Content ties everything in the digital marketing realm together—that's why it is king.
Content creation has been the core part of my blog/business' inbound marketing strategy this year, which was around 70% of my entire marketing effort. The other 30% was allocated to content promotion/distribution, relationship building, site optimization, and analytics.
So this post is basically a case study of how I simplified a very complex process by only focusing on one integral part of inbound marketing (content), and how that led to hundreds of service leads for our company this year.
On content strategy
Content assets help brands communicate their messages to their target audiences. These may come in the form of visual guides, web-based tools, extensive resources and many more (as also listed by Cyrus Shepard on his recent Moz post).
In my case, I aim for every blog post I publish to be an asset that I can continuously optimize and improve.
So in order for my overall campaign to be really scalable (and for me to be able to easily integrate other inbound marketing practices), I based my content development efforts on these core principles:
- Create content that contains ideas/information that isn't found anywhere else.
- Make the content very comprehensive and evergreen if possible.
And as for the content formats, I mostly focused on creating:
- Case studies
- Extensive and evergreen blog posts (how-to's)
- Reusable content (newsletters, slide presentations, PDFs, etc.)
If in case you're wondering about the content assets I've repurposed, here are few samples:
2 months ago, I released a 4 part newsletter series that talks about 12 different scalable link building tactics.
After a couple of weeks, I decided to publish the entire series as a long-form blog post here on Moz.
Another sample is with one of my most popular guides this year (that was also featured on Moz's top-10 monthly newsletter) entitled 22 link building tips from @xightph, which I just recently turned into a SlideShare presentation:
Perhaps this approach of allocating the majority of my efforts into content development is easier for me to accomplish because I established my blog's readership 2 years before I tried it, and also given that I've already built relationships with other online marketers who habitually share my new blog posts.
I still believe that this exact process is replicable for those who haven't yet established themselves. Since it always comes down to what you can provide to your industry and finding ways to let others know you have it.
Content = links
Content assets are able to attract and build links over time, knowing that it is in the nature of content to be genuinely linkable.
Link building becomes automatic when you focus on creating useful and actionable content on a regular basis (and, of course, letting other people who're interested in your content's topic know that your content exists).
Your content won't stand on its own and be linkable by itself, so it's also important to make an effort for it to be more visible to your target audience. Here are a few things you can do to ensure it'll get to your audience:
- Outreach: Connect with other content publishers, industry influencers, and enthusiasts, and see if they're interested in checking out your content.
- Social ads: Use content placement services from Facebook or StumbleUpon to get more eyeballs to your content.
- Conversations: Participate and share your content on relevant discussions from online communities in your space (forums, groups, blogs, Q&A sites, etc.).
- Distribution: Promote your content assets through other content distribution channels such as guest blogging, regular columns, newsletters, slide presentations, videos, or podcasts.
Further reading:
- How to promote and build links to your great content
- 32 experts share their best content promotion tips
Content = relationships
Providing high-value content assets on a regular basis will also help you easily connect and engage other content publishers in your industry.
This can somehow impact how other people perceive your brand as a publisher, especially when other thought leaders are sharing your content, interacting with your brand, and inviting you to contribute to their websites (which is quite similar to what Moz has done in past years).
Relationships, partnerships, and alliances are vital in this age of marketing, as they can help increase your readership and follower base, and can particularly help improve the shareability of your site's content.
Here are a few pointers on how to engage and build relationships with industry influencers:
- Mention or use their works as a reference for your content. You can also ask them to review and validate the information within your content to build a rapport (which is also a great way to get them to see the quality of your work).
- Make sure that your content appeals to their audience/followers; this increases the likelihood of getting your content shared.
- Don't worry. You don't have any reason to be afraid to reach out to influencers when you're really confident with the caliber of your content.
Content = social activity
With the right push, a well-thought-out piece of content will almost always do well in terms of social sharing. Most content assets are designed to be share-worthy, and the common factors that make most content assets shareable are:
- Their design and if they're visually appealing.
- If they've been shared by popular/influential entities in their industries.
- If the content is emotionally compelling, educational, useful, and/or just simply adds unique value to the industry.
Making your linkable assets timeless or evergreen can also amplify its social activity, given that every time it gets a new visitor the content remains relevant, which can continuously increase the amount of social shares it is getting.
And the more you create content assets on your website, the more you can grow your following base and network. Which is why content plays a big role in social media - because it's what people are sharing.
For more actionable tips on increasing your content assets' social activity, you might want to also check the post I wrote a few weeks ago at Hit Reach on how to get more social shares for your site.
Content = search rankings
The ways in which search engines determine web pages' importance (and whether they really deserve to be prominently visible in search results) have evolved over the years.
Major factors such as relevance (which can be measured through usage/page activity) and authority (measured through social, links, domain authority, brand signals, etc.), though, still play a huge role in terms of search rankings. These metrics are also elements that most successful content assets embody.
Great content generates rankings.
A couple of pointers on making the most out of your site's content pool to boost your SEO:
- Turn the pages on your website that target key industry terms into evergreen content assets.
- Optimize your important pages/content assets for interaction, conversions, and user-experience. For example, test your pages' CTAs, encourag people to share the content, etc. These are the key areas that will make your pages rank better in search results.
Further reading:
Content = email subscribers
Email marketing is an essential part of inbound marketing, because it's a marketing platform that many businesses have full control of (owned media).
Growing your email list is a whole lot easier when you're consistently putting new content up on your site (and especially when you consider every piece of content you launch as an asset).
The more content you publish, the more people get to discover your brand, which can ultimately increase your chances of getting them to subscribe or sign up for your email newsletter.
Tips on how to increase email sign-ups:
- Make your opt-in form(s) very visible on the site's key landing pages.
- Incentivize sign-ups by offering free content such as ebooks, whitepapers, newsletter series, and/or access to free web-based tools.
Content = conversions
Content assets can definitely lift conversions, mainly because they can strongly demonstrate the brand's domain expertise and authority.
If you've planted a lot of useful and actionable content on your site, then these things are influencing your site's ability to convert visitors.
More on improving your content assets' conversions:
- Identify which landing pages/assets are constantly driving sales/new customers/service inquiries to your business. Make them more visible by building more internal/incoming links to them, improving or updating the content itself to earn better search rankings, sharing them on social networks, or basically anything that can improve their traffic.
- Continually test and improve the content's calls to action.
Becoming a better inbound marketer
Before I became an SEO in 2010, I was a freelance writer. It never occurred to me that I'd be doing both in the future—and actually more.
But I guess knowing how to get the right traffic and having a better grasp of the kinds of content that my audience needs and wants to read made me a better inbound marketer.
I would love to hear your ideas about this approach to inbound marketing, or if you have questions, I'd also love to see them in the comments section. You can also follow me on Twitter @jasonacidre.
Really nice piece of a marketing strategy with content.
The email marketing part does not make sense to me as if you write a good quality and useful content, it will automatically reach to authentic audience and will drive business. The graphic you have attached along with the section, having huge 'Bounce Rate' which indicates that users click for information but don't find relevancy. But, you still generated business which is nice.
And, as far as subscribers are concerned, we need to have bifurcated according to their interested topic. That might be a reason of high bounce rate.... isn't it?
If you can give little insight over this, would be really happy to discuss as I would be gaining something.
Thanks for the very interesting comment Sundar :)
Regarding the "high bounce rate", this is just my observation: most of the landing pages that have high bounce rates (but are still able to convert visitors into leads) are long-form content, so basically a large portion of its incoming traffic just save/bookmark it and just return to read the post when they already have the time.
Thanks. And, your comment does not seem related to actual situation because, if the user will come back to read then It should have improved 'avg. time on page' and should decline in 'new visits %'. And, type of conversion is also a matter to explore.
Well, you said right, its converting into business at last :)
Sorry, If I went away from the topic which you have written on. It just a thought which had come in mind after reading your article thoroughly.
Thanks for sharing such informative content as its going to help me in making a content based marketing for my blog.
Late to the discussion but I want to add that 'avg. time on page' requires two page views to calculate the difference in time stamps. Kaushik does a great job of explaining this on his blog https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/standard-metrics-revisited-time-on-page-and-time-on-site/
I work hard on the SEO and content of my niche site and often read great posts on Moz and other SEO sites. There are however two worlds. The seo world creates itself. It is full of enthusiasts who really know what they are talking about and there is a huge audience of webmasters and owners of small independent websites who want to read all they can to improve theirs sites.
However, converting ideas that work so well for a dynamic online industry such as SEO and taking it and applying it to the very competitive but undynamic niche world of garden buildings in England (where search success in my niche still depends upon one basic keyword phrase of 'garden office' see www.iobuild.co.uk/garden-office/ to understand the tiny world I'm talking about) can be quite a challenge!
As someone who give independent advice on building garden offices and other domestic garden buildings i do pull in some traffic with long tail keywords. but nothing like the traffic you get if you are ranking on page one.
Put the 'garden office' into any social media and a few limp results will appear. Broaden out to long tail keywords and there is nothing at all. Focus on gardening and you get stiff responses from gardening experts saying they are interested in plants not buildings for their gardens.
I would love to read about an SEO industry expert taking a really obscure niche that depends upon national rather than local search and see what they can do with it. Doesn't have to be my niche, but if someone was willing to have a go it could provide some really useful guidelines for people whose small, independent websites focus on product rather than seo or social media, apps or digital technology.
I've actually been thinking of doing a post about this for a very long time (a real case study on marketing obscure or not-so-interesting niches) - just have to make sure that my clients approve of sharing their internal data though. Although, there are a lot of case studies here on the Moz blog that are somehow relevant to what you're looking for. But yeah, I'd definitely add this one on my to-do list! Thanks.
Hey Jason,
Thanks for the awestruck post.. You rightly said that we should recognize the true power of our content. I'd like to quote the latest post of Mr.Rand here about the Visual Assets.
There is one thing that we need to focus is, "On which topics we need to write about". For instance,
if I work for an app development firm, on which type of content should I stress on? You can't go always for the topics like: Top 5 apps for abc, top 5 apps for xyz, Top 5 apps for 123.....
The content should be technical but without the jargon and it should be based on the need of your target audience. You rightly said that a Good Content will give you --> Rankings---> Email Subscribers---> Social Reputation and most importantly ---> Conversions. Not only these but the Good content will also give you the loyal audience which always wants to come to your blog willingly.
Make a content that people fall in love with. :)
If you're building content for an app development firm, you can focus on topics that solve most common questions/problems by your target customers (or perhaps the problems that your own apps/products solve). You can also create ton of case studies in that field, I believe. Thanks Umar :)
Thank you for the response. Yes you are right and I'm working on the same footprints that you mentioned. :)
Great Read. Thanks Jason :)
Also, apps tend to promote a lot of links just being apps. If you have the critical mass of users, people begin to review. You can speed this up by reaching out which in turn directly helps with link building.
Jason,
We followed your ego baiting tip actually in this post.
worked like a charm.
It is interesting to see that the asset sometimes doesn't matter, especially on Facebook.
Its all about the influence of the person.
We recently shared a picture of the artwork of an upcoming vinyl release (for a music label).
No success at all.
After reading your post about the social shares,
We tried the ego baiting.
We sent a message to the artist himself asking to just share the image, that's it.
A small line of text "out soon" to just see what impact an artist has.
The artist shared the picture on his profile he got over 90 likes within seconds.
Just by re-sharing, not even mentioning the label page,
the page received over 60 likes in seconds.
So they clicked on the link to the page in the title of the fb post.
I'm still blown away by this.
tnx for the great tip!
I find it harder to do so in an organic way (i mean getting links for search).
You need a very good angle & a company that wants to take the beth of putting the hours into it.
Hey Dries,
Thank you so much for the very encouraging comment!
I'm always happy when people apply the things I share - I'm sure that all the other bloggers here feel the same way too whenever their works get appreciated. And I'm also glad that you've got your own insights from just trying the method out. Hope everything goes well with your campaign :)
Hi jason,
You shared great stuff about content. Its very true that content is king, strong and informative content surely attract more people to read it. Its absolutely right that 100% original content helps to better performance in Google SERP. And in digital marketing original content will help to lead whole market. I am really loved your post too much interesting.
You nailed it Jason!
Right Jason. That's why rich content blogs are performing very well in Google SERP day by day rather than services websites.
Was nice and fully informative as always. And I would like to add one sentence which incorporates the whole context behind this process.
No matter what business niche and competitor level you have just concentrate on three milestones of
1.Inform
2.Educate
3. (and then go for) convene.
And future will be yours. :)
Very true! Thanks for that man!
Great point Jason about concentrating on publishing content that is not available instead of great content that is a dime a dozen. Thinking outside the box is defiantly a huge leverage point as Inbound Marketers.
it's nice to see the visuals on all this stuff. Not bland at all and definitely and easy read.
Glad that you liked this post guys.
Being able to separate yourself from the rest is what really makes brands successful nowadays, especially on the web. It's hard, but definitely worth the effort.
You always provide really good posts on here and inbound.org. Thanks for the insights. Definitely think creating great content on and off your website is the way to go today. Another important factor seems to be how well you can promote your content as well, to get it to catch a social wave and shared on various platforms.
Very well said Jason! Thanks for sharing this very relevant article of yours! This is what I really love about Moz, I can learn lots of SEO thing, which I really got interested the most!
Rand would be out ranked again :). 1st comment ever . Hope to see you on white board Friday!.
Galing talaga ni IDOL :)
Thanks Adam. Hopefully in the future :)
Jason, a great topic here for market strategy with content. "Content is KING" so king always be King.
Now a days content marketing is going crazy, even building back links, brand image promotion and help to conversion after all. But it's depend how we used for inbound marketing and how much we success.
By the way thanks for a nice insight, look forward to again with great posts.
There you go! The nicest and simplest run-down why content is everything!
It's also important to note that the interactive utility plays a crucial role in relation to content as well! You can fill a site with great content, but if you don't follow the basic rules of a good layout design, fonts and colors, etc., it'll all be in vain.
Good readers are picky choosers, so treat your site like a 5-star hotel, and you're more than likely to see readers return!
Agree - content is an element that helps a brand to effectively communicate with its target audience, so other factors such as design (as well as how you promote yourself/content) are very important too - to really make the most out of your campaigns.
Thanks for sharing the analysis Jason! Content being released in large amount is not effective until it adds value to be viral in digital arena. A whole new approach is required to adhere to quality content that can make the user to follow your conversion funnel paths. Subscription is a also a mini conversion. Recently i saw a google display network You-tube update which focused on "Earned action Report" which is a signal for micro-conversion and abenefit to advertisers as well. You may find a good intro to this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLUzJR35su0
Also recently there was an update on Facebook too on meme sharing and content linked to them. This you may find here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-algorithm-meme-nj
So we can see that we need to have a vast and quality portfolio of contents to extract the benefits from them.
Very Powerful stuff by Jason!
We all hear all the time that content is king but very few people have an idea of how exactly the content is king and how once can generate links, relationships and promotion out of it. This post clearly defines why creating content on regular basis is important and why this is the place where you should invest most of your time.
Great Read!
Couldn't agree more! Thanks man!
Completely agree with your approach on content Assets and am sure it will work for established brand having readership. What about small businesses having no online presence? I found many startup producing great content but did not get attention due to lack of visibilities.
Thanks for the comment (and the tweet) Jignesh!
As for small businesses, people will always find answers to their problems, and sometimes small businesses have the solution (product/information/service) to most people's problems - so the key is to provide the best answer (and the best way to demonstrate it is through content).
I also see a lot of startups pushing out great content, but as I've said also on the post above - a great content wouldn't move on its own - so if they're really confident with their content, then perhaps investing (money, time and effort) to heavily promote their content will sound very reasonable.
That was a great piece again Jason !
A good content strategy (relevant, consistent, targeted...) has never been such a critical point today and it is the pivotal element of any digital action. the way you've explained all this is simple (in a positive meaning) and very efficient, as usual.
Keep the good work and thank you for all your helpful resources.
Thanks Amalik, glad you liked it!
Hi Jason this is a great article and actually really shows what SEO is all about. It motivated me to focus more on writing fresh and unique content, I wonder how much time you spend more on less on an article like this?
It usually takes me 4 - 6 hours to finish a content like this - though I already have a rough draft/format (with all the data, reference and screenshots I need) before writing the actual post :)
Great content is at the core of every great website & marketing campaign. It's ultimately what leads to links, rankings, brand development, and pretty much everything else you mentioned in the post. Great insight - thanks for sharing Jason.
Yes sir, very true! Thanks for reading.
Jason, you are freaking killing it. I did notice that the link in your post bio to Xight Interactive goes to wordpress page that has yet to be developed? Also, quick question, why not combine Xight and your SEO blog?
Thanks for dropping by Jonathan - and thanks for noticing the Xight Interactive website :)
The site coming out very very soon! As for the reason why I didn't combine Xight and my SEO blog is that Kaiserthesage is a personal brand (that I've solely built from scratch), while Xight is a company that our core team has started as a group, so I believe that it deserves its own entity to be built on its own given that all of us have exerted individual efforts to make the company really work.
This is a great article Jason!
I couldn't agree more that every piece of content should be an asset that will attract audience and links over time. Yes you have the news item which isn’t necessarily evergreen per say, but it is still an important asset which can still attract links and especially traffic, even once the news has passed. Other assets can evolve over time, be re-promoted and bring a steady flow of traffic, links and conversions.
I think outreach or "content amplification" is a key piece of the content jigsaw which many overlook but should really be part of the content strategy,. Well done for highlighting it within the article.
Agree with the news part, especially when you look at it a wider perspective, as the entire "news section" of a website can be considered as a powerful asset (in which people may always use it as a reference or point other people to it for updated news about that certain industry).
And I couldn't agree more with content amplification - which is really a vital part of inbound marketing. As I've mentioned in the post, a great content wouldn't be able to move on its own, they all need a push to get straight to its target audience.
Really great post! Love the insight.
A great article, in this blog, everything to learn, continue to share quality content, thank you very much for providing us with relevant information
Thanks Jesson for sharing thoughts & agreed that content is the kind. But what about eCommerce websites & Portals where we have less content & more products. Unnecessarily putting content will work? we rarely found any content on eCommerce sites & these sites are making money & ranking as well....
Appreciate your feedback... :)
Great job, Jason. All great content is evergreen. I totally agree with that theory.
Nailed it. This is great :)
Great job you nailed it!
Jason, you've provided some excellent, actionable information here. I'm taking a serious look at my content strategy for 2014 and this post will be very helpful. Thanks.
Glad I could help Mark. Feel free to ask if you encounter something that you might need more help with.
Very truly said Jason, content ties almost everything in digital marketing. There are many theories (available on internet) on how to come up with great and useful content. But if someone needs a practical example of that, they don't have to go somewhere else, just see how Moz's blog is doing that and their success is not invisible to anyone.
Thanks for sharing.
Yes! Also, there are ton of other successful websites in other industries that are killing it in content marketing. Just look at and observe the top blogs in the industry you're working on, and you'll get plenty of ideas/insights on how your space works in terms of content consumption.
Well said Praveen. Its great place to learn from mentors like Jason. Cheers
Content and will always be the king in digital marketing. Creating fresh and valuable content will surely lead you to success.Thanks for sharing this article, I enjoyed reading it.
Thanks Barbara, and glad that you enjoyed it :)
Jason,
Saved this piece for my "Sundays w/Seo" session. As always, it is on-point. I half suspected you were a content-first guy.
Two elements you cover exceedingly well with all of your work are (a) creating invaluable evergreen content that stands the test of time and (b) creating content that's neither readily available nor easy to produce. In a recent blog, you alluded to these elements being the core of your philosophy surrounding content creation.
Cyrus's "Big Content" blog seems to validate those points.
I'm surprised more companies are not following suit, but maybe it's because they cannot step off the infographic bandwagon.
RS
Great advice, Jason. I've tried to always operate under the principle that content is king. I studied journalism before becoming a blogger and eventually, a social media editor, and that foundation has made it easy to focus on writing quality content. But I have to say, I've had my doubts on the credibility of this often administered advice. There are just so many blogs out there with crappy, regurgitated content, that are driving tons of traffic and "engagement" (often just other bloggers leaving comments because of the high traffic and hoping to drive views back to their own site). But there are tips here that I've never considered before, such as creating "evergreen" content and reusing content in newsletters and other formats, and maybe that is what I've been missing. Thanks for all the helpful information! I'll continue to focus on content while keeping these considerations in mind.... we'll see how it goes!
Nice post