Surprisingly Underused but Effective Content Marketing Tips and Tricks

July 6, 2016

These are the 20 most underrated ideas but effective content marketing tips you should be implementing

1. You Can Find Blog Topics in Your Inbox

It is a common occurrence for your business to get a few questions or inquiries asking about your business or what you provide. You might even get some related comments or emails on the subjects and it may tend to get a bit monotonous answering the same questions day in and day out. Instead, create an FAQ blog post and have it uploaded in order to answer all of your clients’ (or potential clients’) questions with time saved and no skin off your back!

Use Videos in Your Blogs

It has been proven time and time again that blogs with images and videos are ten times more likely to have more people clicking or visiting than there will be with simple text based blogs. Words and writing are boring. Images and videos are good! You could use your company’s education or training videos, snaps from the people at work, or anything creative. The point is to capture your audiences’ attention straight away.

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Answer these questions in your videos:

How is my company better than the other, related companies?
What can I offer to teach people?

Answering these two questions in your videos is the key to success and offering free, educational or entertaining content is always appreciated, most usually in the form of extra shares, likes, and comments. This is always good to further increase your business exposure.

4. Write a ‘Who Should I Follow?’ Listicle

While it is true that you are an expert in your industry, otherwise why would people bother to listen, but there are people who are thirsty for knowledge and will appreciate a list of who else they can potentially follow to learn more. Many of your audience members or viewers will love the fact that you are not so insecure you can actually give a list of ‘competitors’ and that the ‘competitors’ themselves appreciate the link. This may mean that they will not link you in some articles and thus, a beautiful networking relationship is born.

5. Create an Inforgraphic with Facts that Relate to Your Goals

Infographics are one of the easiest pieces of information to digest and can be easily taken in by most people. Create this infographic with all the facts that bolster your goals or mission in your business and then upload it into your blog. This will give your customers an extra bite of knowledge (which they will love) but you also prove yourself as a further expert in the field.

6. Write a Compelling or Enticing Story (Be Appealing)

“Just buy it,” said no advertisement ever. Companies like Windows and Nissan don’t just ask you to buy their product, so you should be no different. Copy what makes most advertisements successful and then implement it into your own blog. The secret is to tell a fantastic story that brings your target demographic into your blog’s gravity. Find out what your mission is and how you would like to present that in your content. People always appreciate being coaxed into something, especially when they think it was their idea to purchase in the first place!

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7. What Kinds of Questions Do Your Customers Ask? (Understand Customers)

The internet is the go to for most people when they are trying to decide whether they are going to purchase something or not, whether it is physically or online also. You need to anticipate what some of those questions would be relating to your own product or service and do your absolute best to make sure that your results show up right alongside the others in a Google search.

It is around this time that you are to create a blog post or some content that satisfactorily answers all of the questions some of your potential buyers will have. Once they see this, the conversion rate could become a lot higher. Just remember to keep posting informative content about your goods or services.

8. Set the Date (or Dates)

When you give a customer an opportunity to sign up at any time they desire, this is a all well and good but it doesn’t give your subscribers a chance to connect with you on a real level. By offering specific products, content, webinars etc. at a certain date and no other creates a sense of not only urgency to attend, but a chance to log in and create a real networking connection with you. People love to see the face behind the product as it enables them to feel more trust towards you. Customers will be purchasing your goods or services in full confidence and you will build up a marketing community in order to distribute more of your product! It just continues to make so much more sense, so what are you waiting for?

9. Plan Your Promotional Campaign (Create Strategy)

Once you have determined that there is an actual need (market) for the product or service you provide, the next move is to plan how you will promote your content. After all, you are going to want people to see it after working so hard on it. Make sure that you have this in place BEFORE writing it however, as it would be a shame to waste your time.

10. Get Stuck Into the Community (Team work)

Now this usually pertains to the online community surrounding you (but local works too, just not as well). Find some related communities or forums to your website and see if there is anything you can add to the pot. Leave bits of your expertise all around the place and comment where you can, advising people that if they need more information they can find it at your website. Always be mindful not to be a spammer and leave spammy comments or your reputation can (and will) be harmed.

11. Utilise SlideShare (Sharing is caring)

If you haven’t heard of SlideShare yet then you are in for a treat! It is, basically, a sharing platform, social media type website that allows users to share KeyNote, OpenDocument, PDF, and PowerPoint presentations. It’s just like YouTube, if YouTube used slideshows instead of movies.

Once you have uploaded a presentation, you can leave it there to be shared by all across all the popular social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.

12. Utilise Pinterest (One of the cleanest approach for content marketing)

Pinterest is an commonly looked over platform, which is a shame because it has some of the best potential for luring traffic back to your website, and garnering sales conversions. Millions of people around the globe use Pinterest to find an amalgam of different things, and your business should be among them.

After you have finished writing some great content for your blog, create some cool little images or infographics to link Pinterest boards into. This way, Pinterest users will then view, like, share, post and more across all their favourite social media platforms once again, like Facebook and Twitter.

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13. Reuse Your Older Content (Old is gold)

It is completely understandable that you may not have the team required to pump out content on the regular and for most online businesses, it is usually one or two people in charge of everything. Having said that, there is a simple idea that you could use: recycle some of your old content. Try to display information from an old blog in a different way. For instance, you could have a text based upload with statistics on certain fields related to your industry and then change it into an infographic or even tweeting it as a short post.

Instead of feeling the pressure of having to come up with completely new content time and time again while the rest of your responsibilities pile up, simply think of new ways to display old information. Not everyone saw it the first time, so there’s always that solace.

14. Create Content that is Deemed ‘Evergreen’ (Play Safe on some content)

If you have no idea what the term ‘evergreen’ means, then you haven’t been blogging long enough. This refers to the type of content that never goes out of date and can always be relevant, no matter what date the viewer sees it. Publishing on the internet is long term and endless so you will want to publish material that can still provide knowledge or something of value.

15. Optimize All of Your Social Media Platforms (Don’t Forget)

Did you know that social media platforms are about 23% of the reason why people go online? When you post at exactly the right time, you can account for an explosion of viewers as to posting at other times of the day/night.

It’s also important to create different versions of the same post in order to make it relatable or able to upload, such as how Facebook and Twitter, or SnapChat and Pinterest work completely differently and accept different types of media content.

16. Understand Your Audience (Make It Personal)

If you have a blog then you probably have a rough idea of what target demographic you are looking to hit. If you don’t, then it’s time to head back to the drawing board because you will never hit everyone at once. It is important to target your content to that specific demographic in order to gain the most views and traffic. This is where programs like Google Analytics come in (if you are having a hard time figuring out your demographic). Ask yourself questions about your potential customers, such as:

What do they do?
Which general area do they live in?
What age range are they between?
How often or regularly do they purchase?

Once you have these in the bag, then you can figure out how to tailor your posts to them.

17. Your Blog URL Requires Optimization Too (Leave no stone unturned)

This is a quick and easy step that will assist you greatly in most keyword and phrase searches. Alter your generically given URL and make sure that it includes a keyword that is relevant to your potential customers’ questions or searches. You will see a huge increase in your traffic (and hopefully sales).

18. Go For Half Text, Half Visuals (Avoid being monotonous)

While you can simply post text or images/videos on their own, research and studies have actually proven that those who implement both in a 50/50 strategy on posts will receive far more interest and hits. This is one of the reasons that infographics are wildly popular at the moment, and may continue to be so. Always remember to stock your blog posts with all kinds of material to achieve the best results, you’ll thank me later!

19. Get Invested in Active Reading (Knowledge is the best investment)

By engaging in active reading (the process of taking content apart piece by piece in order to find some unanswered questions or perspectives), you will be able to predict new content that could be written and answer some of the questions that the article you read did not. In doing so, you further cement your reputation in the world of your field. Releasing content like this on a consistent basis could even leave you as the ultimate knowledge on the source, with people starting to come to you first and foremost.

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20. Be Unique and Create Original Content (No other content marketing technique can beat this)

You can be assured that whatever field you are in, there are, literally, already thousands of online businesses in the same field. To stand out from the pack, you need to come up with some original content that others don’t have out there. Try to find ways to be completely original and unique (easier said than done!). It is important to set aside a certain amount of time to do some research and see what is missing from the pack, and see if you can fill that void (very similar to active reading above).

So in Conclusion…

If you can try to utilize even half of the tips on this list, you will have a great amount of success with your content marketing. It will start to feel as if it is worth putting in all the extra time and work and will allow you to feel great about the current state you are in. The thing is that you must work consistently and as hard as you can in order to get ahead of the pack and remember, ALWAYS BE ORIGINAL! Good luck, my friends!