The Best Beginner’s Step-by-Step Content Marketing Guide

This comprehensive guide is not only for beginners, but also serves as a crash course. It’s packed with resources and tips that could easily form the basis of a college course. All readers, especially business executives, should give it a read to learn what to do when their marketing team runs out of ideas or loses momentum.

Content marketing is crucial for growing a blog or business in 2023. If you want to increase web traffic, improve your domain authority, and boost sales, you must leverage the power of content marketing. Although it’s not difficult, there are proven techniques, tested tools, and best practices to follow in order to execute a successful content marketing strategy. As a business owner, you don’t want to overcomplicate your content marketing plan or waste time and money.

This long and detailed article provides clear and concise instructions, including a table of contents for easy navigation and an FAQ section with quick answers to questions like “what is content marketing?” and “what are the different types of content marketing?”. It covers the most up-to-date and effective content marketing strategies for 2023.

Content Marketing Meaning and Value

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing, as defined by the Content Marketing Institute, is a strategic approach to marketing that involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content in order to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and ultimately drive profitable customer action. Unlike traditional marketing techniques that focus on promoting products or services, content marketing aims to provide valuable information to the target customer, whether by answering a question or solving a problem.

In simpler terms, when you use any type of content – written (such as blog posts, articles, ebooks, or social media posts), visual (such as videos, infographics, or social media graphics), or audio (such as podcasts) – to market to your customers, you are engaging in content marketing. The more helpful and relevant the content is to your audience, the more valuable it will be for your business.

Why Content Marketing is Necessary for Your Business

What happens when you make great content that engages your customer? It gets the word out about your business (brand awareness).

What if you focus on answering questions, offering in-depth explanations about important topics for readers, and solving problems for customers? You become an authority in your industry.

What if you consistently create quality content and become a trusted source for that sought-after information? Your site becomes THE go-to source above your competitors for reliable content.

So, what are the results of good content marketing? More traffic, more brand advocates, more backlinks, more domain authority, and more sales… all the good stuff.

Proof That Content Marketing Works

I know what you’re thinking…show me the stats! It’s one thing to say “take it from me, content marketing is amazing,” and it is another thing to actually demonstrate it.

Here’s the thing: with more than 4.5 billion internet users worldwide and 3.5 billion social media users (Oberlo), it’s a no-brainer that you need to attract and engage your audience where they’re at all day, every day… online.

Check out these content marketing statistics from Demand Metric:

• Over 90% of organizations use content marketing.
• 60% of people are inspired to seek out a product after reading about it.
• 70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements.
• 82% of consumers feel more positive about a company after reading custom content.
• 90% of consumers find custom content useful.
• Per dollar spent, content marketing produces 3x the number of leads as traditional marketing.

Examples of Content Marketing

There are many types of content marketing and you can and should use as many as possible to reach your audience. This list covers the most popular content marketing varieties.

1. Blog Posts
   Blogs are the cornerstone of content marketing. They will live forever on the internet and can continually provide value to your reader and, as a result, can be valuable to your company. Blog posts need to be useful (informative, entertaining, educational), high quality (not just a bunch of filler from a content farm), updated regularly (avoid outdated, stale content), and SEO optimized (so the search engines and your readers can actually find you). Typically long-form blog articles get better SEO results, although the suggested word counts for blog posts can vary by industry. It makes sense that more great content = more traffic, but there isn’t a perfect formula for how many blog posts you should produce on a weekly or monthly basis.
2. Ebooks
   Ebooks are next-level content, in both breadth and depth. They allow you to tackle a more complex topic and expand on it in a way that just isn’t feasible in a blog post. Ebooks can establish your knowledge authority on a subject or in your industry. An Ebook offer can inspire your reader to engage further with your brand, for example, by joining your mailing list to gain access, thereby feeding your email marketing channel. Content from your ebook can be repurposed to inform your blog posts and vice versa.
3. Case Studies
   If you have a product or service that you are selling and want to show how it has worked for other customers in a demonstrable way, then a case study is a handy sales tool. Case studies are a valuable content marketing tool because they essentially show potential clients how you have made past clients successful.
4. Templates
   Creating templates and offering them to your readers for free is a pretty awesome way to attract readers to your blog and customers for your business. By putting the hard work into creating great templates and giving your customer free access, you have saved them time and money and most likely inspired loyalty. For example, if your blog is about recruiting you can provide a resume, cover letter, and email template to your readers. Or, if you have a blog for writers, you can offer templates for PR pitches, email outreach, or freelance bids. Templates are invaluable time savers for entrepreneurs!
5. Infographics
   Infographics are quick to read, visually pleasing, easy to share on social media, likely to be a source of backlinks (if it proves to be of interest to other writers covering similar topics), and a valuable accompaniment for your articles, blog posts, or email marketing. User-friendly design software like Canva makes the process of creating professional and appealing infographics simple.
6. Videos
   In 2023, Video really should be part of your content marketing toolbox. Video is more likely to be shared, often more engaging than the written word, and more likely to build a rapport with your audience. Plus, YouTube is a great source of traffic and video tends to provide more entertainment value. There are many types of information that are just better executed in a video format. If your blog is about graphic design software or video editing or photography, chances are your readers are going to want to WATCH you explain your process and SEE you doing tutorials vs. simply reading how-tos.
7. Podcasts
   Podcasts are a very popular, powerful, and informative medium that can be a phenomenal marketing avenue. Podcasts give you the ability to speak in your own voice directly to your audience, use storytelling, and build a relationship with your audience – all great stuff.
8. Social Media
   Chances are you are already using some or all of the social media platforms listed below to reach your target audience. If you are using many channels, lots of services like Buffer are available to help you keep track of your social media content marketing campaigns. Research shows that over 70% of Americans use social media, with many using it weekly and even daily. The top 8 Social Media Networks are listed here in order of popularity.
   1. YouTube
   2. Facebook
   3. Instagram
   4. Pinterest
   5. LinkedIn
   6. Snapchat
   7. Twitter
   8. Reddit
   9. TikTok

The Content Marketing Funnel

Content Marketing Funnel Explained

Just like the buyer persona is a fictional representation of your customer, the marketing funnel is a visual representation of the sales process. The marketing funnel describes the journey of the customer and documents the stages from the very first moment they became aware of your existence to the point of purchase.

In a perfect world, the funnel would be shaped like a cylinder, and every sales lead would become a loyal customer. But, in reality, the number of people that learn about your product or business or blog and the number of those people that become customers are not equal. That’s because gaining new customers, building relationships, and closing the sale is more involved and certainly less predictable than that.

Hence, the marketing funnel helps us to break down and address these stages.

Top Of The Funnel – Capture Attention

Goals: Your audience is just discovering who you are and what you are all about. At this stage, you are looking to build brand awareness (get your name out there) while simultaneously adding value (providing helpful and memorable content) to attract potential customers.

Tactics: Good SEO and Social Media Marketing are great ways to attract your target audience. Blog posts with relevant topics of interest, comprehensive guides with useful information, and videos that can be shared on social media are good examples of how to help your audience discover you at this stage.

Metrics: Ways to measure success in the awareness phase include social media reach, the number of keyword searches, and site traffic (how many visitors are coming to your site, how many pages they are viewing, and how long they are staying).

Middle Of The Funnel – Engage & Educate

Goals: Here your goal is to convert your reader into a sales lead. Now that they know who you are and associate you with valuable content, you can build on that growing trust relationship by diving deeper into your value proposition.

Tactics: Case studies that show how your products or information have helped others, ebooks, downloadable templates, free tools, whitepapers, tutorials (that show how to use your products), detailed how-to blogs, instructional videos (that demonstrate value to your customer), webinars, seminars, and free email courses will all nurture the relationship with your audience at this stage.

Metrics: Measure site engagement by tracking how your visitors are navigating your site and where they are spending the most time. Measure customer engagement by tracking the number of opt-ins to your email lists, sign-ups to your free courses, or the number of downloads of free ebooks or templates.

Bottom Of The Funnel – Convert to Purchase

Goals: This is the stage where you want to close the deal, make the sale, convert leads into customers, and turn occasional visitors to your blog into regular subscribers.

Tactics: The most effective content for helping a potential customer commit to a sale are product testimonials, product and service reviews, introductory or free trial offers, mini-courses or product spec sheets, limited-time promotions/discounts/coupons, and free consultations.

Metrics: How many customers purchased and how did they buy – via social channels, email links, referral links, or directly on the website?

After The Funnel – Retention

Goals: You don’t just want to make one sale, right? You want repeat customers. You hope for a loyal readership that chooses to return to your site over and over again. Even better, you want brand advocates that will vouch for your company to their friends, family, and contacts, who will spread the word far and wide and even create content on your behalf, in a really organic way.

Tactics: By offering incentives like discounts or premium perks, you can encourage brand ambassadorship via reviews, testimonials, or social media shares. Customer loyalty can be fostered through rewards programs and earned discounts, outreach, and follow-up by phone or email. You can even encourage your customers to be involved with decisions about the design and features of future products, services, or content offerings, allowing them to feel personally vested in the outcome.

Metrics: Know how well you are inspiring customer loyalty by measuring the number of repeat purchases, brand advocates, social media ambassadors, glowing reviews, customer referrals, etc.

Content Strategy

Before you sink your teeth into content creation for your business, you need to have an idea of where you are headed, what your final goals are, and what kinds of results you are aiming for. A haphazard approach will be frustrating: no less time-consuming, but almost certainly less fruitful. You want to be knowledgeable and clever in your approach while being purposeful and organized in your execution.

Content Strategy Explained

A Content Marketing Strategy essentially outlines your vision (where do you want your blog or company to be in the short and long term) and the framework within which you will accomplish your goals using content marketing.

Your Content Marketing Strategy is defined by what values will drive your content (how can it solve a problem, and/or entertain, inform, educate?), what types of content you will produce, at what frequency that content will be created, on what channels that content will be published, the underlying messaging of your content, what will differentiate your content, what audience you will reach, and for what ultimate desired outcome.

Why You Need to Create a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Whether you are an entrepreneur or a marketing team member within a business, it is not only wise but necessary to have a clear content marketing strategy in place before you start creating or outsourcing your content.

Bottom line – this is about time and money.

Creating a content strategy requires an upfront time investment no doubt, but will save you tons of time and prevent you from spinning your wheels going forward. Equally as important, a defined content strategy can save you money by properly allocating your budget and ensuring cost-effective expenditures by measuring the performance of your strategy using ROI metrics.

Here’s How To Create an Awesome Content Marketing Strategy

Define Your Content Marketing Vision

In a nutshell, your content marketing mission statement should define your vision by outlining what you hope to accomplish with your strategy, who you are targeting, and how your strategy will be mutually beneficial (a win-win) for your company and your audience.

Let’s say you run an auto parts website. Your content strategy mission might be to offer tutorials about how to fix cars and reviews of automotive parts brands (type of content) for discerning DIY customers and car enthusiasts (target audience) and by way of answering their questions and offering solutions about car maintenance and repair, you are building trust and establishing authority in your industry (intangible business goals) which converts into increased traffic and sales (tangible business goals).

Run a Content Audit

If you have an existing blog with content, you need to figure out what is actually working towards achieving your marketing goals. That is why a content audit is an important first step in devising your content strategy.

What Is A Content Audit?

A “content audit” is the process of analyzing the quality of the existing content on your website to figure out how effective it is and to weed out problems. The ultimate goal is to find what is working and what is missing. The results of your content audit will inform how your content plan can be adapted to better meet your current marketing goals.

Step 1: Inventory

Start off by logging all of the content you have using tools like Screaming Frog to crawl your site to pull your URLs and then use Google Analytics to analyze. After crawling your site and grabbing the URLs, you can assess the quality of your content – looking for duplicate pages, broken links, missing titles or descriptions, missing meta descriptions, bad redirects, etc.

Step 2: Organize

Next, organize your content in a spreadsheet by assessing your content through the following categories. This content audit template will make it easier.

• Topic and Relevance – What topics are most popular with your readers? How likely are your readers to share your posts based on the topic? Do your readers respond better to content that is directly related to your business or product you are selling, or articles that relate in a more peripheral way.
• Word Count – Does long-form content appeal to your audience, or do your readers prefer a quick read with condensed information?
• Author and Tone – Which authors are striking a chord with your reader? What tone are they responding to? Do they prefer serious, light, funny, or dry delivery?
• Publication Date – Consider whether the content is stale and outdated or if it is “evergreen,” meaning it maintains relevance and gains traffic over time.
• Features – Does the content include videos, lots of images, graphs and statistics, infographics, or Schema markup?

Step 3: Metrics

With Google Analytics you can figure out how your content is performing and estimate how effective your content has been in achieving your marketing and business goals.

• Traffic – How many people are visiting your website (traffic levels) and where are they coming from (traffic sources)?
• Conversion Rates – How are your readers responding to your call to action, whether it is through the sale of a product or a signup for a free offering?
• Engagement Rates – How much time does your reader spend on your website and how many pages do they visit? What is your bounce rate (how many people leave your site after only visiting one page)?

Step 4: Analysis

Now that you have gathered all of the info, what story does it tell?

• Content Gaps – What topics are underserved or missing entirely? Fill in the gaps.
• Lackluster Content – Find solid but under-performing content. Refresh it by adding imagery, media, infographics, etc.
• Outdated Content – What great articles that have lost traffic due to age? Renew them with fresh, relevant information.
• Hot Content – Separate the awesome articles from the duds. Make more of what works!

Set Your Content Marketing Goals

Once you have outlined your vision and completed your audit to see how your existing content is performing, you can move forward and set some specific content marketing goals.

Keep in mind that goals should be SMART (Specific/Measurable/Attainable/Relevant/Time-bound).

Your goals will likely run the gamut – from increased sales or conversions to expanding brand awareness and customer base, to building trust and reputation within your industry.

Know Your Target Audience

Who will be reading your content? In order to reach your audience, you need to know your audience. If you try to appeal to a really broad and undefined audience – the “general public” so to speak – you will end up creating cookie-cutter, uncompelling content that doesn’t really appeal to anyone.

For example, in everyday life, I am guessing you use different words and communication styles depending on who you are talking to. When you speak to a child, sibling, parent, grandparent, boss, co-worker, teacher, best friend, stranger, customer, etc., you use different ways to express your ideas that are fitting to your audience.

This becomes even more true when you are creating content for your customer – when you may only have one chance to excite, inform, entertain, and compel your reader to come back for more.

Create Customer Personas:

You need to know who you are speaking to when you are creating content – this will inform you every step of the way. Creating a buyer persona (a fictional representation or avatar of your customer) will help you to clarify and visualize who you are marketing to.

• How to Gather the Data to Create a Buyer Persona. – If you are an existing business, you can base your buyer persona(s) on past and current customers. This data can be gathered in a number of ways. Surveys (done via phone, email, social media), forms on your website that collect reader data, social media profiles, and web analytics tools are all solid ways to collect relevant buyer information. If you are a new business or blog without an existing customer base, you will need to rely heavily on market and competitor research to create your buyer persona(s).
• Can You Have More Than One Buyer Persona? – Of course. There are surely different types of people that are the right fit for your business, be it a product, service, or information offered.
• Use This Data to Create a Buyer Persona. – First, start by gathering important demographic information for your audience. Information about the age, sex, income level, race, employment, geographic location, and level of education of your customer is key to defining your buyer persona(s). Knowing how your target audience looks for, finds, and shares information on the internet (channels), which sites they use regularly and trust, and whose voices resonate with them (influencers and industry leaders) is key.
• How Do I Create a Buyer Persona? Once you have gathered all the data you can create a custom buyer persona of your own design or choose from many customizable templates that make formatting easy.

Value Proposition

Solve problems for your readers. What are your customer’s pain points and how can you address those? People are looking for answers to questions, solutions to problems, ideas for inspiration, innovative ways to address business needs, creative inspiration for tackling issues, technical expertise, and so on.

You need to figure out what problems you are solving and what solutions you are offering. This will inform your content and keep your audience coming back for more.

You also need to add value by being unique. Your readers WILL come back over and over and your customers WILL buy from you because your blog is different, better, funnier, more in-depth, aesthetically pleasing, data-driven, or all of the above. Know how you are special and try to make those features shine through in everything you do.

Choose your Content Channels

Decide which content you will post where – on your website, blog, social media channels, or on third party websites as a guest poster or contributor. You can adapt the length, writing style, and visual elements depending on the needs or restrictions of those channels. For example, content for social media posts might be shorter, have a lighter tone, and be more image-heavy, as compared to your own blog articles, which might be long-form, data-driven, or infographics-heavy.

The Types of Content To Create

Choosing the types of content to create will depend both on your preferences and expertise and the needs of your customer. Maybe video is the best way to reach your audience, or maybe they prefer to digest information via long blog posts or infographics. Maybe your budget permits you to cover lots of formats. But, if you find yourself limited to a few types, just do what you can in the most effective and efficient way possible.

Content Creation

Content Creation Workflow

In an ideal world your company would have the manpower to assemble a content team including:

• Content Strategists – to outline brand guidelines, devise a strategy based on your content audit, create personas, etc.
• Content Writers – to create awesome, informative and engaging blog posts, articles, and social media messaging.
• Content Editors – to proofread and polish content prior to publishing.
• Content Coordinators – to oversee freelance writers, create or approve outlines, and manage guest post relationships with other blogs and outlets.

But, let’s be real, out of the gate most blog and business owners will be wearing ALL of these hats.

So how on earth can one person be productive and prolific enough to execute a successful content marketing strategy?

One word – outsourcing!

Content Creation Outsourcing

If you tried to create all of the content for your website, you would be subjecting your business to the limitations of your own output. That is to say, even if you had no other business responsibilities and all you had to do was write all day, every day, you would just not be able to grow your blog.

Realistically, using the do-it-yourself method, it could take years and years to see the results of your labor. That just isn’t going to cut it. That being said, you might also not have the budget to hire employees, even on a part-time basis. That is where freelancers come in.

Content Creation Using Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence, and specifically ChatGPT, can be used to enhance and accelerate your content marketing efforts in a number of ways. Here are a few ideas:

1. Generating content ideas: ChatGPT can be used to generate a list of potential topics or titles for new content pieces, helping you to come up with fresh ideas more quickly.
2. Creating outlines for articles or blog posts: ChatGPT can be trained to understand the structure of a typical article or blog post and can use this knowledge to generate an outline for you to work from.
3. Writing content: ChatGPT can be used to write entire articles or blog posts, allowing you to produce content more quickly and efficiently.
4. Editing and proofreading: ChatGPT can be used to edit and proofread your content for grammar and spelling errors, helping to improve the quality of your content.
5. Creating social media posts: ChatGPT can be used to generate ideas for social media posts, helping you to come up with engaging content for your social media channels more easily.

Overall, ChatGPT and other AI tools can be a valuable addition to your content marketing efforts, helping you to produce high-quality content more efficiently and effectively.

How To Hire Freelancers

Decide What Content to Outsource – First you need to identify what kind of content you need help with. Do you need a lot of social media posts, website blurbs, long-form conversational blog posts, ebooks, or highly technical, data-driven articles? The type of content, number of words, amount of research necessary to complete the task, and whether a writer needs to already have expertise on a subject, will all play into how you choose a writer.

Set Your Budget – To a large extent, when it comes to freelance writers, you get what you pay for. The level of complexity of the content will lead to a higher price tag no doubt, as will the length of the article. That being said, there is a wide range of pricing tiers. Rates for blog posts will vary greatly from rates for advertising copy or marketing blurbs. You will pay more for a shorter, high impact piece of sales copy. When hiring a freelance writer to create blog articles, you will find average prices ranging from 2 cents to 25 cents per word, with 4 cents to 10 cents per word being a favorable target rate.

Create a Job Listing – Be super clear about the type of content, writing style, word count, and level of expertise you require. Clearly define what qualities, experience, and expertise you are looking for in an ideal freelancer.

Screen Freelance Writers – Ask detailed questions about the writer’s experience in your industry. Require writing samples and links to currently published work online. Find out what their average turnaround time is and if they are available for repeat gigs. It isn’t ideal to go through the hassle of hiring and building a relationship with a writer for a one-off article when what you really need is a dedicated writer. If your schedule is demanding and your expectations high, you will need to find a writer who can produce on tight timelines.

Provide an Outline – Providing a detailed outline with sections and subsections is a really crucial step that will save your writer time and save you from a lot of revisions. A structured breakdown of the article will guide the writer and give you the confidence that all-important elements will be covered. The outline can also indicate desired word count, tone, links to other content to use as an example, etc. The more information the better the outcome.

Start With a Test Article – To ensure that the quality, research capabilities, and writing style of a writer match up well with your needs, it is wise to start off with a test article. This should be an article that reflects the length and breadth of what you are looking for on a regular basis. The test article should be a good indicator of whether the writer is on the same page as you, as far as the overall output and turnaround time.

Websites to Hire Freelance Writers

• Upwork – Finding freelance writers is simple with the Upwork Basic Plan. Just post a job for free and either wait for freelancers to apply or seek out writers to interview. When you pay the writer for the job, Upwork will tack on a 3% administrative fee.
• Textbroker – This system allows clients to choose between 3 levels of service in their Self Service Category: OpenOrder, DirectOrder, or TeamOrder. With OpenOrder you can post a job order and choose between 4 pricing tiers related to the writer’s expertise which is rated from 2 to 5 stars (2 stars = 1.5 cents/word, 3 stars = 2.7 cents/word, four stars = 2.7 cents/word, and 5 stars = 7.2/word). With DirectOrder you can commission an author of your choice to write your content and negotiate a rate directly with the writer, with rates starting at 2.7 cents/word. Lastly, with TeamOrder, you can handpick your writers, form a team of authors, and set your own pricing, also starting at 2.7 cents/word. Textbroker also offers a Managed Service, which allows you to outsource your entire content project, starting at $2,500.
• Fiverr – Signing up for Fiverr is free. Gigs will feature a description of the services offered, work samples, and pricing. You will want to reach out to the freelancer directly to get more details about turnaround times, overall availability for repeat business, references, etc. A service fee of $2 is applied to purchases up to and including $40, and a 5% fee is applied to purchases above $40.
• ProBlogger – This service charges for job postings, as opposed to a percentage fee on what the freelancers get paid. A standard job listing on ProBlogger costs $70 for 15 days. Upgrading it to a featured listing with a spot on the front page costs $140 for 15 days. They offer package deals which offer a 20% discount on 5 standard listings ($60 per listing / $300 total), 33% discount on 10 standard listings ($50 per listing / $500 total) or a 20% discount on 3 featured listings ($120 per listing / $360 total).

Content Ideation

Solving Problems With Content

Are you asking yourself “what the heck should I blog about?” First and foremost, focus on what problems you are solving for your customers. This will guide your brainstorming process and help you to choose the winning content ideas.

The Best Tools for Brainstorming Content Ideas

• Reddit – Reddit is an enormous forum where users go to share news and discuss everything under the sun. With 330 million users and global Alexa rank of 19 (as of May 2023), Reddit is a phenomenal resource for ideas and inspiration. Search subreddits that are dedicated to topics that relate to the general topic you are considering. Read the discussions and comments to learn what questions people are asking and how they are being answered. Find out what struggles and problems people are facing, what solutions and recommendations are being offered, and whether or not they worked. The insights that you will gain into your topic are unparalleled.
• Quora – Simply put, Quora is a question and answer website. Users can ask questions or provide answers to the questions of others based on their knowledge and expertise. As a result, Quora is a really valuable tool for market research. You can also follow a question or topic of interest and be notified whenever new questions are asked or new answers are posted. You can join the conversation or simply soak up the information. It’s a pretty awesome way to find out what “pain points” your target market has and what they are interested in learning more about.
• Answer the Public – Drawing from the billions of Google and Bing autosuggestion data, Answer the Public allows you to enter a keyword or phrase and then extrapolates all of the questions being asked about that topic. You can get an idea of what is driving your audience, what their intent is, and what they are looking for. One small drawback is that you can only perform a handful of searches per day with the free version.
• BuzzSumo – BuzzSumo Topic Explorer is another great blog idea generator that helps you discover trending topics and search for influencers that you might want to partner with. Just search for a subject and find related topics, popular content, and key question suggestions. With the free plan, you can access search results across the Discovery, Content, and Influencer features but you are limited to 7 days or 100 searches.
• Ubersuggest – This free tool was created by Neil Patel as a way to sort of reverse engineer the SEO, content marketing, and social media strategies of competitors. So, you can decide what topics to write about on your own blog based on what content pieces are getting the most backlinks and social media shares and performing the best overall for your competitors.
• BlogAbout by Impact – This is a basic but helpful tool to brainstorm about blog article titles using a fill-in-the-blank format. It offers you good, albeit generic titles, with a few blank spaces where you can insert your desired keywords. It’s a quick and easy way to generate a dozen or so ideas for great titles.
• Feedly – Feedly saves you time by aggregating information about your topics of choice from sources all over the web into one single feed. It’s a great way to find and organize information that will keep you in the loop with all of the latest news, blog articles, and social media posts pertaining to your topics. It will definitely inspire your content creation and the service is free for up to 100 sources.
• Blog Post Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule – This tool evaluates how the proposed title of your blog post measures up. It gives you a score based on the use of common, uncommon, power, and emotional words while factoring in length, the kind of sentiment it conveys, and how keyword-rich it is. It also indicates how it would be truncated if used as an email subject line, Google Search result, or a tweet.

Content Creation

Use a Content Editorial Calendar

To stay organized, properly plan ahead, and feed your pipeline, you need to document your content production using a calendar or spreadsheet that can be accessed by all contributors. The Content Marketing Institute, Hubspot, and CoSchedule offer free Content Calendar templates where you can log info such as the types of content you create, the publish date, author, where it is posted, etc.

Choose a Content Management System

You will also need to choose a content management system (CMS) which is software for creating, publishing, managing, and tracking your content. WordPress is probably the most widely used platform, but others like HubSpot CMS, or Shopify and Magento for eCommerce are great.

Visual Content Creation Tools

Including nice visuals with your content, whether in the form of images, graphics, animations, or videos, is an absolute must. Visuals are a huge asset to your content. As an attention-grabbing feature and an attractive accompaniment to your text, visuals are instrumental in increasing views, shares, and conversions. Luckily there are awesome tools that make creating professional graphics a breeze for the vast majority of us who don’t have the skills.

• Canva – This free service allows users to create beautiful graphics quickly and easily using a massive selection of images, templates, and layouts. The drag and drop functionality is really user-friendly and downloading and sharing graphics is a cinch. With the premium plan, Canva Pro, you gain access to more features, including 60 Million photos and elements and more than 1000 fonts.
• 99Designs – This website connects customers with designers looking for everything from logos and business cards, to graphics and websites. You can either hire a designer directly or create a contest, which allows many designers to submit work for your approval. This service is a personal favorite of mine – the process is smooth and the results are fantastic.
• Adobe Spark – Adobe Spark makes it easy to create blog, business, and social media graphics, short videos, and even web pages. You can test it out and enjoy limited functionality with the free starter plan, but a paid subscription will give you access to the full features.
• Snappa – This design platform is marketed as a “snappy” alternative to “clunky” Canva. Some users have found it faster and more intuitive than Canva. Users have access to all of the more than 6 thousand templates and 3 million photos and graphics for free but are limited to 3 downloads per month without a paid subscription.

Content Promotion

Analyze and Measure Content Marketing Results

User Behaviour

Use Google Analytics to measure the following elements of your website traffic to create a picture of how your customers are behaving with your content.

• Unique Page Views – how many times a page is viewed in a browsing session.
• Time On Page – the average amount of time users spend on a page.
• Page Depth – the average number of pages viewed by a visitor in a browsing session.
• Bounce rate – the percentage of single interaction visits to your website.
• Unique Visitors – the number of people visiting your site during a certain time period
• Traffic Sources – where your website traffic is originating from. Find out about referring sites, which countries your visitors are in, whether your traffic is direct via your URL or via search, etc.
• Pages Per Session – the average number of pages viewed during a browsing session.

Engagement

Monitor how your audience is interacting with your content to learn if they are connecting with it in a meaningful way. The level of engagement of your audience will make it pretty clear whether your messaging is resonating with readers or falling flat.

• On-Site – Track the onsite engagement of your audience through the number and quality of comments on your posts.
• Backlinks – Monitor backlinks using Google Search Console.
• Social – Measure social media followers, promoters, activity, shares, comments, and mentions with a tool like BuzzSumo.

SEO

The following SEO metrics are a good measurement of how your content is performing and how well it is achieving your marketing goals. Success with SEO directly translates to more exposure for your content and that increased visibility will contribute to your goals of reaching your target market.

• Rich Results – Google search results with extra visual or interactive features (like carousels, images, or videos), formerly known as Rich Snippets, appear at the top of the Google page. When your content is featured in the “answer boxes” in the coveted “position zero” at the top of the SERPs, it is a really good sign that Google is happy with your content and of course, it means incredibly high visibility and click-through for your blog post. You should also check to see whether your page supports rich results.
• Dwell Time – The amount of time between clicking on a search result and returning back to the SERP. Generally speaking, a longer dwell time means the user is happy with your content. Low bounce rates and longer session times indicate that readers are spending more time on your website (high dwell time) which is a good indicator that your content is considered relevant and engaging.
• Backlinks – Which sites are linking to you? The more links from unique domains and the higher the domain authority the better. Use Google Analytics to see how your site is doing with gaining backlinks.
• SERP Organic Ranking – Search Engine Results Pages are the results that Google displays in response to a query. Measure how well the keywords and phrases in your content are ranking using Google Search Console.
• Domain Authority – This is a metric created by industry-leading SEO company Moz to predict how well a website will rank in the SERPs, on a scale of 1-100, with 100 being the best. Use MozBar, a free Chrome Extension that makes it easy to get advanced SEO metrics quickly.

Revenue

The goal of great content creation is to add value to your business, and although this value is measured in many ways, the ultimate metric is increased revenue. To gauge success you will want to take a close look at leads generated and conversions.

• Leads – Measure the leads on your website by tallying the number of form completions, downloads, email opt-ins, blog subscriptions, etc.
• Conversions – Track your conversion rate by tallying the percentage of site visits that ended in the completion of your sales goal. Those goals could include purchases, downloads, sign-ups, memberships, etc. Keep your eye on the Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate to see if there are any issues or errors to be aware of.

Reputation

Your company’s reputation is one of your most valuable assets. It needs to be carefully protected and promoted to ensure that it accurately reflects your business and brand values. Measure how well your content strategy is contributing to this process with these metrics.

• Partnerships – Track whether your content strategy is contributing to building new strategic partnerships and strengthening existing relationships.
• Trust – Monitor the number of referrals, return customers, and subscription renewals as a measurement of how well your brand is trusted by your customers and how loyal they are.
• Rapport – Track the number of social media mentions, positive reviews, and backlinks to your website as a measurement of your reputation and popularity.

Content Maintenance

Update Your Content

Keeping your content updated will make you a favorite of readers and search engines alike. Stale and outdated content is the enemy here, but the good news is there are many ways to keep older content feeling current and relevant.

• Internal Links – As you grow the content on your website you should go back to older blog articles and add internal links (links that connect one page on your website to another) to newer, relevant content. Also, linking to older content from new blog posts signals to Google that your aging content is relevant. The whole process helps to refresh older content while improving site SEO.
• Incorporate Feedback – If you receive feedback or suggestions about your content, for example in the comments section or on social media, it’s a good idea to periodically revisit and tweak those articles by incorporating that audience input as a way to keep it fresh.
• Make Corrections – Likewise, go back to older content and make corrections either by fixing outright factual errors, updating data that has simply changed, and as a result no longer holds true, or even by fixing grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.
• Fix Broken Links – Inevitably, links will break over time because the content has been moved or deleted, so it is important to find and replace those broken external links with working links. Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a good tool to weed out bad links.

Repurpose Your Content

Published content can be reused and recycled in new and better formats to adapt to different audiences and channels. Here are a few ideas about how to revamp your content:

• Convert Content – Convert a blog article into an infographic or informative image to share on social media.
• Spin-Off Content – Turn an article into a video or slide presentation. Conversely, take a video and use the material to create a written article.
• Divide Content – Take a long, in-depth blog post and sub-divide it. Then expand on each part by publishing separate articles.
• Combine Content – Gather shorter blog posts and combine them to create a more in-depth piece like a long-form article or ebook.

Keep Evergreen Content Fresh

Your pillar posts are your best blog posts that act as the foundation on which your blog and reputation are built. They contain long-form, evergreen content that covers a broad topic that is relevant to your industry. It’s essential that these evergreen posts remain fresh.

• Replace Stats – Statistics change over time and in order to keep your pillar content relevant make sure to add more recent statistics and examples to support your argument if necessary. If it’s 2023 and your stats are from 2010, your article might seem outdated.
• Update Instructions – When articles contain how-to, instructional steps, particularly for software products, it’s important to make sure those instructions and screenshots remain accurate and reflect the latest versions of the software, programs, or apps.
• Add, Add, Add – What might have started out as a 1000 word article, can end up being 5000-10000 words long years later if you continue to expand on the ideas and enhance it with new and valuable information.

Grow Your Content

To grow your content you need to have a multifaceted approach.

It’s one thing to grow your content creation by simply increasing output through outsourcing and scaling with guest posting but it’s another thing to make content that actually converts and to grow your blog in a very tangible way that allows you to generate a steady income from yourself.

This growth will be measured by more traffic, increased domain authority, an ever-expanding and large email subscriber list, and will ultimately be reflected in a healthy and thriving revenue stream.

Here are some solid strategies for growing content that converts.

Grow Your Email List

Building your email list should be a priority from day one of your blog launch! Don’t put this off. Your email list will become one of your most valued business assets and will be key to growing your business.

Not only is email communication a really direct and personal way to engage your readers and customers, but it boasts the highest ROI of any other marketing channel.

Bonus: It is wholly owned by your business, so you can control your message and exposure, unlike with SERPs, where visibility can be sporadic due to Google’s finicky algorithms.

Since subscribers must sign up to receive your emails, you can be assured that your list is highly targeted towards your intended audience, and therefore your email audience is more likely to engage with and share your content.

• Use Lead Magnets – To accelerate the growth of your subscriber list you will want to add a Lead Magnet to attract the customer and incentivize them to sign up. Ebooks, tutorials, templates, and e-courses are all examples of lead magnets that could work well for your blog.
• Use Opt-in Forms – Capture the attention of your readers and encourage them to sign up by using strategically placed and nicely designed opt-in and exit-intent forms. Email subscription plugins for WordPress like ThriveLeads, ConvertBox, ConvertPro, and Bloom make it easy to add opt-in functionality to your website and increase conversions.
• Manage Your Email List – Using the right tools to manage your email list, like ConvertKit, AWeber, Mailchimp, SendinBlue, ActiveCampaign, and GetResponse, is essential. There are lots of great email marketing services out there, so choose one with the right features and pricing that best suits your needs.
• Capitalize on Your Email Signature – Think about the number of emails you send on a daily basis and how you can use those emails to promote your content and publicize your brand. Insert a link to one of your best blog posts or videos, and even consider adding a call to action to encourage them to learn more about you and your company.

Hub and Spoke Model

This Hub and Spoke Model describes how all of the content on your blog is related in a hierarchy and interconnected in a web of sorts.

• Pillar Content – Your pillar posts create the foundation of your blog. These content pillars are long-form and evergreen articles that should stand the test of time while providing exceptional value to your reader. Your pillars will establish your authority on a subject matter and be a go-to resource that your readers will refer back to over and over again, like our article on how to SEO optimize a blog or how to build a blog from scratch. Pillar posts will cover a ton of information but won’t necessarily be super deep or detailed.
• Spoke Content – Your spoke articles will be inspired by these pillar pieces and will contain much more in-depth information about each of the sections covered in the pillar article while driving traffic back to the pillar article. The idea is to link back to your pillar content from your spoke content within your own blog, as well as from other sites where you contribute content or are featured. Social media posts, emails, videos, infographics, and Slideshare presentations that link back to your site are just a few other examples of spoke content.
• Content Web – Ideally, you will have enough interlinked content between your hub and spoke articles on your site to keep your reader informed and engaged without losing their attention through outbound links to other sites. This is a phenomenal strategy to establish your brand as an authority with your audience and to build trust with the customer, all the while reaping fantastic SEO benefits.

Guest Posting

Writing for other blogs as a guest writer is a win-win for both you and the site that you are guest posting for. You will be providing them with original content and they, in turn, will link back to your site to boost your domain authority.

It’s a great way to increase your exposure with your target audience, grow your backlinks to juice your SEO, and boost your site traffic. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

• Pitch to high-quality sites that share your audience and avoid content mills that churn out low-quality content. Focus on sites that are relevant to your target audience, and of course, the higher the DA (domain authority) and traffic, the better.
• Always accompany each guest post with an author bio which includes a link back to your site.
• Promote the guest post on all of your social media channels to maximize readership. If your post gets a lot of traffic, it will bode well for you when pitching to future sites.
• Include a call-to-action asking for user comments with questions or feedback. If your guest post creates a high level of engagement with the reader it will be more successful. Diving into a discussion in the comments section also gives you more of a chance to express yourself and make an impression with the audience.

Networking

As with most fields, networking with other businesses and bloggers is a good way to expand your industry knowledge and reach. Learning tips and tricks from seasoned bloggers is invaluable.

• Reach out to fellow writers and content marketers on sites like BlogEngage (a social network for bloggers), Reddit‘s blogging subreddit, GrowthHacker (a community focused on marketing growth), or Moz (a community connecting online marketers and helping them discover important industry events). These sites offer a unique opportunity to engage with others in your industry who are focussed on blogging and content marketing.
• Be a source of support, information, and inspiration to others and you will inspire the same in return. In other words, aim to provide value to others before expecting the same from them.
• Be transparent and honest in all online (and in-person) interactions with other industry peers. Trust is essential and being authentic goes a long way. Share your successes and failures and try to learn from those of others.

Channels

There are many websites that offer unique opportunities to re-purpose, share, and market your content.

Some of these sites are sort of hidden gems, that might at first glance seem unrelated to blogging or content marketing, per se.

The beauty here is that you can tap into a different audience that might not otherwise see your content, just by sharing it using another medium or channel.

• SlideShare – This powerful presentation software, owned by Linkedin since 2012, is used by 80 million professionals every month! This platform offers a phenomenal opportunity to turn your blog content into a presentation format to reach this huge new audience. Most importantly, it allows you to link back to your site which helps build your domain rank with Google. Include a link inside your presentation with a call-to-action to visit your site, or sign up for your mailing list, and even mention a lead magnet.
  
  Not only will you be growing your audience, building your brand, and gaining traffic to your site, but you will be building domain authority with great backlinks.
  
  It goes without saying that your presentation must be gripping and visually appealing. Don’t forget to share your SlideShare presentation on LinkedIn and social media outlets and include social media share buttons in your presentation to make it easy for readers to share, as well.
  
• Quora – Quora is not only a great tool for brainstorming content ideas, as I touched on earlier in this article, but it is a fantastic way to grow your audience by establishing yourself as an authority in your industry. Search for questions that relate to your content niche and provide helpful, clear, structured, and detailed (but concise) answers that deliver value to the reader.
  
  Don’t be overly sales-y by trying to peddle a product or service within your answer. Do include a link to your site in your answer.
  
  A time-saving tip to help you to quickly provide quality answers is to draw on your existing research and blog articles and pull out the best nuggets of information on the topic so you can quickly provide high-quality Quora answers and avoid writer’s block. Then, link back to the more in-depth article on your blog to drive traffic and help the reader dig deeper and learn more about the topic.
  
• Pinterest – By signing up for a free Pinterest Business account you have access to both Pinterest Analytics and Rich Pins, which are an upgraded or premium Pin of sorts that work really well for business use. Choose from a handful of types of Rich Pins like Product, Article, or Recipe, depending on your business goals and niche. Product Rich Pins show the latest price, availability, and product information right on your Pin. Recipe Rich Pins will list information like ingredients, cooking time, and serving sizes. Article Rich Pins will display a headline, author, and description and update with automatically according to recent edits.
  
  Pin, pin, pin, and keep pinning your blog articles, regularly and consistently. Pinterest scheduling apps like Tailwind automate pinning and definitely make the process easier. Also, add Pinterest share buttons to Your blog articles to make it a cinch for readers to pin.
  
  Join relevant group boards, where all users can post, so you can benefit from the total number of all followers for all pinners in a group. When you pin to your own boards your audience is limited to your followers, whereas with group boards you have a LOT more exposure. Check out PinGroupie, a website directory that lists nearly 30,000 pinboards, so you can easily search and find group boards to pin to.
  
  Pinterest is all about great visuals. It’s super important to use really attractive and catchy imagery so your pins don’t get lost in the mix. The more beautiful your pins the more likely they are to stand out, get re-pinned, and shared.
  

Content Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

It’s true that our failures offer great learning opportunities. But, wouldn’t it be nice to avoid as many mistakes and pitfalls from the get-go as possible? Take a look at some common errors that can be costly, in terms of both revenue and reputation.

• Don’t Spam – Don’t send emails and messages to customers who did not opt-in.
• Don’t Be Pushy – Don’t be overly sales-y. Your content marketing should add value without directly pushing your product or brand.
• Don’t Use Black Hat Tactics – Don’t try to trick Google with crappy, keyword-stuffed content. This won’t build a loyal audience, it won’t inspire trust in your brand and it will hurt your SERP ranking.
• Don’t Be a Perfectionist – Don’t let perfectionism get in the way of creating content and communicating with your customer. If you wait until you have some massive amount of amazing content before hitting the publish button or building your email list, you will miss out on valuable time to forge a relationship with your customer and build your brand presence online.
• Don’t Be Shady – Don’t create manipulative or deceptive content. Always be transparent about who you are and what you are offering on your website.

FAQs About Content Marketing