As a blog owner, it is imperative that you make the most out of your digital assets. Since you are likely to have a limited budget, you have to be ROI-oriented and pursue new methods to maximize the value of everything you invest on. This includes your content.
In the world of digital marketing, content means everything. It is the lifeblood of any marketing strategy – inbound or outbound. Although it is a crucial component of almost every aspect of online marketing, it is not ideal to simply spend more on new content with reckless abandon.
[tweet_box design=”default”]Discover the best #contentmarketing hacks to help improve your traffic, lead generation, and sales[/tweet_box]
Content Repurposing
Over time, your website will begin to accumulate old content that will continue to bring in traffic. You can also repurpose old content to raise their value and expose them to new audiences.
Simply put, content repurposing is the practice of reusing and updating an old post. This expands the content’s reach, multiply its effect on SEO, and appeal to new audiences by changing its format – from infographics to slideshows. Read here for more information on content repurposing.
For example, Digital Marketing Philippines turned their post on visual content marketing into an infographic, which was then released a few months later.
Consequently, the new content gained more exposure than the original written article.
To repurpose old posts into Infographics as well as other image formats, you can use a tool like Infogr.am for free. Another tip when repurposing content is to keep trying different formats until you find the best version that maximizes engagement. Some of the content types you should consider include eBooks, videos, podcasts, images, and guest posts. Here's a very creative use of repurposed content by Ms. Ileane who used one of her popular YouTube videos and turned it into a Slide Share presentation.
Product Reviews
In addition to attracting more traffic, your content can also be used to establish your authority. You can highlight your expertise and build your credibility by incorporating product reviews in your content strategy.
To do this, you must look for products related to your niche and write about how to use them to fulfill a specific goal. This should be relatively easy as opposed to coming up with a new blog topic that requires extensive research.
More importantly, you need to share your uncompromising views of the product or service.
One of the biggest problems with product reviews is the tendency to focus on the positives and ignore the negatives. This is prevalent among reviewers promoting affiliate products because they want to encourage readers on how good the product is so they can earn a commission if the readers buy the product from their page.
However, writing a disingenuous review means compromising your integrity and makes you look cheap in the eyes of your readers. As a result, there is a high chance that they will not buy from your site.
A good example of an unbiased product review is Techtage’s SiteGround review. While the post gives SiteGround a glowing review, as seen from the screenshot above detailing its advantages, it provides a very intelligent argument that explains why it is a superior hosting service. Also, the post is rich with information such as images, conclusion, and an FAQ about the reviewer's first-hand experience with the hosting service to compel readers that the review is indeed authoritative. Another good example is this TubeBuddy review.
By establishing your website as an authority in your niche, you can review and feature as many affiliates products as you want. Just be mindful that recommending a bad product to your audience can fail at your credibility. This is why you should be very careful on what you recommend. Read this post to learn more about this content tactic.
User-Generated Content
User-Generated Content or UGC is considered as one of the most important content types for the online audience. They are relatable, engaging, and are spot-on for your audience’s preferences. This is because they are the equivalent of word of mouth advertising in the world of digital marketing.
An easy way to start generating UGC is to have your brand scrutinized in Yelp reviews. It is one of the most trusted review websites for businesses. Given its credibility, having your audience talk positively about your brand on Yelp is extremely beneficial. It helps bring in organic traffic to your site and boosts the confidence of leads when closing purchases.
A more comprehensive strategy for generating UGC is to hold contests on social media networks. You can run a photo contest on platforms like Twitter and Instagram. The usual is to have your audience post about their experience with your product while including a specific hashtag.
Skyscraper Technique
The phrase “build it and they will come” is meaningless in the world of content marketing. Creating great content is not enough to be visible in the online market. More specifically, it is not sufficient to generate natural links from other authoritative sites, which are critical to bringing in organic traffic and increasing your rankings in SERPs.
With the “Skyscraper technique”, you will not only be getting more links to your content – you will also be saving much time and effort when planning topic ideas for your content strategy. The three steps for the skyscraper technique are simple:
- Find content that is shareworthy (try using Buzzsumo for this)
- Rewrite it into something more refined and detailed
- Promote it to the right people
Looking for top-ranking articles on Google is a step in the right direction. Also, look for outdated content that you can reuse, update, and make your own. The next step is to improve it by adding more details, referring to more valid resources, and improving the overall presentation of the content. In one example by Backlinko, they took a popular post on Google's ranking factors and made something more attractive and updated. You can find out more about how this works by visiting this link.
Finally, you can get the word out by targeting authoritative sites that linked to the original content that you reused. You can use a tool like Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs.com to find these sites.
Just be straightforward when sending your outreach email. Tell them that you created a more complete and updated post that they might want to link to.
Conclusion
The way you develop and execute your content strategies will have an enormous impact on your blog in the long run. Remember that you either break or build your brand with your content. With these content marketing hacks, you can make full use of your content – from building your authority to attracting more traffic.