start using them and watch your visitors grow and your type of customer will start growing month by month.
