“Will Your Content Marketing Last The Distance?” plus 1 more |  |
| Will Your Content Marketing Last The Distance? Posted: 10 May 2013 08:00 AM PDT This is a guest contribution by Ruchi Pardal of ResultFirst. Some people believe that content marketing means multichannel, and seemingly mechanical, publishing of anything, anywhere. Their goal is to gain links and rank well (of course, momentarily) using thin content, spinned content, keyword-rich content or unnecessary press releases. That’s the kind of content marketing that brings very short lived benefits (if any). True content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.  Image courtesy of Sura Nualpradid / FreeDigitalPhotos.net What’s Content Marketing?Content marketing creates valuable, sharable content published on multiple channels to attract readers and hopefully customers. Content marketing builds a community. Content marketing gains exposure. And, of course, content marketing markets your brand. But true content marketing taps into people’s desires and grabs their attention by wowing them. Bewitching them. Making them learn something they didn't already know or were seeking. It hooks them in not just once, but time and time again. Your Content Marketing Weapons
Questions for Long Distance Content MarketingContent marketing, if used smartly, can help you gain things you never even knew you could get your hands on. Kissmetrics skyrocketed its traffic and got 3500+ unique domain links using by creating 47 infographics. In fact, it's one of the greatest examples of content marketing done right. Even Mashable believes that. So, here are the questions you should (and must) ask yourself if you want your content marketing to work for you in the long term: Is there any meaning to the content I'm creating? Content marketing with an ambiguous objective is the worst of them all. So, first off, think about what you want to achieve and how that impacts your different audiences. Then track back to how content marketing can bridge the gap. Choose the right content marketing weapons for your audience and your objectives and before jumping in feet first, work out how your content can stand out. Is it relevant to what my audience wants? Anything that gives your audience, or their network, real value is relevant. Instead of wasting time thinking about how to convert them as a subscriber, think what they need to learn and what they'd love to learn. Is it mostly about myself, my company, my team? That's okay – but only sometimes and it’s important that content that’s just about you, with no value to your audience, is in the minority Does it add any value to or challenge traditional wisdom? Nobody loves rehashed content but yes, if you can give an old topic a new angle or your take then it can feel like a brand new idea. Does it sound robot-generated? Try to make your content interactive as hell. If it sounds robot-generated, it's drab, irritating and repelling, your readers won’t read beyond the first paragraph. Will my audience link to it and share it socially? One of the qualities of content marketing that lasts the distance is its ability to resonate with large audiences and that means making it sharable! Sharable content also helps you in your SEO efforts, too. Am I just adding to the sea of crap content that's already on the Web? Please don't! It's our Web and it's up to us whether we make it all the more exciting or filled with full, lifeless, boring content Have I chosen the right channel for publishing my content? The right channel leads to the right audience so it’s quite an important decision. If you've been doing content marketing just to get links, well, that won't help you now. Google values not just hard-earned but relevant links from trusted sites. Moreover, this I-want-that-link behaviour is disturbing and somewhere undermines what we put into getting one. Time to get over this, right? Last and the most important: Is my content marketing based on a content strategy? Solid content marketing needs a solid content strategy, one that must answer how you'll take care of creating, marketing and governing content over time. A footnote about SEO"If your content is the best thing since sliced bread, you're going to rank well. We are focused on what searchers are engaging and how we can deliver them better results." – Bing's Duane Forrester "Don't think about link building, think about compelling content and marketing." – Google's Matt Cutts If you still think that SEO is all about rankings and traffic, don't do content marketing for SEO, at all. However, if you understand that content marketing is about creating and sharing value that helps you build great communities, well the SEO benefits will come as a result. In summary, I'd reiterate that you can't win the marathon and gain loyal followers with short sprints of content. You need a content strategy and consistent effort. So, how do you make sure that your content marketing lasts the distance? What is your favorite content marketing weapon and why? Shout out below. Ruchi Pardal is Director of ResultFirst, a firm that works on pay-for-performance model, helping businesses get found across search engines and give an optimal experience to their audience. She's been into digital marketing for well over 10 years. When she’s not busy with her work, Ruchi loves to spend every moment with her awesome family. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger Will Your Content Marketing Last The Distance?     |
| My April Blogging Income Breakdown Posted: 09 May 2013 08:59 AM PDT Yesterday I published a post telling my story of adding 12 income streams to my blogs over the last 10 years. One of the comments and tweets I had a number of times was a request to make the diagram I used shows how the 12 different streams of income go towards making the overall revenue on my blogs today. It has been a over a couple of years since I did an income breakdown so I decided to put together the numbers today. The categories don’t completely coincide with the 12 income streams mentioned in yesterdays post (for example I no longer do consulting and I’ve combined all the affiliate income and all the ad network income – however you’ll get the picture. The above breakdown is for last month’s income (April 2013). It is worth noting that while I chose April as it was a pretty typical month for me that things can vary quite a bit from month to month depending what the monetization focus of my blogs is. For example if I were to show you December last year you’d see Affiliate earnings and eBooks dominating the chart more as we do a 12 days of Christmas promotion on Digital Photography School that promotes a series of affiliate products and our own eBooks over a two week period. Or if I created a chart for March this year you’d have seen ‘Events’ as a bit bigger as we launched our ProBlogger Event Early Bird Tickets that month. I hope it helps to see a visual of the breakdown of what I was talking about yesterday. What was your #1, #2 and #3 income stream last month? Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger My April Blogging Income Breakdown     |
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