6 Tricks To Improve Your Content Marketing

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Content marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your business. However, many companies have gone the content marketing route and struck out. Chances are, those businesses made some content marketing mistakes in their strategy. With the following tricks up your sleeve, you are bound to see results in the content marketing realm.

Focus on Your Goals

What are your goals for content marketing? They can vary from business to business. Now is the time to consider why you want to pursue content marketing and what results you want to get from it. Deciding and focusing on your goals early on will allow you to filter future decisions through this lens. If something doesn’t help you reach your goals, it shouldn’t be part of the plan.

Choose Your Players

Who will be a part of your content marketing strategy team? It could be tempting to do it all yourself. However, that probably isn’t a good idea. Time is money, especially for a business owner. Consider the time it would take to figure out how to do everything minimally well with limited results. This would have a far higher cost than hiring a professional in the field to handle it for you.

At a minimum, you should find someone with website, graphic design, and search engine optimization knowledge on hand. This person wouldn’t have to be full time, and most of them work on a contract basis, providing the services that you desire and that fit within your budget.

If you have more room in your budget, consider hiring a creative professional to develop content and delivery. All kinds of professionals could be involved, from videographers to writers and designers. The sky’s the limit if you have enough money to make it happen.

Stereotype Your Clients

Although “stereotype” often carries a bad connotation, that is precisely what you need to do with your clients. Figure out what they all have in common, then deliver content based on that commonality. The majority of your clients will have similar needs as far as products and services go, so focus on those and go for the gold.

Create Deadlines

It is easy to put off projects, especially those that don’t have a hard and fast deadline. Do yourself, and your team, a favor and create realistic deadlines. Create a timeline that maps how you are going to get to where you want to go, then set deadlines according to the overall picture. This will help keep everyone, even you, accountable for reaching your goals.

Make It Happen

So far, there’s been a lot of talk about creating content. Now it’s time to make it happen. A representative from Preszler Injury Lawyers suggests that your business is represented as honestly and realistically as possible while still reflecting your brand and personality. Once your content is created, it’s time to get it out into the world. Publish it online via your website or social media platforms. (This is where a professional can come in handy!)

Optimize Old Content

As you continue creating content, your old content is still floating around out there on the internet. Revisit old content occasionally, tweaking it to make sure it is still pertinent and relevant to your customers. There’s no need to get rid of good material just because it’s older, as long as it is still timely and drawing views.

The post 6 Tricks To Improve Your Content Marketing appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

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August 21, 2019 at 02:35PM

Also, check out  Avoidable Content Marketing Mistakes

By: Andrew Epprecht

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28 Business-Boosting Marketing Activities You Can Do in 1 Hour or Less

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The entrepreneurial lifestyle is often a hectic one.

Some “treps” easily end up working 50, 60, or even more hours per week.

Don’t get me wrong.

I love almost everything about running my businesses and blogs, but time is definitely at a premium.

And I’m sure many of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day to spend on an extensive, exhaustive marketing campaign.

But you know what?

There are a lot of marketing activities that can get legitimate results that you can do in 1 hour or less.

I came up with 28 specific activities you can do in your downtime but which will still give your business a nice boost.

Here we go.

1. Create an editorial calendar

Almost any great blog begins with a detailed editorial calendar.

This is where you coordinate your content, schedule your posts, set deadlines, list your CTAs, and so on.

In other words, an editorial calendar provides structure to your blogging campaign and keeps things from getting messy.

Honestly, this is the only way I’m able to stay on top of my game (and maintain sanity) with all of my different projects.

I recommend checking out this list of editorial calendar templates from Builtvisible for more.

2. Tweak your editorial calendar

You should also know that an editorial calendar is never static.

A good one is dynamic, ever-changing.

If you haven’t checked your editorial calendar in a while, look it over and make any necessary adjustments.

For instance, you might:

• Check off posts that have been completed
• Add new content to create over the next month
• Look for ways to make it more organized

3. Read three industry blog posts

I really recommend staying on top of industry trends.

This is your ticket to spotting patterns, generating new marketing ideas, and coming up with interesting new content to share with your audience.

That’s why I try to make it a habit to read three high-level industry blog posts whenever I get a chance.

4. Comment on three industry blogs

When you’re done reading, leave a thoughtful comment.

Go for more than just saying, “I love this blog post!”

Instead, shoot for something more detailed and insightful to prove you’ve really sifted through the information and analyzed it.

Here’s a great example of a recent comment I received on Quick Sprout:

I think this comment added even more depth to the conversation, and I can guarantee you any blogger would greatly appreciate such a comment.

I know I do.

5. Research industry trends

The way I see it, crushing it in most businesses is all about striking while the iron is hot.

That’s why I routinely do industry research to see what’s happening and stay on top of recent changes.

A quick Google search on “[your industry] trends” should pop up a wealth of information.

This can shape your business and marketing decisions and will help you stay sharp as an entrepreneur.

6. Brainstorm topics for your blog

As I’ve said before, coming up with new ideas for blog posts can be quite exhausting.

That’s why I like to devote some time to simply brainstorming new ideas so I don’t have to come up with them off the top of my head.

One of the ways I streamline this process is by using Alltop and BuzzSumo.

Here’s Alltop:

And here’s BuzzSumo:

They’re both great for seeing what’s popular and for generating ideas.

Sometimes, I can come up with as many as 50 rock solid ideas in just 1 hour this way.

7. Do keyword research

I’m a big fan of a process known as “batching,” which I’ve written about before on Quick Sprout.

Batching can be used to make nearly any task quicker and more efficient.

Here’s a simple example of using batching to deliver mail:

One marketing task that can be quite time-consuming is keyword research.

When you do this prior to writing every blog post, it can really drain your time.

That’s why I suggest doing it in blocks: identify keywords to target—all in one sitting.

You can then add your keywords to your editorial calendar so you know what to use in your upcoming content.

8. Send a pitch for a guest post

You probably already know I’m a huge proponent of guest blogging.

If you can get in front of a large, established audience, you’ll get exposure for your brand.

It’s just as simple as that.

But, of course, guest blogging first begins with sending an initial pitch.

If you’ve got an hour to burn, why not send out a couple of pitches to relevant bloggers?

And if you’re new to this, I really love this guide from Backlinko.

It will walk you through guest blogging step by step.

9. Repurpose one of your best blog posts

If you’ve been blogging for awhile, there’s a good chance you have a handful of posts that totally crushed it.

They’re the best of the best—your “unicorn content.”

Repurpose one of your best posts using a different medium, e.g., a whitepaper, long-form guide, infographic, or a short e-book.

If your audience was receptive to a particular topic presented in a standard blog post, there’s a good chance they will give it a warm reception in a different medium too.

Read over this guide for everything you need to know on repurposing content.

10. Record a video

Video marketing is ridiculously huge right now.

On average, video gets crazy engagement.

It also gets massive conversion rates.

If you’re not already leveraging video marketing, I suggest getting on board right away.

I know for a fact that video allows me to connect with my audience on a level that most other mediums cannot.

And the odds are good that it will produce a positive impact for you as well.

11. Record a podcast

I friggin’ love podcasts!

Interest in them has grown over the past few years quite a bit:

In my opinion, they’re a great way to “round off” your content and offer your audience an alternative type of media to consume.

At the time of publication of this article, I’ve recorded over 200 podcast episodes on NeilPatel.com and have found it to be a tremendous experience.

Once you figure out the software and equipment, it doesn’t take much effort to record a podcast.

You can easily do it within 1 hour.

If you’re not sure how to get started, check out this guide from Pat Flynn.

12. Make a slideshow

I feel slideshows don’t get a whole lot of love and get lost in the content mix.

But they’ve got plenty of potential and are worth experimenting with.

Slideshare alone had 70 million users as of early 2017 and can be a great way to pull in some extra traffic.

13. Create a picture quote

I’m sure you’ve seen picture quotes floating on social media.

They look like this:

They’re especially big on Twitter and Instagram and work great for expressing thoughts in a visual-centric way.

The cool thing is that picture quotes are super quick and easy to make.

Canva is one of my favorite platforms because it offers a large library of professional images that are mostly free to use.

You can borrow from famous quotes or create your own.

14. Share three epic posts on social media

Curating content is an integral part of the social media marketing process.

You definitely want to shine the spotlight on other people’s great work rather than shamelessly self-promoting your brand.

Whenever you’ve got some free time, search the Internet for three epic posts to share.

To curate content like a boss, check out this guide from Curata.

15. Follow five relevant people

Sometimes I feel my social feed is a little stale.

In which case, I search for a few new follows to spice it up.

You may even be able to make some new contacts, so always be willing to make the first move on social media.

16. Engage with five people on social media

Allow me to piggyback on that last statement.

If you’re looking to expand your network and potentially find new business partners, be always engaging with others.

This hardly takes any time, but commenting or even liking or retweeting great content can sometimes be the catalyst for new opportunities.

17. Engage with five recent followers

It’s also important to engage with the people who follow you and build genuine rapport with your audience.

When you’ve got some spare time, go through your social media accounts and pick out a handful of recent followers.

Then hit them up by thanking them for following you or even start an online conversation.

18. Target an influencer

I’m sure you’ve heard about influencer marketing and how potent it can be as a marketing tool.

And it’s totally true.

But getting to the point where an influencer actually promotes your brand takes time.

The first step in the process is finding someone who is likely to be on board.

One technique I’ve found to be effective when searching for influencers is to use BuzzSumo.

Here’s an example of what pops up after I searched for content marketing influencers:

I think a great way to make use of an hour is to research and target potential influencers in your industry.

To learn about this process, check out this post from NeilPatel.com.

19. Contact an influencer

Once you’ve found an influencer, it’s time for the approach.

This typically involves doing a little research about them, their brand, values, philosophy, etc.

Next, send them an email or contact them via their website to give them your pitch.

I recommend reading this post from Crazy Egg for the skinny on reaching out to influencers.

20. Submit your business to directories

Did you know that 145 million people use Yelp each month?

And that’s just one of many business directories.

If you’re looking for a way to boost your exposure and reel in more local consumers, it’s smart to spend some time submitting your business to relevant directories.

This ultimate list from HubSpot highlights 50 of the best directories for local marketing.

21. Check Google Analytics

It’s important to stay current on key metrics.

I like to know about any visitor traffic patterns and behavior that could impact my ability to make conversions.

If you haven’t checked Google Analytics (or whatever type of metrics platform you use) in a while, it’s smart to spend some time there.

In particular, I pay close attention to the amount of time people spend on my site, referrals, and audience interests.

22. Analyze your top competitors

If you’ve got some extra time on your hands, you may want to see what the competition is up to.

I suggest identifying three or four of your top competitors and checking the following:

• Top organic keywords
• Backlinks
• Top anchors
• Referring domains

This will give you some valuable intel on what’s working for them and what you can do to gain the upper hand.

One of my favorite tools for doing this is SEMrush.

It’s free and will supply you with a load of information.

23. Do a content audit

Although the word audit may sound time-consuming and even a little intimidating, it’s actually not all that involved.

You can do a basic content audit in as little as 1 hour.

While it may be a tad boring, it’s a great way to ensure your content is hitting its mark.

You can learn the basics in this guide from Quick Sprout.

24. Do an SEO audit

Just like you want to ensure that your content is in tip top shape, it’s also crucial to see what state your SEO is in from time to time.

Doing an SEO audit is a great way to get a glimpse of how things are performing.

More specifically, you can tell:

• What your top organic keywords are
• Whether there are any issues with meta descriptions, URL structure, etc.
• How your domain ranks among the competition

Check out this post from Search Engine Land to learn how to do your own SEO audit in only 5 minutes.

25. Check for dead links

Dead links aren’t cool.

They disrupt the user experience and can make your brand seem unprofessional.

That’s why I suggest checking for dead links every few months or so.

It’s no big deal.

Just use the Online Broken Link Checker.

It’s completely free, and it will give you the rundown of any broken links and identify their location on your site.

26. Do some internal linking

An internal link “is one that points to another page on the same website.”

Internal linking is a fundamental part of SEO and helps “spread link juice around your site.”

It’s a good idea to spend some time doing some internal linking if it’s something you’ve slacked on in the past.

Just make sure your links point to pages that are relevant and truly add to the reader experience.

27. Improve your email signature

Having an email signature that’s consistent with your company is an important aspect of branding.

Unfortunately, it’s sometimes overlooked.

If you really want to make a splash, add your logo along with a professional headshot.

Check out this infographic from Business 2 Community for the details on creating a killer email signature.

28. Fine-tune your sales funnel

Your sales funnel is the key to leading consumers through the buying process until they ultimately make a purchase.

But if you’ve been using the same sales funnel for the past few years, some serious inefficiencies could be holding you back.

Why not spend a little time going over your existing sales funnel to check for areas that could use some improvement?

Conclusion

Amping up your marketing doesn’t always require exhaustive work sessions.

In fact, there are many business-boosting marketing activities you can do in 1 hour or less.

If you’ve got some downtime and want to devote it to marketing, any of these activities should be worth your while.

Can you think of any other marketing activities that don’t require a big time commitment?

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March 29, 2017 at 03:45AM

How to Be Successful on Social: Prime Your Pump!

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In a previous post, I mentioned Napoleon, and how just as many battles are won through logistics and planning as by bullets and bombs. Success in battle, as in social media, comes from having an army of supporters before you even take one step onto the field.

But how do you begin to assemble that network in the first place? How do you command attention, convey authority and earn your followers’ respect? You have to look, act, and be the part. You must be confident, capable—ready to address the naysayers and yet leverage those who look to you for leadership. In short, you have to prime your pump!

Keep Your Followers From Getting Cranky

Remember those old hand-cranked water pumps you’d often see on farms or campgrounds? Perhaps you even grew up with one in your own front yard. Think back to a time when you ran to one of these pumps in thirsty anticipation of a cold drink, only to find that when you cranked the handle, nothing came out.

Crank-crank. Nothing.

Crank-crank. Nada.

Along comes your friend who cranks the handle once and—whoosh! Out comes the glorious, crisp, cold water from what seems like the depths of the earth. From that point on, the water flows unabated. You drink with abandon with every new crank of the handle, and you can literally fill barrels with the rewards of your efforts. Getting thirsty yet?

Similarly, when you present yourself to the world on social media, don’t disappoint your followers by not being ready to provide value right away. Prime your pump so that when people come to visit they’ll reap the rewards of interacting with you on the first pull of the handle. Prepare your public profile and persona so that it clearly states your mission and your value to your target audience. Have a great picture that speaks volumes about you without having to say a word. Craft a snappy bio that doesn’t require a dictionary or a degree in fine arts to figure out. Above all, don’t make your audience have to do a bunch of work before you provide them a payoff.

A Primer in Personal Branding

Pop quiz: think of a soft drink. Now think of a running shoe. Chances are you thought of Coke and Nike, respectively. These brands have spent considerable money over the years so that whenever you think of getting a drink or going for a run you immediately think of their brands.

To achieve business or personal opportunities in the world of social media, we need to think of ourselves as our own personal brands. When our target audience thinks of the products or services we sell, or the ideals that we stand for, we want them to immediately think of us.

The good news is that with the power of social media, building a brand no longer takes millions of dollars and dozens of years. You can start building your personal brand and priming your pump by following the simple steps outlined above. Be ready for greatness, because greatness is ready for you!

The post How to Be Successful on Social: Prime Your Pump! appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

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February 23, 2017 at 05:39AM

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4 Advanced Automation Tools To Streamline Your Social Media Without Sacrificing Your Voice

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According to Social Media Examiner’s 2016 report, “At least 90% of marketers want to know the most effective social tactics and the best ways to engage their audience with social media.”

Here’s what I say to that:

Automate as much of your social media marketing as you can, so that you do have time to test different strategies and find the approach that works best for you.

Automation Tools: The Key to Social Media Success

View automation like you would a new personal assistant. You know they’re there to relieve some of your workload, but you’d never send them into a meeting with your largest client and tell them to pretend to be you. Social media is just like that. The random tasks that require more data entry and repetition can be automated easily enough; everything else should be personalized.

Now, in terms of which automation tools you should use, I always suggest starting with the more affordable options first. If you’re new to the social game, it’s best to get your feet wet when first testing the waters. Here are my favorite cheap tools to get started:

Jetpack by WordPress.com

Jetpack is a fully-loaded plugin for WordPress that helps users automate a whole host of items for their website. One of those items, as you may have guessed, is social media.

Once you’ve downloaded the plugin for your website, visit the Settings tab within WordPress and click on “Sharing”. This is your new Publicize tool, courtesy of WordPress. It will enable you to:

• Link your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ pages to WordPress.
• Add social sharing buttons to each of your posts (for the social media platforms of your choosing).
• Automate the sharing of any post, page, or other content type on your preferred social channels.

 

 

As I said, too much automation is never a good thing on social. While it’s great to have a tool like this to automatically share your new content on social media, people will start to notice if that’s the only activity you’ve got going on.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a great way to manage the activity on your social media accounts from a single platform. It’s also a fairly comprehensive tool when compared to some of the other social media management tools available.

So if you’re looking for a tool where you can:

• Connect all your social media profiles
• Post messages to each of those profiles
• Manage your schedule of posts
• Engage with your connections
• Generate reports on activity
• And more

Start with Hootsuite.

Feedly

If you haven’t heard of Feedly before, this is what’s known as an RSS feed aggregator. In other words, if you enjoy reading content from 11 different websites, but don’t want to visit each site separately in order to do so, use Feedly.

People want to engage with businesses like they would with people. If your social media page shows post after post of your own content, your audience may get the sense that you only care about pushing your own agenda. But if they noticed that you share relevant and interesting content from other sources… Well, then, they’d see you as a well-informed and impartial thought leader who simply wants to talk about important matters, even if they don’t come from your own blog.

In other words, when you find something share-worthy on Feedly, add it to your Hootsuite.

Zapier

Zapier works similarly to the Jetpack Publicize tool. The main difference is that Zapier automates the connection between a lot more than just WordPress and your social media.

• Want to automatically share posts from a Facebook Page to your personal profile?
• Want to share your latest newsletter with your LinkedIn followers?
• How about pinning all of your Instagram photos to your Pinterest board?

Think about all the different ways you could connect your social media tools to everything else you use. Google, newsletters, WordPress, cross-social platforms, and more. Just create a Zap to make the connection, and you’ll be ready to go!

Wrapping Up

Social media has been the source of many headaches for marketers, entrepreneurs, and others just trying to figure out how to make this marketing channel work for them. Rather than spend too much time navigating the basics, automate as much of that as you can with the tools above. Then you can focus on being strategic about where to post, when, how frequently, and with whom you should share it!

The post 4 Advanced Automation Tools To Streamline Your Social Media Without Sacrificing Your Voice appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

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February 22, 2017 at 10:18PM

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Facebook Rolls Out Major Video Updates: This Week in Social Media

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February 17, 2017 at 09:03PM

Twitter's new anti-abuse measure stops notifications for threads started by people you've blocked

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February 16, 2017 at 09:02PM

How to Use Instagram Live to Generate Leads

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February 13, 2017 at 09:03PM

Sad Atlanta Falcons fan buries team gear as a warning for the future

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February 7, 2017 at 06:06AM