content strategy Archives

5 Agile Marketing Principles to Boost Your Content Creation Process

Making homemade pasta was a dirty pastime I recently engaged in for several hours on a Sunday afternoon, but it helped me understand the complexity of a simple strand of spaghetti.

I had no idea that, depending on the sort of pasta you want, there are numerous varieties of wheat to utilise in virtually endless combinations.

Many marketers and I share a similar connection with content.

Without actually comprehending the complex dance that resulted in their production, we happily use the goods of content marketing. Even those of us in charge of one or two of those steps lack a thorough understanding of the entire content development process.

Early on, we could get away with a haphazard approach, but now that high-quality content is expected, we need to invest in both the process of creation and its results.

You can’t just eat spaghetti without thinking about it any more; you need to get your hands filthy by learning about and improving the content marketing process.

Why the process is important

For years, a portion of the value of the content generation process has been concealed from view. It manifests in the study conducted by CMI, where the benefit of a written content strategy is frequently recognised. If you haven’t been following along, here are some tips for content marketers with a strategy for their content:

Are much more likely to believe that their content marketing is effective.
I find content marketing to be less difficult in all aspects.
Feel more efficient when using social media and any content marketing strategies
can support an increase in the content marketing budget.

Execution, however, makes up the other half of the equation; strategy only makes up one.

What happens once the plan is successful? What makes it come to life?

It appears that part, as well, needs to be recorded.

Marketers that document their processes are 466% more successful than those who don’t, according to CoSchedule.

When your method is in order, amazing results become possible. Every piece of work that passes through the process improves as it proceeds smoothly from beginning to end. Work is completed more quickly and is more likely to be of excellent quality and related to marketing goals.

And if we’re being completely honest, most of us could stand to improve in those areas.

Using an agile process for content marketing

An easy and clear way to start is by documenting your method, which increases your chances of success. But you’ll probably find out through documentation that execution could be improved.

Being “better” at executing content marketing is a vague and pointless objective. You need a trail that is well-marked.

You gain more from frameworks created for the first totally digital profession, software development, as marketing becomes an increasingly digital career.

Of course, I’m talking about the use of Agile methods in marketing.

Agile content marketing in action

I’m not suggesting that you implement the whole of agile frameworks like Scrum or Kanban, just to be clear. I recommend incorporating Agile values into your content marketing strategy.

The five areas of visibility, experimentation, iteration, cooperation, and efficiency are highlighted by agility in general and agile marketing in particular.

Visibility

Open up the conversation and see what transpires. Visibility could simply mean outlining all that your content team has planned and is working on for the upcoming month. Going one step further and putting that in a digital project management tool might be required, but at this point, that’s really just a bonus. Even a simple sticky note list on a whiteboard is a positive step.

In the end, enabling this openness enables those making content requests to understand how their new request affects the work already underway. Additionally, it displays the true extent of your content efforts, which is frequently MUCH larger than anyone outside the content team believes.

Finally, exposure reveals how effective your content marketing campaign really is. Although it won’t miraculously resolve all of your issues, it’s a great starting point.

Your new maxim should be: if you can’t fix it, make it obvious.

Experimentation

When you imagine the work, you’ll likely realise there is probably too much going on. What we can quit doing is the topic of the next logical conversation.

It can appear to be a sign of failure or missed opportunities to do nothing. Instead, use experimentation as an agile value to steer your content marketing.

The goal is to come to terms with the fact that no plan can be perfect. Audiences, rivals, and the erratic digital world in which we live are all unpredictable.

Accept numerous short-term tests rather than spend weeks or months trying to create a foolproof yearlong plan.

These experiments ought to be, in order to do their best:

They are safe to fail because they are made to not harm the brand if they don’t work.
executable in two to three weeks’ time is short term.
Well-designed, with clearly defined outcomes, measurements, and success and failure criteria (use the scientific method as your guide).
Iterative: Successful experiments encourage more of the same in the future.

Iteration

It’s time to iterate, the third Agile marketing value, when experiments show potential.

When you embrace iteration, you build upon tested concepts, gradually enhancing their value, attractiveness, and functionality.

Collaboration

The aforementioned values, as you might expect, operate best with a variety of viewpoints. Agile is built on the idea that those doing the work most closely and those who will be consuming it should determine how it is done.

Agile, in a word, promotes better teamwork. In other words, a content producer working alone in a basement office with a computer simply won’t be as effective as a team that collaborates and puts the audience first.

Agile develops structures like daily standup meetings to promote in-the-moment communication. In order for the team to offer value quickly and frequently, it also aims to form teams with a variety of talents and knowledge.

Even if you’re not ready to restructure your team or hold daily meetings, look for other points of view to help you create your content. Collaboration always enhances the process of creating material, whether through formal evaluations or an informal show-and-tell.

Efficiency

Although agile processes are frequently linked with quickness and productivity, I kept the discussion of efficiency for last since it is not the main objective of true Agile practices. Agile frameworks’ strength lies in their simplicity or in maximising the number of unfinished tasks.

Agile teams want to do less work, so let me say that again because it needs to be said again.

You are rewarded with an increase in the amount of work you can accomplish if you are successful in maximising the amount of labor you consciously choose NOT to undertake. Working on less and achieving more is one of the most perplexing aspects of the process, but it is unquestionably true.

The process undermines the ability to be creative.

Last but not least, an agile content marketing approach unleashes more than just quickness, productivity, and efficiency. Additionally, it brings about employee pleasure and makes way for genuine creativity.

5 Innovative Video Concepts to Generate Leads

Even just that fact supports the use of video-based content marketing. But the secret is to produce videos that resonate with your audience and are in line with your goals. It takes a lot of planning, strategizing, and organization to develop a successful video marketing campaign that draws potential clients.

Videos can generally be interesting. However, employing them to create demand and leads requires extra work on your part. Here are five suggestions to get you started.

1.Include a compelling call to action

Encourage viewers to take action, whether you share a quick Instagram Reel or a lengthy YouTube video. Depending on your objectives, it may be any of the numerous choices, such as going to your website, buying something, subscribing to your channel, signing up for a newsletter, etc.

A successful call to action makes it clear what you want people to do. “Download now” or “Share with your friends,” for instance.

If your video is lengthy, place CTAs frequently throughout the entire thing. You may add cards and annotations to YouTube videos to promote particular CTAs. Make sure the CTA is appropriate and placed at the right time to instruct the viewer on how to interact with your brand.

The YouTube channel for Business Insider is a good source of inspiration. Each video ends with a prominent CTA that is visible for 10 to 15 seconds, providing the audience adequate time to read it and take action.

2.Increase landing pages with videos

The purpose of landing pages is to increase lead generation. They have been optimised to draw in quality leads. Videos about them can be incorporated to make them more interesting and educational.

Videos help you communicate more ideas without using a lot of text. The page’s text, including the headline and CTAs, can be used to provide more context for the main topic that is covered in the video.

Need some motivation?

3.Incorporate video into email campaigns

Your emails will stand out more if you include videos in your inbox outreach. Videos can be included in a variety of emails, including newsletters, invites to events, and announcements of new products. You can experiment and test different ideas to see what works best for your brand and audience.

It’s not easy to use videos in emails, though. Emails containing embedded videos are not accepted by providers like Outlook and Gmail. The recipient’s device could not support embedded video, even if the source does.

You can fix this issue by including a link to your video in your email. As an alternative, you might employ specialised email marketing tools. To make it simpler to include videos in your emails, software like BombBomb, Vidyard, Hippo Video, and similar programs provide Gmail and Outlook-specific connections.

Alternately, you might generate a thumbnail image by taking a screenshot of the video and including a play button. Want to accomplish that quickly? Click the add play button to view the image. You may make one, construct one, choose a play button design, alter its size, or add an image. Save the updated play-button picture. Include the image and a link to the video in your email.

Don’t forget to include “video” in the subject line of your email. That might encourage more subscribers to click and enhance your open rate, which ought to bring in more leads.

4.Use video content that is gated.

Using gated content to create leads for your company is a terrific idea. For the uninitiated, access to the content requires visitors to provide their contact information. Videos can be gated, just like white papers, case studies, and e-books, which are content formats that frequently lend themselves to this practice.

Videos such as tutorials, demos, and how-tos can be effective gated content because they are instructive, which audiences frequently perceive to be beneficial.

You may produce a series of videos. To pique viewers’ curiosity about the content, the first few would be unrestricted. Gate, the remaining ones after that. Opting-in increases the likelihood that the leads are qualified.

You must express the benefit the audience will gain for this method to be effective. Be specific about what they will receive and how it will help them.

5.Make use of video SEO

Your visibility and interest can be greatly increased by having your movies rank well in search engines. Create a catchy, succinct headline to draw in searches. Create a title for your films that naturally combines the primary keyword to optimise them for search. To ensure that the complete title can be seen in the search results, keep the title to 70 characters or fewer.

It’s crucial to write a meta description that provides searchers with a quick summary of what to expect. Instead of stuffing keywords into the meta description, use them when they make sense given the surrounding information.

Include a transcript beneath the video so search engines can’t read the words spoken in it. Web crawlers are more likely to index the video as a result of having a better understanding of what it is about.

Start a video marketing campaign.

Videos provide a wealth of options to inform and persuade your audience to interact with you. You may develop your business by strategically using videos in your content marketing strategy to create demand and generate leads. Have you prepared?

Learn the Fundamentals of Link-Building to Improve Your SEO

However, a lot of content marketers find link building to be a difficult undertaking. I’ve got you covered if you fit that description or simply want a refresher on acceptable link-building strategies.

Three different kinds of linkages

Let’s first examine the three types of reliable links:

Backlink: A link from another website to one of your content assets (such as a blog post or infographic) or your main website.
Internal link: Your website has a link on one page that directs visitors to another page. (Internal links assist Google comprehend your site’s structure, which is beneficial for SEO, but they are not as valuable as external links. They are also essential for increasing site engagement and lowering bounce rates)
External link: A page on your website has a link to an appropriate external website. (Relevance wasn’t important in the early days of backlinking, but it is now.) For third-party websites, your external links count as backlinks.

No-follow versus “follow”

Links are not all created equal. Similar to how internal and external links affect search engine optimization, follow and no-follow links connect to external content but have quite different effects on it. Exposure Ninja explains the distinction clearly:

Follow links are trustworthy internal or external links that point to your website, which is what you want while building backlinks.
The code rel=”nofollow” is used on the back end to apply no-follow links. It is evident in the linking URL. The connected page won’t directly profit from this link because that tiny piece of code instructs search engines not to follow it.

How come no-follow links are used on websites? Some of the causes are explained by Exposure Ninja:

Unreliable content: No-follow links are frequently used to safeguard publishing websites. For instance, it’s standard procedure for websites that permit users to post links in the comments section because the connections may lead to spammy or abusive content that the website does not endorse.

Links that don’t require crawling include: When it crawls (indexes) your website. You don’t want Google to waste its precious time indexing pages on your website that have nothing to do with search (for example, password-protected areas). It’s crucial to include a no-follow.

Paid links: Google and other search engines do a lot to prevent SEO from becoming a pay-to-play industry. So, if a website receives payment to host a link, the link should be considered no-follow. (I will provide more details below.)

Know the differences among paid

Paying for links may be a dubious SEO strategy. Additionally, it can be an effective strategy to raise awareness for your company and increase its visibility while acquiring excellent links. How can you tell them apart?

Let’s walk through three alternatives. Think of them like a traffic light with three different colours: red for direct purchase, yellow for linking services, and green for go (SEO agencies).

Direct acquisition

What is the main deterrent to direct backlink purchases? Google will lower your site’s ranking if it detects that the link is a paid one. The credibility of those backlinks will be quite low in the eyes of search engines.

Watch out for companies and websites that promise and/or supply inexpensive links. These so-called “link farms” deliver your link to numerous, mostly irrelevant websites. I am uncertain if it is a link farm. If you’re unsure of a link’s relevance on a website, Google probably has the same question. It may be tempting to go cheap and quick, but it’s just not worth the risk.

Linking services

Your backlinking requirements can be met by a variety of third-party linking providers. Their authenticity is in question, though. There are rumours that many of them are private blogs. networks (PBN), which are businesses that pay a group of bloggers to post your link on their website, regardless of how pertinent it is to the content of the site in question.

Even if 1% of (these links) come from legitimate sites, the other 99% being PBN connections, does nothing except hamper your results, according to the specialists at Guest Post. The lesson? Examine any linking services thoroughly, and ask as many questions as you can about their strategies and the outcomes you should anticipate.

SEO companies

All the tasks that a linking service will promise to complete will be carried out by SEO organizations, but reputable businesses also include additional strategies. They conduct an analysis of your website, collaborate with you to establish your objectives, and identify the kinds of links required to improve your overall Google rankings. They might also produce the material for you or along with you to get those backlinks.

You won’t be offered a specific number of links by an SEO company. They are far more committed to successfully establishing your brand’s visibility via the utilisation of numerous reputable strategies and KPIs.

Not all organisations are created equally. If you’re thinking about working with an SEO service, ask them to be specific about how they plan to build the links you require. After that, you can determine if they are effective link-building strategies.

Ask them to explain if they mention using their “database of contacts” at all. Some less honourable businesses will make the pretence that they build their backlinks while actually outsourcing your service to one of the linking businesses discussed above.

How to acquire high-quality links

It’s time to consider what content and websites can help you obtain those high-quality backlinks now that you are aware of the various link types and paid methods to obtain them. The most reliable media and websites will link to you.

The SEO specialists at my company, 10x Digital, have listed some of the components that help generate such links.

Produce superior content.

Link building in reverse is one of the major mistakes we observe clients making. Instead of emphasising the linked-to material, they concentrate on the link. In order to increase views, impressions, engagement, and most importantly, conversions—which are the lifeblood of any business—your content must be valuable and meaningful. In order to do this, you should:

Identify your target audience and the topics that appeal to them (and search for them).

conduct a market analysis. Take a look at your sector. What are the trendy terms? What keywords do you want to see associated with your website in search results?

Look for holes in the material of competitors. What subjects might you cover that they haven’t? Use an SEO tool, like Semrush or Ahrefs, if you have access to one, right away. To help you optimise your website, look at their backlink profile and dwell periods.

With this new knowledge, concentrate on creating a variety of pertinent concepts and content genres to increase your distribution possibilities.

Post guest articles.

A tried-and-true method for honest link-building is guest posting. The secret is to produce and provide content that is actually useful for the third-party blog. The person on the other end of the email should instantly understand what you want to write about and how it will resonate with their audience, so keep your request or pitch for a guest blog post brief and to the point

To improve your SEO results, fix outdated content.

Your website likely contains a mountain of published material if your business has been around for longer than a year or two. Because so much of that information is out-of-date or unrelated, it no longer benefits your audience or your brand.

However, it doesn’t hurt at all, right?

Wrong. The search rankings and user experience of your content may be badly impacted by outdated content.

For instance, published content may contain links to articles, studies, or other helpful websites. Pages go offline over time for many reasons. These links might now lead to pages that no longer exist. As a result, your search ranking suffers since Google dislikes content with broken links. They are not well received by audiences either.

Furthermore, your material may cover subjects that don’t align with your company’s present marketing or content strategies. It would be undesirable for those pages to appear in searches.

Many brands are reluctant to remove information, yet the outcomes are frequently pleasantly surprising. For instance, HubSpot removed over 3000 pieces of old material. The business noticed an improvement in its SEO results in just a few months.

Conduct a content audit first.

Despite what HubSpot has learned, you shouldn’t erase all of your previous material. Much of the information you’ve already provided can be enhanced to boost SEO and the audience experience.

Fortunately, there are numerous techniques to enhance already published material in order to boost SEO. Even better, information that has been appropriately maintained or renovated can benefit you just as much as fresh postings. For instance, according to Search Engine Journal, periodically deleting or updating outdated information may increase page traffic to your site and improve SEO. You could eventually save your brand money by putting these tactics into practice.

You must first locate the erroneous or out-of-date content if you intend to cut it with digital scissors. You must thus audit your content. Every piece of content on your website, whether it be blog posts, tutorials, or interview articles, should ideally be reviewed to determine what still benefits your target audience by establishing authority or by providing information. Start with one content area, such as blog posts, and then extend from there if the volume of content makes that effort too challenging.

Remove or move content that is:

no longer applicable due to modifications to your business or shifting industry trends
Not useful to the people you now want to reach

The SEO boosting strategies listed below may help the material you choose to preserve.

Update and republish quality but outdated material.

What should you do with your archived blog articles and other reliable content that you wish to keep? Republish them since Google favours recently published material.

However, don’t simply repost them on your website because that will quickly result in a ranking penalty in the eyes of Google’s computerised search engine algorithm.

Refresh the article instead by:

Adding new sentences
Updates to current ones
Including fresh links and images

After that, post your excellent material again with the current date. After revising more than 20 previous blog entries, Databox, a well-liked dashboard platform for organisations, noticed a 75% boost in website traffic.

As you work on upgrading older information, keep the following options in mind.

In the content you’re maintaining, remove any references to dated statistics.

Look through posts that are largely truthful and reliable. Edit out any incorrect information or dated references that may be present.

Consider that you’ve written a fantastic blog post for your small business about how to use a particular product. Although the article is still current, it contains information from five years ago. To benefit your brand, remove such phrases.

By doing this, you may avoid having broken links negatively affect your content. Additionally, it stops your target market from reading out-of-date material and drawing the wrong inferences about the legitimacy or authority of your brand.

By changing those out-of-date references or data pieces with more recent ones, you can improve the SEO value of previously published pages.

Go online and look for current, correct, and relevant references to replace each one that was removed. This ensures that your links point to reliable sources and that they are not broken.

Review and update evergreen posts as well, don’t forget.

Read over old postings to look for references that aren’t relevant or convincing anymore. Take into account the market, its trends, and the search terms used by your target audience.

Put on your editor’s cap and start working after that. Cut the fat from outdated material, add new words expressing fresh ideas, and more without altering the essentials of previously published works. This will take you less time than if you were to develop new content while enhancing the SEO for your company.

Include fresh SEO keywords and links.

Finally, by including recently discovered SEO keywords and links, you can refresh outdated material and increase its worth for search engine optimization.

You can leverage the keyword research you’ve already done to improve older material if you’re still constantly producing new content as part of your content strategy. To make older blogs more relevant and authoritative than before, consider replacing or adding new keywords, and think about including a few new, high-authority links within older blogs.

Finally,

Making outdated material relevant to your target audience again requires work. However, upgrading existing material and removing outdated content can work wonders for your content marketing plan.

Without spending money on new material, you might increase organic traffic to your website and better meet the demands of your audience. See the outcomes for yourself by putting these tactics to use.

How to Build Your Personal Brand’s Content Marketing Strategy

You’ve probably thought about the future of your lucrative job in light of the talk of the Great Resignation (or Great Reshuffle). Even if you’re happy with your current job, it’s a good idea to make plans for potential promotions and career changes (especially unexpected ones).

And to do so, something that should be very familiar to you right now is necessary: developing a content marketing strategy.

But this time, you’ll design it for your individual brand.

Not sure if you should spend the time?

What does “personal brand” mean?

Understanding what a personal brand is is necessary before you can create your own content marketing plan.

Anh added during the Twitter chat, “Think of it as your reputation and calling card to the globe.” You can connect with potential employers, clients, customers, collaborators, and other people thanks to your personal brand.

A personal brand benefits you in the ways that Gabriela Cardoza described in the chat:

Try to set yourself apart.
develop your thinking leadership
Increasing credibility and trust
Create a network

You already have a personal brand. Every time you interact with someone, you leave an impression on them about who you are.

When you create a content marketing strategy for your personal brand, you’ll put yourself on a path toward influencing those perceptions to support your goals.

Create a written content marketing strategy for your own brand using these seven stages.

1.Write a mission statement for the company.

The foundation of every effective content marketing strategy is a grasp of the mission and goals. Making a mission statement is the first step in developing your individual content marketing plan.

Gabriela outlined the parts of a personal brand mission statement as follows:

Your identity
How you act
what you believe
What makes you special

I’ll add another: What are you hoping to accomplish with your brand?

2.Compose a statement of the editorial mission.

Make a declaration of your editorial personal mission that relates to your brand mission.

Your core audience is the group you are trying to reach with your message.
What you’ll provide in terms of the information you offer
The things your audience can do (or will know) as a result of your content are known as the outcome or benefit.
You don’t have to make a long statement. Just give a phrase or two of an overview.

Now that you’ve finished creating your editorial mission statement and personal brand, you’re ready to create a content marketing strategy.

3.Describe the aims of your brand’s content marketing.

Your professional goals (to gain a raise, a new job, more clients, etc.) can be accomplished with the aid of your personal content marketing, but those aren’t your content marketing objectives.

Content marketing entails producing and disseminating information in order to draw in and keep your audience and ultimately motivate lucrative action.

Here are some ideas for individual content marketing objectives:

Increase brand recognition by publicising your name.
Gain brand credibility by making yourself seem like a trustworthy, valued resource.
Make a closer connection with consumers to increase brand loyalty.
Find strategic alliances: Make others want to assist you (e.g., guest blogging and conference speaking).

The correct audience will become clear after your content marketing objectives are established.

4.Specify who your target market is.

Though you already know what you want, what does your target audience want?

Describe your audience’s makeup first. What professions do they hold? What functions or positions do they hold?

Afterward, they describe their interests and actions. What are they seeking to learn? What are the aches and pains? Where do they reside (either physically or online)?

Say you work as a content marketing professional for a business that provides financial services. Increasing knowledge of your name and abilities is your aim. Your target audience includes managers and directors of content marketing, communications, and marketing in the financial sector. They want to learn more about how to persuade the executives of their company to support their budget and buy-in. They occasionally check LinkedIn but never Facebook.

5.Identify the sweet spot of your content

Visualise a Venn diagram. Your interests in content marketing are grouped together. Interests and needs of your audience are represented by the other circle. The sweet place for your material is where the two circles overlap.

Your own content marketing should mostly cover these areas.

You can choose your favourite content distribution methods and formats. For instance, you should consider a podcast rather than a YouTube channel if your audience likes podcasts over videos and you want to grow your subscriber base. You might also propose to speak at the conference if your target audience frequently goes there. Offering guest blogging on websites your audience reads could help you achieve your brand awareness objective.

6.Create a content calendar.

It’s time to create an editorial calendar now that your subjects, formats, and distribution channels have been determined. However, keep in mind that you are only one person and that you presumably already have a day job. Do not be ambitious at this time.

I advise developing a minimum viable calendar, which is the bare minimum you know you can regularly provide. That’s OK if it’s simply one blog post every month or a check of your LinkedIn page every three months. If you try to take on too much and don’t succeed, you’re more inclined to quit. You’re more likely to persevere if you have reasonable expectations.

7.Make quantifiable objectives

You should now add numbers and dates to the individual content marketing goals you defined in Step 3 after documenting your purpose, audience, content forms, and frequency.

For instance, if your content marketing objective is to build brand trust, your metric might be to increase your newsletter’s subscriber base by 50% over the next three months.

Connecting measurable objectives to all of your strategies is crucial for determining the effectiveness of your content.

Hold yourself responsible.

Your individual content marketing approach may be the most difficult because you’re working alone. It’s easier to put off the task when your supervisor or client doesn’t expect your content.

Establish due dates for each step of the creation and dissemination of content. On your calendar, note them. If you become overburdened and realize you won’t make a deadline, postpone it, but don’t take it off the calendar; else, you’ll never finish it.

Do you want to increase the level of accountability you have? Recruit a partner for accountability. Tell them about your manufacturing schedule. Treat this partner like you would a client or boss; inform them when the step is finished or when the completion date has been changed. (This is easily accomplished by making use of the calendar’s notification mechanism.) Even better, take on the role of their accountability partner.

Let’s get going. When will your personal brand content marketing plan be finished? Write it down in the comments, and I’ll get in touch with you on that day to see if you’re finished.