We’ve all heard it before…”content is king”. And with the hype surrounding content marketing lately, it definitely can be, but only if you’re leveraging it in the right way. Once you get past the difficult parts of concept creation and producing a great piece of content, it’s time to utilize it to your advantage.. And I don’t mean just putting it on your website, I mean putting that content in places where people are going to have the opportunity to see and read it.
There are multiple ways to leverage your content to get results, but I am just going to go over a few steps to get you started.
What Content Should I Use?
I know what you’re thinking…”ok, so we have content, but how do we know which pieces we should use?” That’s a great question. There are different ways to see what pieces of content would be best to leverage for your content marketing strategy.
First, take a step back to do a content audit on the pieces you already have. If they are on your website already, take a look at your analytics data and see which one is performing the best. This could include page views, average time on page, bounce rates, and conversions. A popular and free tool for this is Google Analytics. It will give you almost all the information you need. If content has been put on any of your social channels, look at the analytics associated with it to see its performance. Most of the popular platforms have their own analytics dashboards you can utilize but there are also a handful of free social media analytics tools you can utilize like Buffer or Cyfe. By analyzing your content, you’ll learn from your best pieces and better understand not only which ones you should leverage further, but also what types of content you should produce in the future.
If you don’t have the data available to see which content is performing the best, take a look and see which ones are addressing the pain points of your customers the most and giving them the solutions they are looking for.
Repurposing Current Content
Ok, so maybe you have some good content you can use but you just don’t have much of it. It can be hard to produce tons of good material on a daily basis unless you have a massive team of content creators. The good thing about great content is that it can be repurposed into other forms. This is where your creativity comes into play. A really good eBook can be broken down into a multiple blog post series. You can approach that in another way and turn a blog series into a good whitepaper or eBook.
Another way you can repurpose is by changing the type of content you have. By taking an eBook and turning that information into a slideshare or infographic, you can appeal to a different audience using the same information.
So What Now?
Now that you have all of this great content ready, how are you going to leverage its power? There are several ways you can do this. Some of those include:
Lead Generation
Every company wants more leads right? Attract potential leads by offering them a piece of content and require a form to be filled out to receive it. This way, they get a piece of content they are interested in, and you get their contact info. Win-win. You can then put that contact information into an email nurture (drip) campaign that gives them more content and information about your company. A good nurture campaign is more than just sales type emails, it’s using your company’s content to inform and educate readers. A good campaign will be anywhere from 7-12 touches, giving your contact an opportunity to “raise their hand” along the way. This leverages your other content in a way to help them gain understanding of your company and builds you as a thought leader in your industry.
Email Campaigns
Many companies have a list of contacts that they have either bought or built over time. Use these lists as a way to leverage your content. Create outbound email campaigns offering them an eBook or whitepaper (or any piece of content you feel they would want) and let them know how it can help them. Give them a few different chances over a few weeks to go and download the asset you have chosen. By downloading, you can then send them into a nurture campaign like mentioned above.
Social Campaigns
Social media continues to be a huge way to interact with followers and potential customers. Between organic and paid efforts, there are many opportunities to get your content out there. You can offer your content through sponsored ads that are highly targeted to your audience, sending them to a landing page to download the content piece. You can also use remarketing ads as a way to direct people to download your content. This can help target those who may have visited your website and left without purchasing or contacting you. Lastly, use your employees as a way to share content across social platforms. One great employee advocacy tool for this is Everyonesocial. You’d be surprised at how many of your employees are active on different social platforms and who are willing to share company messages. You’ve got the content, now have them share it.
Now, go take some time and look through your current content pieces. See what you currently have that could work and if you may need to create more. Repurpose content where appropriate and then use the pieces you decide on to build campaigns around to bring more focus on what your company has to offer. Remember, content can be king…but only when used in the right way.