So, you’ve created a fantastic piece of content that people love.
And it hasn’t achieved any of your goals.
Why?
Maybe you didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, this content has earned 35 high-quality backlinks – that’s pretty good, right?
Only if you goal was to earn high-quality backlinks. If you were looking for organic traffic, the number of links you’ve got is irrelevant.
Your content marketing strategy should be defined by your goals. What do you hope to achieve?
Do you want to drive new leads? Is this a brand awareness exercise?
The answer will determine your strategy. So you need to give it some serious thought.
If you need some help – there are three main goals you could choose from. We’re going to tell you the best way to achieve each.
Goal 1 – I Want to Drive Leads to My Website through Organic Traffic
The best way to do this, as any SEO exec will tell you, is through keyword optimised content – we call this Scientific Content.
In very simple terms, you need to build content around very specific keywords relevant to your business.
If the content is good enough, and optimised in the right way, it will rank for those keywords, and people searching through Google will find your website.
And you know these people are qualified leads because they’re searching for content you have – content relevant to what you’re selling.
So, what type of content should you have?
Landing Pages – Your homepage, about page, and any services pages should all be optimised for keywords that demonstrate exactly what you do.
Product Pages – Ecommerce websites with individual product pages need to be optimised for keywords relevant to those products.
These are just the basics. If you want to go next-level, and open up more opportunities for organic traffic, you need to consider long tail keywords.
Long tail keywords are, naturally, longer than regular keywords. They’re typically much more specific, and often in the form of a question.
For example, a real estate agency will want to rank for standard keywords like “estate agents”. But they’ll also want to consider creating content that targets long tail keywords like “how to buy a house”.
There are a couple of formats for this type of content:
Guides – Any content that answers a question (“how to buy a house”), and tells the user how to do something, could be considered a guide. Having a dedicated guide section on your website could generate a lot of traffic.
Blogs – We’ll talk a little bit about blogs later on. They typically have goals other than organic traffic, but if they’re well optimised for certain keywords, they could provide a secondary benefit of organic traffic.
Your ability to rank for keywords will depend on two things – how good your content is, and how good your competitors are.
Goal 2 – I Want to Raise Brand Awareness
This is where you need to get creative. So we call it Creative Content.
It’s all about producing material that allows you to stand out as an authority in your industry.
You’re not basing this on keyword data (although this can help establish ideas) – but on your customer persona.
What is your audience like? What are their interests? How do you think you can offer value to their lives?
If you can do this – offer genuine value – they’ll share your content with their friends, relatives and contacts.
So, what format does this need to be in?
Blogs – Most websites have a blog these days. It’s the perfect platform for posting content that doesn’t warrant a static landing page, but will offer a lot of value to readers.
Social Media Content – Practically everyone’s audience is on social media. Organic postings are relatively low effort, and certainly low cost. If you hit the right note, you’ve the potential to send your message to thousands of people.
It can be difficult to measure brand awareness. How do you know how many people have been made aware of your brand?
Social media is useful here. You can install tools that measure how many shares and likes a piece of content has.
Whilst platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have analytics that allow you to see a posts overall reach.
Goal 3 – I Want to Earn High-Quality Backlinks
It might sound obvious – but you need to produce content other websites feel is good enough to link back to.
Not as easy as you think.
The best thing to do is create unique content that tells people something they didn’t already know – even if they’re experts in their particular industry.
That’s why we call it Educational Content.
Lots of brands have found success in publishing original research materials, as per Buzzsumo:
“BuzzSumo data reveals that research based content is more evergreen and attracts higher levels of backlinks.”
So, what format does this come in?
It’s typically very longform. In-depth pieces offer more value, and so are likely to earn a higher amount of backlinks from reputable websites.
Long-form research articles can appear on a blog, or its own landing page.
But typically if you format original research as a white paper, it adds that extra bit of authority – people see it as something you’ve spent a lot of time on.
Ebooks are another good idea. They’re something users can download and read at a later date.
The success of these campaigns is based on how original the content is, and how much value it provides.
Really strong Educational Content can take a lot of resource to produce. But if done right, the results will more than justify this investment.
One Final Goal – All of the Above
If you want to achieve all the above goals with one piece of content marketing, it is possible.
But it requires something really special.
Generally more than just written content. You’ll need to blow people away with interactive features, or incredible imagery.
High-production videos, podcasts and infographics would also fall into this category.
We refer to this as Revolutionary Content – because we would expect it to have a massive impact.
It requires a lot more time, effort and money to put one of these campaigns together.
Normally, we’d want to get a framework in place by focusing on Scientific, Creative and Educational Content first.
But after that, the fun begins.
