Content marketing is the production and dissemination of information to build trust from target customers and establish authority in a particular industry.
The idea of content marketing for bloggers is a way for them to create a community with personalized relationships, so people may want to bond and develop loyalty to the brand, and to be recognized as a thought leader or influencer in the chosen industry.
The most effective and successful blogs play a key role to convey properly the message of your brand and to generate sales without the use of traditional, forceful, insistent marketing strategies.
Proper content marketing for bloggers do not just adhere to hard-sell advertising and sales pitches, because it answers common questions, provides insights, and improve decision-making for readers.
Here are strategies that bloggers may add to their content marketing arsenal:
1. Create an eBook.
Apart from the potential to learn more information from an electronic book, it may drive natural links and substantial shares to the blog.
2. Interview leaders or influencers in the industry.
Talk to experts in your field or industry to build trust and confidence with the audience and to create reliable content that people love to read, share, and link back to.
Look into previous interviews to develop ideas for new questions and conduct voice interviews through Skype or written interviews through email.
3. Convert blog posts to PDF files and submit to document-sharing websites.
Find websites that convert blog posts to PDF files and submit these documents to Scribd and other websites that share this file format.
4. Write for another blog or news site.
Be a contributor, co-author, or columnist for a blog or news site by using advanced search queries – for example, “keyword” + “become a contributor” – to connect your own blog with high-quality blogs, and to figure out if these other sites or blogs match properly to your standards based on Key Performance Indices, such as domain authority, user activity, social shares, and so on.
Use Quora, Topsy, or a similar service to determine what the readers need and try to address their concerns through your blog post.
In addition, link to older posts in your blog site that are valuable and provide more information for new blog posts.
5. Develop attractive, “pin-able” images or infographics.
In your field or industry, find infographics with a high number of shares and views, and develop or refer to ideas from those visuals.
You may create your own infographic through infogr.am or visual.ly or hire an effective graphic designer or design firm to do it for you.
Moreover, use the Pin It button for images from Pinterest so users may quickly share your content on the photo-based social network.
6. Create a press release.
Press release is among the most effective content marketing strategies that will improve online presence for brands.
You may pitch the press release to a PR agency or journalist to cover announcements about your brand, or even the blog itself.
Send the above people an email to communicate and engage with them, ask open-ended questions or discussions to determine what they look for to cover your press release, and provide their requirements until they are contented and prepared to cover your blog.
7. Post regularly.
The frequency of blog posts may have a positive or negative impact on the reputation of your blog, so make sure to monitor how your readers respond to changes in blog post schedules and how they actively take part through comments and shares.
Regular blog updates may attract more unique visitors and maintain return visitors.
You may choose to deliver to subscribers an email that directs them to your blog or a feed for them to see your new blog posts in their feed readers or content streams.
8. Create relevant and organized videos.
Stop the propensity toward frivolities that will lengthen your videos, and keep it relevant and fit to be seen.
Create video categories to keep your blog’s contents organized and use video playlists based on those categories.
9. Add appealing blog post descriptions.
Creating the meta description of a blog post has two guiding principles: a cliffhanger and a call to action.
A cliffhanger encourages prospective readers to click through to the full story found on your blog, whereas a call to action draws the attention of viewers using phrases such as “Click Here” and “Read more.”
10. Offer easy-to-download perks or freebies.
Improve the way your readers download content from the blog, and ask them for suggestions or feedback on how to optimize free content that caters to their needs.
11. Organize your content.
Content curation is not about gathering links of outstanding content from the Internet, but it is about providing well-organized, well-presented content to the targeted audience or readers.
12. Use memes.
Memes are worthwhile because this type of content may generate massive traffic and better visibility to social media and content marketing campaigns.
Meme generators, such as Memegenerator.net and QuickMeme, help create your own memes.
13. Create slide presentations.
People trust their sense of sight first than the other senses, especially on the Internet, so include slide presentations in your blog to provide visual content.
Submit your presentations to SlideShare to improve its visibility and draw more attention, links, and shares from online users beyond your blog, but always remember to add the URL of your blog in the description box or byline.
14. Link to previous blog posts.
Even though you occasionally add links that lead to other blog sites – these sites have to be authoritative and relevant – in your posts, link to your own blog posts as well.
Use Zemanta, Yet Another Related Plugin, or similar services to encourage readers to click more blog posts or pages on your blog site.
15. Research the competition.
Use free tools such as Google Alerts and Google Trends to see the keywords and key phrases your competitors use for their online marketing campaigns.
Join social networks where the competition receives the highest user engagement and interactions.
16. Add charts or graphs to visualize comparisons.
Determine the main use of your chart or graph; a bar chart best shows a comparison between two variables.
Use different colors for the chart or graph to draw attention from the audience, or create your own visuals using the following: Excel, Chartle, Rich Chart Live, Create a Graph, and DIY Chart.
17. Provide quizzes.
Ensure the quizzes you provide are relevant to the theme of your blog, and ensure it comes with embeddable badges with the quiz title.
18. Follow up some posts.
Provide readers a reason to generate momentum and keep reading your blog by following up some of previous posts to help boost the number of subscribers or followers, provided that they will return to read the next blog post.
19. Try to “ego bait” from time to time.
Ego bait is a business asset designed to draw attention from a group of people by rousing emotions.
20. Highlight drawings in blog posts.
Drawings provide enough information for customers or readers to have a good idea about the message or story you want to convey.
21. Try “gamification” techniques.
Gamification provides the immersive experience of game theory and improves search engine rankings as long as the rewards you give to winners add value to your blog’s content and attracts referral links.
The more missions or objectives a reader or customer has to fulfill to complete the game, the more he or she will want to influence other people to take an action through social sharing.
