Have you always been fascinated by what makes some blogs tick and what makes many others remain average?
Provided the blast of video marketing campaigns and Gen Z’s obsession with social media, is traditional content going the route of the dinosaur?
Will it still be possible to create a money-making blog in 2021?
Absolutely.
That being said, bloggers and marketers alike should have a keen understanding of where content is headed in terms of what’s best going to grab the attention of modern readers. Whether you’re looking to overhaul your current content strategy or want to beef up your blog’s traffic, keep the following tips in mind for future posts.
Search Engine Optimization and Quality Content Remains Important
While the rise of social media has been an important development when marketing our website, we shouldn’t overlook just how powerful SEO is. That’s not to say we should forgo our social media efforts, but we should ensure that we’re putting just as much effort into SEO if we’re looking to promote a website or blog.
While several things have changed in the world of SEO, mainly due to algorithm changes, it certainly still a channel worth investing in. This includes ensuring that website is perfectly optimized for both desktop and mobile users and ensuring that relevant content contains a healthy selection of keywords while not being overbearing.
Content Marketing Isn’t Just Copywriting
Creating quality content is something marketers have been apt to do since the first advertising campaign was launched. Creating engaging, tailored, and purposeful content takes more skill and more focus and is essential for a successful content marketing strategy. Crafting the story for your campaign, or even your brand as a whole is about more than impressive words and cool visuals. It’s about a targeted and focused approach, a multi-pronged attack, and a commitment to regular evaluation, testing, and adaptability.
Determine Goals for Content Marketing and its Success
Putting together informative content is only one phase of effective content strategy. Going in blind with even the best content will not result in the return on investment that you desire. A perfect and remarkable content marketing strategy has to hold individualized goals that influence the essence of your content and how it is used. Without measuring goals, you can run it, but in this case, your content marketing strategy lacks performance and therefore is less likely to deliver the effects.
Exploring Ins & Outs of Content Marketing Mix
When someone composes a content draft of any kind for your business, it becomes a section of a content library you have already put together for your business. No single piece of content can or should be viewed in isolation, and it should provide a further chance to expand and promote your business effectively.
With content strategy, each piece of content has a role in improving SEO and building your email marketing conversation. The content should spark conversation on various channels, lead to shares, drive traffic by sparking click-throughs, or help gain valuable feedback from your audience about new directions to take in future content creation.
Ascertaining a flexible contextual marketing strategy and calendar allows you to produce content that slots into rightful place, where your customers expect it (as well as where they want it), and where it can pique the curiosity of those leads and potential customers who may not quite have been convinced.
The range of software and keyword tools out there allowing businesses to focus and research content ideas means there is no reason not to offer the highest quality and the best-targeted content possible. A single piece of content can be repurposed and reinvented in many ways to suit different channels, audiences and to ensure it delivers maximum mileage.
Shorter v/s Longer
We have gone through several practical studies done by SEO pros that lengthier informative content steadily wins the game in terms of organic rankings and conversions. However, conventional wisdom is quickly changing regarding what valuable content truly means to modern readers. However, conventional wisdom is quickly changing regarding what valuable content truly means to modern readers.
The attention spans of our readerships are shrinking in the face of social media. Therefore, we need to ensure that our content packs a punch with fewer words while still getting our point across. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with long-form pieces over 2,000 words, which are incredibly valuable from a search perspective; however, there’s no need to pad your content for the sake of extending its word count.
Create Less, Promote More
Likewise, the name of the game for future content will be quality over quantity. Rather than focusing on pushing out worthless new pieces for the sake of “content creation,” instead strive to create the best pieces possible and work hard to promote them. For example, a buzz-worthy piece of content should be promoted through:
- The various social channels (highly targeted and purposed based on niche and audience) – some pieces may be prime for Pinterest, while others thrive on Twitter.
- Link-building and outreach campaigns to drive more traffic to your site.
- Email marketing campaigns as a means of providing more value to your readership.
Get Specific with Topics
Instead of focusing on broad topics that have been covered time and time again, focus instead on hyper-specific topics that haven’t been touched on yet. Targeted topics allow you to dominate long-tail keywords and break new ground that your competitors haven’t. Think about it: you can build your business’ content strategy from the ground up by having the go-to pieces on several specific topics.
Data-Driven Strategy
Many content marketers still make the mistake of ignoring metrics such as bounce rate and time-on-page when it comes to what content gains the most traction. If you aren’t already knee-deep in analytics, you should reconsider what drives your content strategy: data or your gut?
Influencers Can Lead the Charm
Influencer marketing is much, much more than a buzz phrase: today’s readers want to hear from experts and big players in their industries rather than newbies with no prior knowledge. Do everything in your power to put your company’s expertise on display, from case studies to interviews with fellow experts and beyond.
Embrace Visuals
It may come as no surprise that content that contains imagery, including videos and infographics, receives more engagement than pieces that ignore visual elements. As video marketing continues to boom, you’ll necessitate doing everything to hold the attention of wandering eyes: the more extra imagery you include, the higher you improve the flow and readability of your pieces.
Measuring and Monitoring Content Success
Content marketing is wider than the whole of its ingredients; it is complex, yet also measurable and manageable, and the key aspects that contribute to the strategy as a whole should include:
SEO
Good content will have a positive impact on your position on the SERP list. Content should, of course, be written with your audience, not bots, in mind. High-quality content goes down well and, over time, there is a positive impact on your SEO. Regular, frequent, and up-to-date is also beneficial to the brand in general. Furthermore, without getting into the technical nitty-gritty, content helps SEO by ticking the boxes of these search engine algorithm criteria:
- You can choose the Focus Keyword, Meta Description, Alt Tags, and other SEO-specific requirements, which all help your content to be found and to be delivered to those searching for these topics.
- Click-throughs to read each post of your blog boost your SERPs too.
- Frequent, stellar content feeds the search bots, which means your website’s overall domain authority will rise.
Inbound Links
- Chasing links and the paradigm of link building is less central to most company’s marketing strategies, but effective content marketing will still deliver backlinks and opportunities for interlinking. Interlinking is an effective way of ensuring your audience can effectively get to other relevant content you have available.
- Should your resources be linked back from authoritative sites (e.g. blogs), Google will recognize that and reward accordingly. Ethical and quality backlink programs can be a timely tonic for your SERPs.
Social Media Shares
- Good content gets attention. While posting and publishing your content on social media, try to get shares, retweets, and comments. These are all valuable measurable metrics and can be an indication of the awesome campaign.
- Also, you should think beyond simply broadcasting the title-plus-URL out continually. Your audience will become bored very quickly. Think about lifting a stat or quote or key insight from your content and drawing attention to that. Even a question asking if people agree is more interesting and likely to drive engagement than spamming out the title over and again!
Wrapping Up
While moving ahead in 2021, the content strategy will not represent an entire transformation under the blogosphere, but SEO and content are continuously evolving. By staying ahead of the aforementioned trends, you can keep your content strategy a few moves ahead of the competition with ease.