3 Tips for Improving Your Content Marketing

It’s easier than ever for consumers to completely ignore traditional advertisements: Their televisions have commercial-skipping DVR systems, and their web browsers have powerful ad blockers installed. They’ll even pay a monthly fee to remove ads from their favorite music streaming services.

Intelligent marketers realize that traditional advertising doesn’t have the same impact it once had.

As a result, they now increasingly focus on marketing that provides value to their customers, rather than ordering them to buy a product.

Content marketing, the practice of producing useful content for your audience, has proven to be increasingly relevant to business audiences.

This strategy typically takes customers down a longer sales funnel than traditional ads. However, the value content marketing provides to consumers helps to build the trust needed to turn leads into regular customers.

Content marketing also works to boost your SEO. Google has made it clear that websites that constantly produce new content will be prioritized in search engine results pages

This article provides 3 strategies for marketers to make the most of their content marketing in order to boost sales and improve SEO results.

1. Involve Your Audience

Encouraging your customers to contribute to your content is a great way to build a community of engaged leads.

Two ways to do this are building customer surveys to help inform what your company’s priorities should be and compiling customer reviews to help you improve your products.

Dan Pearce is a great example of someone who involves his audience to build an engaged community. Dan runs the Single Dad Laughing blog, which is a humorous and empowering take on his life as a single dad.

Pearce creates a community among his readers by using them to create content. For example, He’ll post an image to his social media followers to spark engagement every couple of days.

He then posts a blog full of round-ups of the best replies to these social media posts, content that is typically among his most popular.

2. Blog About Trending Topics

Another way to connect with your audience is to write about topics that are trending on social media. Both Facebook and Twitter show trending topics on your newsfeed, which you can adjust according to location. 

Creating content about trending topics positions you as a thought leader in your industry. It’s also more likely to appeal to a large audience, who may share it on their own social networks.

Buzzsumo is a useful tool that reveals the most shared topics pertaining to a certain keyword. Using the paid version of this tool, you can filter results to show a specific region or time period and can see the identities of the social media users sharing the content.

Use BuzzSumo as a tool to research ideas for your blog to connect with readers on their topics of interest. 

3. Build Your Email List Using "Freebies"

The basic premise of content marketing is to give away valuable information for free while subtly prodding readers towards your paid products and services.

By continuously displaying your knowledge about a topic, you can keep customers coming back to your brand for information until they are ready to buy.

One tactic many successful bloggers use is to offer readers a free e-book, white paper, or webinar on their topic of interest in exchange for their email address. After gaining permission to email them, bloggers can send useful information to the reader and occasionally point them toward paid products.

Once these readers are in a position to buy, you should be the first brand on their mind.

Jeff Goins is an author who has written several books on how to become a successful writer and runs online and offline courses teaching writers how to build an audience.

He posts at least once a week on his personal blog and always includes a freebie at the end of his posts that are of interest to his readers.

Readers who want to use this tool need to submit an email address and subscribe to his weekly email on writing and creativity.

With so much value submitted to his email list every week, it’s little wonder that Goins only needs to send 1 sales email to his list in order to sell books.

How Content Marketing Improves Your Sales and SEO

Content marketing is useful for providing value and framing your business as an industry thought leader.

Marketing isn’t a quick fix that will bring in new customers overnight. It’s a long-term strategy, but it helps boost sales and improve SEO results over time.

Use these 3 strategies to strengthen your content marketing.

About the Author

With over 10 years of experience helping hundreds of businesses succeed online, Paul Teitelman is one of the most respected and top-ranking SEO consultants in Toronto & across Canada. A true SEO expert, tech entrepreneur, life hacker, blockchain enthusiast, and real estate investor, he bleeds blue for his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs and is an avid music fanatic. Add Paul on LinkedIn or check out his blog for some great SEO tips!

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Paul Teitelman SEO Consultant

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