Co-Founder & CEO at HawkSEM, helping brands "crush it" through ROI-focused, results-driven digital marketing programs for over 12 years.
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Seasoned marketers know that high-quality content is an important pillar of any well-rounded search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. But often, great content is published and forgotten about, left to grow stale and outdated.
Luckily, there are ways to work smarter vs. harder when it comes to your content marketing. With a bit of planning and thinking outside the box, you can revamp, repurpose and retool your content to bring you more traffic and, ultimately, a higher ROI.
1. Update content regularly.
The longer a blog post or other piece of content has been around, the more page authority it can build on the search engine results page (SERP). However, you don’t want to drive traffic to a page that features information that’s outdated or no longer accurate.
One way to avoid this is by creating a plan to regularly update your content. It’s a good idea to revisit your content every six months to a year, depending on your bandwidth. During this process, you can check that all links are still working, all data is still accurate, and all facts are still relevant and up to date. In most cases, it’s just about making a few tweaks or adding a few new paragraphs rather than having to start from scratch.
2. Create useful downloads and templates.
All the keywords, metatags and other SEO tactics in the world won’t do much if your content doesn’t provide readers with any actual value. With that in mind, don’t feel like you need to limit yourself to only publishing blog content.
Explore additional content types such as downloads, infographics and templates that are relevant to your audience. If you sell event management software, for example, you could create a branded event-planning checklist that users can download and print out.
3. Tease content through videos.
From images to audio clips to videos, multimedia content often performs better than text-only. It makes sense: visuals help grab our attention and can add context to topics, particularly for explainers and how-to type pieces.
Teaser videos can serve as a preview that entices your audience to click through and read the post that you’re promoting. You can leverage teaser videos in your email marketing, website or via your social media. Plus, you don’t need a professional videographer if it isn’t in your budget — platforms like Adobe Spark, Animoto and Rocketium make creating and uploading short videos a breeze.
4. Consider gating robust content.
The marketing industry is pretty divided when it comes to whether or not you should gate marketing materials. However, if you’re experimenting with longer-form, super valuable content and are focused on goals like lead generation and growing your contacts lists, I say it’s at least worth trying out.
Gating content (this is generally done with more robust collateral like whitepapers, market research and e-books) means the piece is “locked” and requires someone’s contact info to unlock it, such as their phone number and name or their email address.
Pro tip: Gated content should have its own landing page that you can promote both organically and through paid efforts in order to boost downloads.
5. Promote new content through online ads.
Speaking of paid efforts, creating online ads is another great way to boost your ROI through content. Got exclusive data from a recent survey? Planning a webinar on a hot-button industry topic? Investing in a little targeted promotion can go a long way if done right.
For instance, we’ve seen success with promoting our upcoming webinars via targeted LinkedIn ads. This makes sense because you can target certain job titles and industries. It’s a win-win strategy: You get more signups, and more people learn about a resource that’s relevant and helpful to them.
6. Start a newsletter that features your content.
We started our own newsletter a few years back to keep people in the loop about the latest digital marketing trends, news and other helpful insights. We also use these monthly email missives to share our latest blog content with readers.
Along with optimizing your content and promoting it via organic social media posts, an email newsletter is a great way to get your content marketing more exposure. It meets people where they already are (checking their email, of course) and gives you an opportunity to drive more traffic to your website while keeping your brand top of mind on a regular basis.
The Takeaway
When it comes to content, it’s about both quality and quantity. Luckily, you don’t have to have a team of a dozen writers to pull off a content marketing plan that brings in good results.
By making sure what you publish is up to date and accurate, well-executed and promoted properly, you can continue rising through the search engine ranks and achieving the results you want.
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