Category: Content Generation

As digital marketers, we have all heard the saying “content is king,” and this is still relevant today in 2020. SEO can only get you so far in the search engines, but your actual content is what will increase your traffic and make visitors convert into customers over time. It’s no secret that billions of google searches are being made every day for informational content, but with thousands of new blogs being created every day, how can you stand out from the competition? Well, this is where having a solid content marketing strategy can help you get ahead of your competitors.

Content marketing works by providing opportunities to increase your website’s brand awareness, increase website traffic, and attracting new customers. First, you should have a reliable content management system to help you manage and adjust your content effortlessly, and then you can strictly focus on your content marketing strategies.

Content Marketing helps widen your audience to the billion of users who are actively on the internet. Still, it also provides a long-term solution for your company to continue growing organically. With that being said, let’s dive into four content marketing tips that can turn your blog into a traffic-driving machine.

1.) Create Content Tailored for Your Audience

To keep your audience engaged and coming back, you must provide helpful, unique, and valuable content that will help them grow, learn, and master the industry. By creating user-centered content, it will allow you to generate topics that will educate and provide value to the end-users.

But how do you create user-centered content? Well, for beginners, you want to put yourself in their shoes. Think about what type of questions could they have? What could they be struggling with? Or in what areas could they improve on? All these questions will help you create more interesting topics that your user will love and keep them coming back. You can find hidden questions by going to popular forums like Quora and Reddit to search for repeating questions that people in your niche might have. Then you could take 2-3 of these questions, assuming that they are related to the same topic and create a long-form blog about it.

2.) Get On Trends Early

In today’s digital age, most topics have already been covered online, and while you could still put your twist to it. Why not jump on some of the growing trends in your industry early on? Not only will this give you the credibility of being one of the first sources but also bring in tons of traffic when the trend reaches its peak. A great way to find keywords that are trending or on the verge of taking off is to use Google Trends. It gives you a clear indication of whether that keyword will continue increasing or decreasing over time. It also allows you to compare two keywords against each other so that you can further increase your chances of picking a hot trend to create content about. If you want to maximize your efforts with this technique, don’t just create a 1000 word blog. Instead, create an “Ultimate Guide” and make sure to answer every question that somebody could have on that specific topic. This way, your article will be the go-to guide for information on that trend.

3.) Track Your Performance

As many of you may know, “data doesn’t lie,” and it shouldn’t be ignored — your content marketing strategy need to be data-driven. The whole purpose of content marketing is to provide value and build relationships with your audience. If you’re not tracking your website’s analytical performance, then you could be creating content that your audience might not even be looking for. You want to look at specific KPI (Key Performance Indicators) such as engagement, traffic, and conversion rates related to your companies goals. Looking at your blog’s analytical reports by using free tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you can get a good idea of what blogs users are landing on and what they are immediately bouncing off. You can take all this data to find out which type of content your users are engaging with the most to increase your marketing strategies ROI.

4.) Include Relevant Visuals

In 2020 simple blog posts with just a block of text on it just won’t cut it anymore. The online space has become very competitive, and if you want to stand a chance, you want to include custom visuals were it makes sense. It has been found that 65% of humans are visual learners, and 90% of the information that transfers to the brain is visual. So considering just how important visuals are in the learning process, it only makes sense to include visuals in your next content marketing campaign that could help you attract more visitors to your website and also increase user retention rates. You could include custom images, screenshots, infographics, graphs, and videos to support your written content. So make sure to generate high-quality content along with visuals and watch your traffic start to pour in.

Author Bio:

Patricio Quiroz is a digital marketer for Code Authority that enjoys reading about the newest business and marketing trends. In his free time, you can catch him at the gym, playing sports or hanging out with friends.

What content strategies are you currently using for your blog?

This is a guest post written by Lauren Wiseman.

Every business’s marketing efforts revolve around good content because that is what, besides products/services a brand offers, keeps current and attracts new customers. Many people would be surprised that book writers don’t necessarily make good marketing content writers. Be that as it may, content writing is a discipline onto itself and if you wish to be good at it, take a look at some pieces of advice that content pros have singled out. 

Train your brain

Regardless of whether you are writing a book, a magazine article or a copy for a marketing campaign, creativity is one of your most essential skills. Everyone who has to produce a creative piece of writing knows how difficult it is to force creativity. Not everything you produce will be outstanding but you can make (almost) everything to be of quality.

The more you write, the more quality your writing will possess because, at one point, quality becomes a standard. If you want to get to this stage, although it sounds contradictory to the very notion of creativity, you need a routine. This routine means training your brain to write at a particular part of the day, for a particular time. The consistency brings structure and quality to your writing and this is what allows for certain pieces to shine brighter than others.

Read, read, read

Besides training for consistency, to sharpen your writing skills, you need to read as much as you can. Reading will distance you from the everyday abbreviations and slang that we use while communicating with our friends and (sub)consciously feed your brain with complex language constructions and extensive vocabulary. Even if it is a book or an article unrelated to the topics you generally write about, you can still benefit from reading. 

In addition to that, reading other marketers’ writing, as well as their pieces of advice on writing content is of immense importance. You can always learn a thing or two or get inspired in ways you haven’t expected. You can learn about the methods they use, put your own writing in perspective, and actively work on improving your approach to writing.

Look beyond

This piece of advice refers to those that are bilingual or possess exceptional knowledge of another language besides their native. You can brush up your knowledge of the local culture, revive some old friendships and allow all of those elements to become your everyday tools. Prolific writers who are experienced in marketing and have these additional skills can approach writing in other ways as well.

For instance, those language skills may come in handy if the company you work for decides to expand. Simply translating the content won’t do because marketing messages have specific intents that need to be preserved in the other version. This is why many businesses choose transcreation because their marketing content won’t be translated word-for-word but the style, emotions, culture, and intent of the original copy will be adapted to the target audience. With your specific skill set, you can expand your area of work-related interest.  

Take notes constantly

Inspiration is everywhere around us: in the conversation at the grocery store you overheard, as well as in the manner a puppy expresses happiness. Writers, as well as other people who use creativity to pay for bills, know this very well and even find themselves dreaming of engaging ideas they can use for their work. 

This is exactly why you should make a habit of jotting down any idea or situation that you find inspiring and interesting. Good content ideas can be elusive and as soon as you think: ‘Oh, that’s such a good idea, I need to remember it’, it will already be forgotten. A little notebook or your smartphone – whichever your weapon of choice is, just make sure you have it on you always, even on your bed stand. 

Make the headline pop

The first appraisal of your content by the audience will be on the visual level and they will check if the text is divided into readable chunks. This is because most people won’t waste precious time reading something whose composition is loose and hard to read. However, the first piece of, for instance, a blog article they will assess in the sense of the content will be the headline and if you don’t make it striking, you might lose them.

The best manner to prompt your audience to continue reading the content is to evoke an emotional reaction. So, you might try using emotional adjectives such as effortless, painstaking, fun, free, incredible, essential, absolute, and strange. Also, if you have some key takeaways that you would like to point out, you should consider adding numbers to the headline in combination with words such as reasons, principles, facts, lessons, etc.

Wrapping up

From training your brain to leveraging the power of a good headline, content writers have a lot of strategies at their disposal to take their writing to the next level. Whichever elements you decide to incorporate, what’s important is that you are consistent and hard-working because that is what brings about results. Read as much as you can, work on your style, and write down every single idea that pops to your head – and you will have achieved success.

Author Bio:

Lauren is a regular Bizzmark Blog author that has many articles published with the main focus on clients who want their brands to grow in the fast-changing and demanding market. Her personal favorites are successes of small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs. She goes through life with one strong moto – Kindness, always.

Creating content today is not as simple and easy as writing articles 10 years ago.

Making sure your content stands out in a crowded, highly competitive market has become even more complicated and doubly hard. You have to pay attention to and incorporate a lot of key elements to ensure your post will be read by a large number of people including your target audience.

But whether you are a business content writer or blogger, there are techniques to help you create and promote content that stands out from the crowd and the competition.

Here are some of these tips and techniques:

1.   Be original

A tried-and-tested strategy to get someone’s attention and to stand out from the crowd is to create unique, extraordinary content — it needs to be original in the truest sense of the word.

Although it can be hard to create original content today, you can start by researching for as much information as you can which can answer a lot of people’s questions. Next, draft your content around the details you gathered.

To make your content original, explain the information you collected as you understand it and using your own words. Let your personality shine through the content while making it as interesting and informative as possible.

2.   Write 10x content

The 10x content concept does not exactly pertain to lengthy or long-form posts.

According to experts, the multiplier actually refers to the quality of the content and not on its length alone.

When you focus on originality in writing a post, you are off to a good start to creating 10x content. Originality is a key element of this type of content.

However, your post should also be able to evoke an emotional response among the readers. You also have to ensure that all readers will find the post reliable and useful. Lastly, it should have interesting images or visual patterns and excellent text structure to give readers an amazing user experience.

And to create comprehensive, informative and fascinating content, you can’t cram everything in a 300 or 400-word article. This means you have to create long-form posts but you have to make sure they are not full of fluff. Your post should provide in-depth, relevant, and valuable information from start to end.

3.   Study your competition

To create content that stands out from the competition, you need to know what your competitors are doing and how they are doing it. Keep track of the different kinds of content they publish, the topics they touch on, and their frequency of posting.

While dissecting their published content, you should also take note of the length, social media mentions, the links it got, and the keywords used. Use all these details to create your own content. You can also use the information you gathered for updating old blog posts.

However, you have to make sure that the new content you create is a step up from what your competitor or competitors have already published. It should be more detailed, educational, and interesting. Most of all, it should be original.

4.   Use the right channels

Another way you can ensure your content ranks high in a competitive niche is to select the right channels where you should publish and promote it.

Aside from publishing your content on your website, there are other content distribution platforms you have to use. These include microblogging and publishing sites such as Tumblr and Medium and social media platforms like LinkedIn. Each channel has its own target audience or followers.

You will have a good idea about which channels will work well for you by taking into account your target audience and the nature of the business you are writing the content for. You should also look at your competitors and find out where they publish their most popular content.

In addition, you have to be open to creating or rewriting content to make it more suitable for the channels where the majority of your target audience is on. For instance, if you want to publish an article on LinkedIn, you will need to adopt a more professional, formal tone. You have to come out as an industry expert as well.

5.   Engage

Lastly, to ensure your content stays highly visible, you have to interact with your readers.

Whether they are commenting on a post on your website, on another blogging site, or on your social media accounts, take the time to reply to their comments. Even if they simply liked or shared your post, you won’t go wrong with showing your appreciation to them, too.

Although constantly monitoring your social media accounts may seem time-consuming, there are many benefits to doing so. You will know immediately what people are saying about your content, and whether or not they find it relevant. In addition, you can reply to their questions or address their concerns in a timely fashion.

And to make sure you leave a lasting impact on your audience, write personalized responses. By doing so, you let them know that there is a real person who created the content. You will also have more opportunities to highlight your content and your brand’s standout qualities from the competition.

Creating content that stands out and stays visible in a competitive niche requires a lot of research, creativity and perseverance. Although it may take you some time to find the right formula, keep at it. All your hard work will pay off in the long run.

Author Bio:

Hisham Wyne is an award-winning copywriter, brand consultant and content creator based in Dubai. He has over a decade’s expe­rience in helping brands get their messages right. From crisp web copy and zippy brochures to in-depth company profiles and analyt­ical annual reports, Hisham makes words work for you – so you can sell better, gain visibility, and give your brand a unique voice.

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