It’s difficult to find much value in content with no strategy behind it. Without a content strategy plan, your intended audience is unlikely to find your copy, let alone read it.
During the MIMA Summit last week, the importance of a content marketing strategy was the topic of a session presented by Rachel Lovinger of Razorfish.
For this week’s 5 Tips post, I’ve translated some of Rachel’s valuable points into actionable steps for creating an effective content marketing strategy.
1. Discover
In a nutshell, do your homework:
* Research competitors’ content. Whether you’re launching a blog, website or email campaign, determine what information is already out there and how it’s presented. How can you distinguish yourself?
* Concept your voice based on audience and type of content. If you’re providing quick tips and human interest pieces for consumers, your content voice will likely be more conversational. Are you offering in-depth, research-driven articles for a B2B audience? Your voice should be reflect that.
* Define the clear goals and message of your content. By failing to do so, you’ll have a difficult time building a solid readership. You also risk confusing the readers you do attract.
2. Design
Step 2 is all about planning—making sure all the “i’s” have been dotted and the “t’s” have been crossed:
* Determine responsibilities. Before deploying a content marketing plan, ensure that you’ve outlined who will be the keeper of the content. If you aren’t able to hire a dedicated resource, it’s essential to appoint someone to incorporate content maintenance into his or her current responsibilities. Content maintenance could also entail tasking each employee to contribute one piece of content per month.
* Organize content. Is your content logically located on your site in a central place? Is it easy to search for a particular topic? If your readers have a difficult time navigating through your site to find useful content, they’re not likely to stick around for very long.
3. Build
With Steps 1 and 2 complete, you’re ready to start putting the wheels in motion:
* Plan a style guide. Include as much information as possible regarding everything from tone and voice to target word count. Provide best practices for optimizing content and writing checklists.
* Create a copy deck. A copy deck is essentially a roadmap for your content pages, including text, graphics, advertising and links. It can be developed in stages, starting with writing a few paragraphs to describe the content.
4. Deploy
With the first 3 steps in place, a content marketing strategy is finally ready for deployment:
* Maintain. It’s crucial to have a plan in place to continuously update content. Outdated content will quickly turn readers away. Plus, a stagnant site won’t do you any favors when it comes to search engines.
* Monitor. Leverage analytics tools to gauge what worked best and what failed. Look for patterns in the most popular types of content—i.e., checklists, charts, case studies. You can analyze virtually any variable, from optimal article length to most popular type of headline
5. Adjust
The final step to creating an effective content marketing strategy is ongoing:
* Respond. No content marketing strategy is perfect. Based on analytics reports, continuously tweak your content efforts to maximize results.
Adopted from http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/10/content-strategy/
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Success is Sweet
Internet marketers already know these strategies by heart. But there may be some who just entered the online business and marketing community who may not have tried some of the simple ways of marketing in the internet. The main point of internet marketing is to generate traffic and lead visitors and customers to your site. Your site's visibility will be the key factor for you to attract customers and make sales. Online marketing strategies have this purpose in mind.
Let us count the simple ways of marketing online:
Link Building: To achieve greater visibility in the Web, you have to have a high ranking in the search engines. To have a high ranking among the search engines, building links is vital. Search engine spiders crawl across the Web to look for the number of links you have and use it as one of the important bases on ranking your website. Build links all over the Web by reciprocal linking, creating quality content, and submitting your site to the site directories!
Keyword Search: Search for your main keyword and other terms that are related to your site. When making links, you can use your keyword and terms as an anchor text for more visibility to your site. Make use of keyword tools available online to search for the most searched for word that you can use as your keyword.
Site Directories: By submitting your site to site directories, you are also placing another link for the search engines to crawl. This adds to your number of links and can increase your rank among the search engines.
Article Submissions: One technique in leading visitors and generating traffic to your site is by submitting relevant and interesting article to article directories. Submitting articles to the directories can also help you build more links to your site, thus gaining you more links and increasing your rankings. Don't forget to make the article creative and relevant, of course. Readers won't be curious to see your website if your article doesn't get their attention.
Affiliate Marketing: The downside of this strategy is that you'll have to spend for the commissions of affiliate sales. Nevertheless, this strategy is used by many internet marketers. Affiliate marketing usually works by networking with other websites that are in the same niche as you. Now since you are both in the same niche, most usually the traffic that you can generate through affiliate marketing is targeted. This is about the best thing abut affiliate marketing (aside from generating sales). You are also building links through the links (in the ads) on the website that you are affiliated with.
Newsletters and Subscriptions: Sending newsletters to the customers and clients will not only help in building professional and friendly relationships with them, but also brings in targeted traffic to your web site. Whenever you have something new to talk about and events to promote, newsletters can be a great way to let the clients and customers in on the news.
Email Marketing: This is another popular way to generate traffic and occasionally make repeat sales. This is kind of like sending newsletters, only your are more or less not sending news but rather promoting your latest products and services. Remember that when making your emails, you should avoid making it spammy and annoying. Make your email content original, creative and interesting.
Forums: You can see the most eager visitors of the online community in forums. Participating and giving great content in the replies will help in establishing you as an expert in your niche. This will give you a boost in the eyes of the online community. You'll be able to form relationships among the community and get them to be interested in your site and business. Plus, you can place links to your website on your signature every time you make a post! This can increase your rankings and visibility in the search engines.
There really is nothing to marketing online... now all you need is just a lot of time and effort to make your website known across the internet.
Adopted : http://www.selfseo.com/story-19652.php
Let us count the simple ways of marketing online:
Link Building: To achieve greater visibility in the Web, you have to have a high ranking in the search engines. To have a high ranking among the search engines, building links is vital. Search engine spiders crawl across the Web to look for the number of links you have and use it as one of the important bases on ranking your website. Build links all over the Web by reciprocal linking, creating quality content, and submitting your site to the site directories!
Keyword Search: Search for your main keyword and other terms that are related to your site. When making links, you can use your keyword and terms as an anchor text for more visibility to your site. Make use of keyword tools available online to search for the most searched for word that you can use as your keyword.
Site Directories: By submitting your site to site directories, you are also placing another link for the search engines to crawl. This adds to your number of links and can increase your rank among the search engines.
Article Submissions: One technique in leading visitors and generating traffic to your site is by submitting relevant and interesting article to article directories. Submitting articles to the directories can also help you build more links to your site, thus gaining you more links and increasing your rankings. Don't forget to make the article creative and relevant, of course. Readers won't be curious to see your website if your article doesn't get their attention.
Affiliate Marketing: The downside of this strategy is that you'll have to spend for the commissions of affiliate sales. Nevertheless, this strategy is used by many internet marketers. Affiliate marketing usually works by networking with other websites that are in the same niche as you. Now since you are both in the same niche, most usually the traffic that you can generate through affiliate marketing is targeted. This is about the best thing abut affiliate marketing (aside from generating sales). You are also building links through the links (in the ads) on the website that you are affiliated with.
Newsletters and Subscriptions: Sending newsletters to the customers and clients will not only help in building professional and friendly relationships with them, but also brings in targeted traffic to your web site. Whenever you have something new to talk about and events to promote, newsletters can be a great way to let the clients and customers in on the news.
Email Marketing: This is another popular way to generate traffic and occasionally make repeat sales. This is kind of like sending newsletters, only your are more or less not sending news but rather promoting your latest products and services. Remember that when making your emails, you should avoid making it spammy and annoying. Make your email content original, creative and interesting.
Forums: You can see the most eager visitors of the online community in forums. Participating and giving great content in the replies will help in establishing you as an expert in your niche. This will give you a boost in the eyes of the online community. You'll be able to form relationships among the community and get them to be interested in your site and business. Plus, you can place links to your website on your signature every time you make a post! This can increase your rankings and visibility in the search engines.
There really is nothing to marketing online... now all you need is just a lot of time and effort to make your website known across the internet.
Adopted : http://www.selfseo.com/story-19652.php
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