08/01/2018
The tools every content marketer should be using to move content up in rankings and perform excellently, online.
Creating relevant content for your business is essential. Content is not just a campaign, it’s a commitment. You need to keep producing, re-purposing and promoting content throughout the entirety of your business. But, how do you know your content’s performance? How many shares has it had on socials? The only way to find out is through analysis. And for that, you’ll need the right tools.
Monitoring and tracking success is imperative for any content strategy, but what metrics should you be looking at, and what tools do you need to be using. In this post we’ll be looking in depth about what tools you need to make your content successful. With tools that help your content get out there and seen.
Updated crawlers in various Google algorithms mean blogs or articles that rank highly on search engines, are around 2000 words long. Previously, the caps for crawlable content had been significantly smaller, with some posts being as small as 500 words. But now, in 2018, it’s essential to make sure you have at least 2000 words of content, not including H1 titles. The algorithms now also measure shares on Facebook and other social network news feeds, due to them increasing organic reach. Businesses need to focus their content on the consumer, now more than ever. Building social following and brand loyalty.
Ensure that your topic is broad enough to talk about in depth, to hit your word count. Google will pick up on keyword stuffing and white text, so don’t try and fake your way through it. You need to create content that meets the best crawlable stats for Google.
Not only that, but now the best content is content that is relevant to a user base. Moving away from buzz keywords, Google now ranks content on its performance. Views, click throughs, social shares – they all add up and factor in to how well your content will do. So, do your homework. Research and write with your user / consumer base in mind. You need to match their queries and meet their needs. After all, they will be the ones that share your article the most. If you offer information in your writing that people actually use and find helpful, they will share it.
Any good content marketing strategy makes use of all the analytics and figures available to you. Do some research on what your consumers are searching, look at keywords and key terms to gauge what’s being searched for, in relation to your site. Content that fulfils a query and is relevant is key for getting shares and organic visits to your site.
On trend articles/blogs are essential too. Working in current topics of interest that trend online mean you can link your content, and effectively piggy back off the hype. You’ll be able to share relevant articles with trending hashtags on Twitter/Facebook (as long as you can get the content out before the buzz dies down).
But, evergreen content does just as well. If your creation is timeless, then it will be shared time and time again – if it’s relevant to the right user base. Ensure when it comes to making a content plan, you have a balance of current and evergreen content to fill your site with. The more content, the better.
When it comes to getting your content out there, you need to implement all tools at your disposal. Getting your content shared more and more drives organic traffic to your site, link backs can improve your rankings on Google and other search engines too. Guest postings and social influencer plugs can be an excellent way of reaching an audience, if you do your research first. Know your audience, so you can target that specific market. B2B or B2C, you need to know who you’re aiming the content at.
If you’re content is worth sharing, it will be shared on social media. So, promote it to death. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram – do your best to stick your content in everyone’s face. Use appropriate hashtags, paid promotions and other social media marketing techniques to really get your piece to the right people. You can target specific demographics on social media through promotional tools – but it will cost.
But getting your content seen is a worthy investment. If you can boost organic traffic to your site, you can monitor conversions coming through social shares and other external links to your website. Monitoring all of these metrics is key for your business to succeed online.
As we’ve mentioned before, having useful, information rich content is a great way to get users / consumers onto your site. By providing information for ‘free’, you establish your brand as credible and human. The more useful the information, the more likely it will be shared. Google’s robots cannot interpret copy in the same way users can, but, it can measure relevance and reliability based on the number of shares and views.
Your content can range anywhere between long form case studies, to short form blog posts, and even produce visual content, such as video or infographics. It’s important to tailor your content to your intended audience. Your content needs to be easy to navigate too, with clear sub headings and a concise message too. Write content speaking directly to a user, address a single reader as if they are the only one reading your content. But remember, Google’s best crawlable content is around 2000 words long. If you use clear subheadings, your long content, can be navigated more easily, so users can find the specific piece of information they want to take away from your content.
Put your rulers away, we’re talking about monitoring digital traffic and engagement. We’ve created a list of the ultimate content marketing tools you’ll need to succeed. Monitoring traffic and engagement is imperative, to analyse if your strategy is working or if you need a new one. As well as some useful content marketing assistance tools to use too. Below, we’ve compiled a list of the essential content marketing tools you should be using, and if not, should definitely use!
Jumping on the band waggon of viral content is great and all, but by the time it shows up on your social media feed, it’s probably been done to death. Viral trends are a fickle thing, they remain popular for a finite window before moving on to the next big thing. Almighty.Press allows you to jump on viral trends before they become viral! The algorithm can identify growing content, so you can create content ahead of the curve. It moves past basic monitoring and allows you to proactively create trending content, that can be shared on social media, paired with hash-tags. Using Buffer, you can write the social posts, with the link to your viral content, and queue it up ready for posting on the day it’s set to trend. With this tool, you’ll more than likely get more shares and likes, due to the content’s relevance.
How to use: Almighty.Press can assist you in finding trending topics. On the home page, you’ll be able to search for keywords and phrases, previewing the total engagements, as well as ‘Almighty Force’ a measurement tool designed by Almighty.Press. You can filter by time, and sort by date/time, engagements, comments or Almighty Force. It can even assist you in creating your content too.
Growing a business by submitting guest posts to bloggers and influencers is an excellent way to build audience and expand your content’s engagement further. For SEO purposes, having back links to your site through content is a great way to improve rankings, but having influences share you content with their reader base can lead to more content engagement and even more social shares. But how do you find influencers and bloggers? That’s where Ninja Outreach comes in. It’s a platform for content marketers to contact bloggers and social influencers. Ninja Outreach boasts over 25million contacts, so you can be assured that there is an influencer to meet your businesses criteria. From the dashboard you can monitor email correspondences and easily track a niche influencer for your content.
How to use: Via the central homepage, you can search relevant keywords for your business against influencers listed on Ninja Outreach. The tool then generates a list of results for influencers and bloggers that match the keyword you’re using. You can use filters to narrow down results (Geographic, contactable by phone etc.), and create a list of related terms. You’ll be able to manage your list, template messages and see who you’ve been in contact with on the webpage too. Once a relevant influencer is found, you can send a custom message or a template, and begin discussing guest posting opportunities.
This content marketing tool allows you to directly send notifications to desktops, mobile and tablet devices, and apps. It’s always important to reach your user/consumer base in anyway you can, sometimes that means trying something new, as opposed to social media and email marketing. With algorithms changing all the time, it’s important to innovate and evolve your strategy, when it comes to content marketing. Now more than ever, users are checking notifications and emails through mobile devices. Pushwoosh allows you to add mobile and desktop notifications, as well as offering in app notifications too. Guaranteed to reach 100% of your user base, Pushwoosh is a handy way of notifying and reaching your consumers in a different way. You can target your notifications too, reaching a specific target audience and add tailor made messages too. Notifying your users to when new content has been posted and giving them direct access to it, through the notification.
How to use: With Pushwoosh, you’ll probably need to recruit a developer for this one. It’s slightly techy, but if you can utilise it effectively, you’ll be able to reach users via notifications. You can find a video tutorial here:
When it comes to managing your social media, one tool centralises all your accounts for ease of use. Buffer is a management tool that allows you to schedule postings on multiple accounts, whilst monitoring social engagement too. You can connect all your social account with Buffer, and view them all on the hub page. Not only does this streamline your process, by saving time, but you can track your content’s performance. You can measure how many users have clicked the link through to your website, and monitor if your post has been shared, liked or commented on. Tracking user engagement is essential to understanding your user base, what sort of content they want to read / see. This helps you in the future when it comes to creating more content for your business, and can assist you in tailoring your content.
How to use: From your Buffer dashboard, you connect your profiles: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc, and from there you can create your social media post. Linking in your content from you site, via links. Buffer can compress links, so it doesn’t use too many characters. From this dashboard, you are able to select which social sites you would like the post to appear on. Instagram is not yet compatible with Buffer, but can set reminders for you to post. Scheduling content for Facebook and other networks is simple. Via the schedule section, you can create posts and set a date and time you wish them to post. You can also use analytics to look at your content’s performance on socials.
SumoMe is a useful tool for tracking the way your website is viewed by your users. Through analytics, it can help you to improve your content’s reach and increase your audience too. You’ll be able to track how users navigate your website and when they are likely to exit your domain too. Through this tracking, you can create friendly pop ups for users to opt in to your email services. Friendly pop up options can also include related posts and customer special offers. You’ll be able to encourage users to navigate round your site before they exit, with interesting related posts, you can boost your content engagement. SumoMe also incorporates responsive share buttons and analytics for aforementioned buttons. Using these tools can help your content’s engagement, regarding social shares, and have more consumers/users sign up to your email updates. Growing your mail list and social shares is essential for a business’ growth, as well as growing content engagement.
How to use: You’ll need to either build SumoMe into your website’s code or install the WordPress plug in, via the SumoMe website. There are many features, that are all free, designed to help you grow your email list. Some of the friendly pop up include when a user reaches the bottom of a blog post, an email subscription bar pop ups. Others work on timers, after your site is initially clicked on or if a user is about to leave. By installing the code/plug-in, you’ll be able to create as many friendly pop ups as you’d like, in various different forms.
Customers that have signed up to email subscriptions are more likely to be loyal brand customers. It’s a great way to contact customers directly, with offers and new blog and content updates. It easily integrates with any website, assisting you in reaching every single one of your subscribers. You can create email campaigns and monitor their effectiveness, so you can make improvements where needed, and streamline your email success. There are testing features too, which mean you can see how your email that is going to your subscribers looks. You can target certain subscribers, with filters that allow you to contact everyone or just a select few. You’ll grow audience engagement, plus promote your content in a direct way – increasing traffic for your online content.
How to use: Via SendGrid’s desktop home screen, you can select to create a new campaign, filtering your contacts and a tailored greeting in the process. Filters include, customer information or customer type, previous engagement with emails (follow up emails to those that have read it). There are templates which can be edited and remains in one, easy to navigate page. It’s that simple to use. For a demo video, click here:
By utilising all of the aforementioned tools, content can effectively be researched and distributed through various channels, overall increasing user engagement and organic traffic to your website. Researching trending topics on Almighty.Press can help you create some on trend content, that will, more than likely, perform better. Distributing the content via social media, using Buffer and through email too, SendGrid, will make sure your loyal customers see the content. Existing customers will be notified through desktop and mobile, with the help of Pushwoosh. Finding influencers on Ninja Outreach will ensure your content is presented to a new audience, thus generating more traffic to your website. Finally, by using SumoMe, when users visit your website, they will be able to opt in to email easily and find related content.
