Content marketing is getting very competitive as more and more businesses are implementing it. People publish around 70 million blog posts a month and the spend on content marketing is always increasing.
Shares and referrals from social networks have been decreasing too as networks are doing their best to keep users on their networks instead of directing traffic to websites.
The rise in competition, coupled with the restrictions placed by social networks is making content marketing harder.
This is why if you want to continue generating traffic, leads, and sales from your content marketing efforts, creating the same old boring content won’t do. You need to try harder and create more entertaining and educative content that stands out and convinces readers to return for more.
So, to help you outdo the competition, I have created this list of 4 tactics to upgrade content…
#1. Create interactive content
One way to upgrade content is by creating interactive content that gets your readers more involved. When you get your readers to invest effort into your content early on, they will want a return for their time, hence, they will dig in more and more.
Interactive content can also help you categorize everything. This can make it easier for your readers to find the exact answers they are looking for.
So, create interactive content that gets your readers to do something in order to gain access to the content. You don’t have to create new content for this. You can just take your most popular lead magnets and blog posts and convert them into something more interactive.
For a good example of interactive content, you should check out this Warranty Map. The content on this page isn’t only visual, but also interactive.
People can look at this map/blueprint to see the items that are located in the different areas of the house. They can also click on each of the items to get details like the types of warranty plans you can get for each item and how much it will cost.
This can be a very interactive and pleasurable experience for visitors.
So, take a look at your content marketing data and figure out which content is already performing well. Then upgrade it into visual and interactive content that gets your readers to take part.
But before you go about with this you should make sure you use a good quality hosting service for your website. Image heavy content like the above can take a while to load. So, if your hosting service isn’t up to the mark, your site will load slowly which can reduce both the conversion rate and the search engine ranking (as loading time is a ranking factor).
#2. Help readers find more useful lead magnets with quizzes
Lead magnets have become a common part of content marketing as people now understand the importance of generating email leads. This has led to blog visitors signing up for a lot of newsletters. It has also resulted in them getting inundated with hundreds of emails every single day.
So, just creating a lead magnet like everyone else won’t do. You need to create a better lead magnet than all your competitors out there and make a solid first impression and then send out more quality content in your emails to keep open and click rates high.
An example of a site that makes a powerful first impression with its lead magnets is Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to Be Rich. When you visit Ramit’s website, instead of asking you to download a lead magnet they ask you to take part in a quiz.
When you take part in the quiz, they gather information such as your work status (freelance or employed), future career plans, etc. And once you finish taking part, they ask you to sign up for a report and a lead magnet that was generated based on your answers.
Most websites don’t do anything even close to this, so this helps Ramit stand out from all the competitors out there. It will help him deliver a unique lead magnet that people will be itching to read.
It helps him make a powerful first impression with it and he can continue nurturing the leads with high-quality relevant content. As the data obtained from the quiz will help him learn more about his audience. This will keep open and click rates high and unsubscriptions low.
So, like Ramit, do something extra that gets users to interact with your content early on in the funnel. And then use the data to boost your content marketing.
#3. Upgrade blog posts with infographics
Blog posts are the most popular form of content. A lot of people create them. As mentioned, around 70 million blog posts are published every month. Content marketers prefer publishing more blog posts because they are easy to create and most of the high ranking content on search engines is blog posts.
This is because pages with around 2,000 words rank higher in search engines and it is easy to create blog posts of this length when compared to other types of content.
But writing a long blog post alone will not automatically boost your SEO rankings. Along with the content on the page, you also need to build backlinks. This can be a lot of work as not everyone will want to link to a regular post. This is why you should accompany your posts with infographics.
People love reading infographics. They get shared a lot and they also attract more backlinks. This results in a lot of initial traffic from the social media shares and the referrals from the links, but not long term search traffic as there is very little written content on the infographic’s page. Most people only accompany their infographics with a short introduction and conclusion.
This is why if you write long-form posts and then summarize the contents in an infographic placed on the same post, you will generate both short term traffic from social media and long term traffic from search engines.
The links and the long-form content will help you climb up the rankings.
I have had great results by accompanying long-form content with infographics. An example is this post I wrote on How to Become a Social Media Manager.
I wrote a post that is around 5,000 words, and I summarized the content in an infographic. This made it easy for me to attract backlinks and shares and get the post to perform well on search.
You can promote the infographic by using the guestographic technique. It is a combination of guest posting and infographic outreach. This is where you reach out to bloggers and ask them to publish your infographic. You also let them know that you will write the accompanying text for the infographic. This makes their job easy. So, many people will publish it and link back to the infographic.
#4. Run a contest
As mentioned, popular lead generation methods are getting even more common. Therefore, a fun and engaging alternate method you can use to generate leads is by running a contest. You can create a simple contest by giving away one of your products or one from another company (that your audience wants) and then ask people to sign up via email to take part in the contest.
You can also inform people that you will inform them who won via email. This will get them to look forward to the email where you announce the winner. This can boost the open rates of the first few emails you send. After that, if you continue sharing quality content in your emails you will keep the opens, clicks, and sales you generate from your emails high.
For some inspiration on running powerful contests check out this case study from Little Secrets. They grew their list by 56% in 7 days, achieved email open rates of 80% and got a 27X ROI.
They set up their contest with Kingsumo Giveaways which incentivizes participants for taking extra steps like sharing the contest with their followers. This can make the contest more engaging and get more participants.
Conclusion
Content marketing is becoming very competitive. More and more businesses are implementing it every day. This is why if you want to continue generating the same results you generate today, you need to make some changes and plan for the future.
So, implement the 4 tactics I have shared above to upgrade your boring content and continue generating more shares, leads, traffic, and sales.
Guest author: Mitt Ray is the founder of Social Marketing Writing, where you can download 100 Free Social Media Background Images.
The post 4 Ways to Upgrade Your Boring Content Marketing in 2020 appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
source https://www.jeffbullas.com/upgrade-your-content-marketing/
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