inbound marketing

A Beginner’s Guide to Content Strategy

Using content as part of a marketing strategy requires time, expertise, planning, and proper management. Don’t produce bad content. Plan for the publication and distribution of unique, relevant, and engaging content through the implementation of a content strategy.

What is a content strategy?

There are a number of definitions for content marketing floating around the Internet. Here are a few good ones worth pondering:

Content strategy has been described as “the practice of planning for content creation, delivery, and governance” and “a repeatable system that defines the entire editorial content development process for a website development project” (Wikipedia).
Content strategy is using “words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.” (Rachel Lovinger, Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data).

Kristina Halvorson, author of the book Content Strategy for the Web explains content strategy in the following way:

“It plots an achievable roadmap for individuals and organizations to create and maintain content that audiences will actually care about. It provides specific, well-informed recommendations about how we’re going to get from where we are today (no content, or bad content, or too much content) to where we want to be (useful, usable content people will actually care about).”

A well-thought-out content strategy takes into consideration the culture, approach, and end goal of delivering information about your company, product, service, or brand. Where should you publish content? When? How often? What kind of content is best suited for this purpose? When done properly, content can be used strategically as an asset and a quantifiable ROI.

Why do I need a content strategy?

Many companies think they can simply “wing it” when it comes to creating content. A couple of articles here, a press release or infographic there — easy, peasy.

Not quite.

Think of it this way. You wouldn’t try to cook a complicated meal without the help of a recipe. Nor would you try to drive to a remote destination without the aid of a GPS or Google Maps. A content strategy acts in a very similar way. Not only does it provide you with an end goal to work towards, but it also enables you to outline detailed instructions for achieving these results.

What should my content strategy contain?

Before you plan your content strategy, check out Kristina Halvorson’s article The Discipline of Content Strategy. In this post, Halvorson explains that every content strategy should start with the following elements:

key themes and messages
topic recommendations
purpose (how will your content close the gap between what your audience is looking for and what your business is offering?)
content gap analysis
metadata frameworks and any necessary content attributes (including various search engine optimization techniques)
any implications of strategic recommendations on content creation, publication, and governance

These basics will then lead to a more in-depth analysis of editorial strategies, content management, content delivery and distribution, ongoing optimization goals, and key performance metrics.

And you thought you were just publishing a blog!

Putting together a content strategy will help ensure that you have the right resources in place to produce the content you need to set your company apart from the competition.

Inbound Marketing Explained in Three Easy Steps

Inbound marketing is one of the best ways to attract and nurture new leads and potential prospects. When executed properly, this permission-based marketing tactic drives relevant traffic to your website, turning visitors into prospective customers and converting leads into sales. This method of attracting qualified traffic to your website is both effective and efficient.

So, how can you get customers to invest in your inbound marketing? It all starts with the creation of compelling content.

The inbound marketing funnel

According to HubSpot there are three distinct steps to inbound marketing lead generation:

Step one: Get found

The production and distribution of informative, engaging content will maximize the number of people you attract to your inbound marketing funnel, which in turn will impact the number of customers who come out of the funnel.

The creation of great content impacts your website in the following ways:

causing your site to perform better in organic search engine results
attracting natural backlinks from other websites
spreading information through social networking and sharing sites
increasing newsletter subscribers and widening your distribution network

All of these outcomes will help you bring in warm leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers. Getting found is the most important step of the process — you can’t convert visitors into customers if you don’t have any visitors to begin with after all!

Here are three top tactics for getting found online:

Blogging

Companies that blog have been shown to get 55% more leads than those who don’t.

Search engine optimized content

Most customers begin their buying process by searching for product information on Google. Make sure your website is listed prominently on search engine results pages by integrating targeted keywords and properly optimizing your website code.

Content marketing

Once you’ve got the knack of publishing content to your blog, take things one step further and develop a content marketing strategy. Unlike blogging, content marketing isn’t restricted by a medium or platform. A robust content marketing strategy can include viral videos, webinars, white papers, and more.

Step two: Convert

Step two of the inbound marketing funnel kicks into high gear once qualified visitors hit your website. This is the beginning of the lead nurturing process. Well-crafted content, call-to-action buttons, special offers, and targeted landing pages will help you lead potential prospects deeper into the funnel.

Not sure how to nurture leads on your website? Here’s a quick and easy three-step process:

Build a targeted landing page. Remember all of the content that you created and distributed back in step one? All of this content should have included backlinks to one or more targeted landing pages on your website. This way, when a visitor clicks on this call to action, they’ll be taken directly to a page where this action is fulfilled…after the user subscribes to your email marketing list, of course!
Stay in touch with email marketing. Email marketing is a great way to nurture long-term relationships with potential prospects and loyal customers. Focused email campaigns that contain relevant content will help establish your company as an industry leader and guide people through the sales process.
Get personal with marketing automation. Keep the lines of communication open by sending customized marketing messages to your company’s followers. For example, if a visitor downloaded a case study from your site, you might want to send them a series of emails that contains related information. However, if this visitor signed up to participate in a webinar, you might want to change any follow-up communication in order to ensure relevancy.

Step three: Analyze

No inbound marketing campaign is complete until you’ve sat down and reviewed the numbers. Once you’ve started to convert visitors into leads and leads into sales, it’s time to analyze your inbound marketing funnel in order to figure out ways to make the customer attraction and retention process more efficient. This will involve looking at website visitor metrics, leads, conversion rates, sales, and industry benchmarks.

All of this information will help you set and track specific marketing goals that will ultimately have a positive impact on your bottom line.

How to Write Content That Actually Generates Leads

It’s tough to be a businessperson in the digital age. While you might think that the Internet makes it a breeze to find loyal customers, the ease of communication between business and potential customer has made competition with other businesses tougher than ever.

Online lead generation is akin to fishing in the midst of thousands of other people hoping to catch the same fish as you are. To be effective, you must not only use the best bait, but you must also have the best tackle to reel in the catch.

In marketing terms, it’s important to develop content for your website that draws people in and converts them into customers.

This, of course, is much easier said than done.

We developed this resource to give you some simple tips to instantly improve your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) and conversions.

Since many start-ups and small businesses are new to the wonderful world of SEO, here is a brief introduction to the term. For more veteran content creators, feel free to skip down to the tips list below.

SEO refers to increasing your website’s visibility in search engine results (primarily Google) and thereby increasing traffic and (hopefully) sales.

Optimizing your website can get quite nuanced, but much of it has to do with useful and clear web copy and the appropriate use of headings and tags, which allow search engines to index the site more easily.

SEO (bait) and conversion rate (tackle) exist in unison. Content on your site should draw traffic to your site, but it should also motivate visitors to action.

The following are the top five must-haves for web content that converts:

1. High-Quality Content

When asked whether writing matters in blog posts, author and digital marketing expert Guy Kawasaki replied, “This is like asking if the quality of food in a restaurant matters. Writing is the primary determinant of the success of the post. Everything else—timing, graphics, frequency—is secondary.”

High quality doesn’t just mean that your posts are grammatically correct and free of spelling errors. A good blog post will be grammatically correct, but it will first and foremost be of use to your audience.

The Internet is already so full of content that if you are posting for the sake of posting, you are just adding to the noise. Listen to your audience and learn what they want to read about.

In addition to great writing, don’t forget to include great-quality graphics that supplement the main points of your post. This is especially important to get viewers of your post to click the preview on social media or the front page of your website.

2. Keywords

High-quality content will help you move up in the ranking of Google’s search results because the most valuable currency in SEO is trust.

However, great content, while necessary, won’t get you very far in terms of driving traffic to your site. To make your content visible in searches, you need to understand the importance of keywords.

Google’s Keyword Planner (available for free online once you create a Google AdWords account) is a great tool to help you understand what words and phrases your clients are searching for and incorporate those terms into your content.

3. Post Length

Another very important factor in SEO is the length of your posts, titles, and meta descriptions.

A good rule of thumb is that title tags should be 55 characters or less, while meta descriptions should be 155 characters or less.

The length of a blog post itself is a bit more variable, as optimal post length has long been debated by content marketers and SEOs. Keep in mind that the length of a blog post is really more about usefulness and trust than actual word count, and longer posts tend to have more detailed and reliable information.

However, as Ann Handley, author of Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide for Creating Ridiculously Good Content, explains, “Ideally, you want to worry less about blog post length and more about being useful to your audience. If you can be useful in 300 words, go for it!”

4. Design

While many web content how-to articles focus on writing (which makes sense), they often overlook the very important aspect of visual appeal.

You’ve done all this work to bring visitors to your site by producing trustworthy writing that contains well-researched keywords and is of optimal length, but you still aren’t meeting your lead generation goals.

The problem might be your website’s design. Our first impressions of websites are often subconscious, but there is no doubt that design and aesthetics play a major role in gaining a visitor’s trust.

Evan Bailyn, author of SEO Made Easy, puts it this way: “Websites are like commercial buildings: If you walk into one and feel surrounded by symmetry, calm, and beauty, you feel comfortable transacting with the business.”

5. Call to Action

This is perhaps one of the most important, and often forgotten, aspects of content writing. You are writing a post not only to provide your audience with useful information but also to educate them about your organization, product, or service.

The majority of business owners started their company because they believe their product can make a difference in the lives of others, whether by saving time, providing entertainment, or solving a common problem. Don’t forget that many of the people who clicked the link to your site could benefit from the products or services your company provides.

Within each blog post, and on each page of your website, make sure to reserve a specific section where you can place a button, link, or clear direction for the customer to follow to learn more about your company or to make a purchase. With blog posts, this typically occurs at the very end. Be sure that, wherever you place the call to action, it is related to the content of the page it is on.

By approaching SEO from the perspective of generating leads and customers—not just increasing traffic—you’ll be even more effective at harnessing the power of your website and blog, resulting in a measurable impact on your bottom line.