The Right Content Strategy to Maximize Traffic
This is part 2/2 of our Frugal Guide to Content Marketing.
In this next article, we’re going to spell out how to create content that achieves your desired business outcomes, rather than just sitting in a corner of your blog looking pretty.
The holy grail of content marketing is developing a piece of content that grows wings, takes flight and “goes viral”. This is not easy, but there is some science to developing content that will be shared and will drive activity back to your website.
Read on for 5 content development frameworks every content manager should evaluate for their content strategy.
Key Takeaways
- The Hustle and Morning Brew - the content success story of our generation.
- Visual content can help your brand and strengthen your SEO position.
- Interactive content drives more conversions.
- CTAs are valuable part of content and should be made priority.
- B2B customers are looking for more tailored and detailed content.
In a hurry, here are all the content types that you need to try:
[Content type #1] Curation - Be the Hustle of...
Creating original content is HARD. It takes time and can get expensive.
But you don't need to do it all yourself! Insightful curation of content can add plenty of value for your audience.
There is an art and skill to 'borrowing' the work of others and by filtering and organizing information relevant to your audience, you are delivering a useful service.
Even if you are generating a lot of your own original content, sharing the work of others (ie. curation) is a handy technique for building community and letting your readers know that it’s not all about you, all the time.
Two of the biggest content marketing success stories of our generation are probably The Morning Brew and the Hustle - The most famous newsletters around. Both have amassed a fascinating number fo loyal followers and have grown to double-digits million dollars companies.
They make us, content marketers, think about the power of novelty and curation. They have revived a channel that everybody gave up on - emails. By breaking all the rules but deeply understanding what their target audience is looking for: long format emails, minimal pictures, curated picks for a busy millennial.
For more tips, check out - https://influencermarketinghub.com/content-curation/
[Content type #2] Visual content
Instagram and Pinterest are the ultimate visual platforms and their success is very telling about our own weakness in from of visual content. Humans are visually stimulated beings. We process visual data better than any other type of information.
The fact is, we process images 60,000 times faster than text, and 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. But visual content marketing is more than just sharing pictures and videos, it really can help you strengthen your branding, rank higher with SEO and create emotional connections with your customers.
There are several types of visual content: pictures, videos, gifs, infographics... You can create stand-alone visual content or supplement any blog or landing page to make them more engaging. Keep this in mind during your content creation!
[Content type #3] Multiply your ‘share triggers’ with interactive content
Interactive content generates 2X more conversions and drives consumers through the pipeline!
Whether we are talking infographics, quizzes or gamification, the principle for this type of content is the same: make the user take action and interact with your brand.
While no one can be more famous than Kim Kardashian, Buzzfeed crazy quizzes are great contenders. If you never took one click here to see what we are talking about:
----> Take the quiz: Choose Some Potato Foods And We'll Reveal If You're An Introvert Or Extrovert
Interactive content is a must for effective content marketing efforts whether it is for b2c or b2b. Here are some tips on how to make your content more interactive:
- Use images, infographics, and videos to make your content more engaging.
- Use quizzes and polls to get people interacting with your content and to collect valuable data.
- Use social media to share your content and create an omnichannel strategy to connect with your audience where they are.
- Use gamification to drive action. While it is no longer a novelty, its appeal is still as relevant. Whether it is AR like the Wayfair "View in Room" button or a simple spin wheel for a discount, users are more likely to take action with these options.
The ultimate growth marketing playbook
The exact 41 strategies we used to grow from 4-figure to 6-figure traffic in one year.
[Content type #4] CTA - Call to action
Content is king and we all know that but the problem starts with how to effectively call to action to seal the deal.
Calls to action are an essential part of any online content strategy and allow you to measure the success of your marketing efforts. Below are 4 characteristics of highly converting CTA's to help you optimize yours.
- Make your CTA's buttons
This may seem like a given but it is always good to be reminded that the more visible the better. Visible and big are different words; your call to action should stand out against your website background but doesn't need to be big. Making the CTA a button helps the user know what to do next and where to click for the next step.
- Provide value
By now, everyone knows that by clicking a CTA, they will have to share their information. We are not fooling anyone so providing value is extremely important to make the trade worth it for user. For example, if they are downloading an e-book, you can add a preview of the pages, or a summary of what they will read.
- Use action text
You don't have to use fancy words to drive conversion, you only need to tell the user what action they need to take. The most converting CTA texts are the most used ones: Download now, buy now, read more, sign-up for free, try-it for free...
- Include a secondary muted CTA
The secondary CTA is designed to be less prominent and offers an alternative to users who are not ready to fully commit to your main CTA. It can be a valuable asset for you to control the customer journey and direct then towards content designed to give more information and convince.
[Content type #5] B2B content marketing strategy
While all the discussed above can apply to b2b, there are slight nuances when it comes to interactions between two businesses. B2B customers are looking for more tailored and detailed content.
Your content strategy as B2B marketer can be split in two:
- Narrow audience - sales oriented: Focus on the problem is your company solving
- Broad audience - brand building: Help you target audience do their jobs better
Let's take Core dna as an example. This is how we split our content strategy:
1 - Narrow audience: Headless Content Management System (CMS), eCommerce platform
In this first category, we focus educating about our product and services. Our blog posts talk about what a headless platform is, how we combine content and commerce and offer a hybrid platform etc. We also created an FAQ section to help our current and potential customer fully comprehend our offerings and answer any questions they may have.
This content aims at persuading our target audience that Core dna is the right product for their needs.
2 - Broad audience: Content Management, eCommerce Management, Platform strategies ...
In this second category, we focus on helping our target audience do their jobs by offering valuable insight, tactics and strategies to implement to reach their business goals. For example, this piece of content marketing articles will help marketers and marketing teams execute a successful marketing strategy.
This content aims at engaging our target at the top of the funnel. We relate to their pain-points and offer solutions for all aspects of their jobs. We are not selling, we are creating valuable relationships.
Conclusion
No matter your target audience, providing value should be at the center of your content strategy.
You can always rely on the AIDA principle when creating your content: Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. If you follow this structure, you will create compelling content for your audience.
Want to learn more about content marketing? Download our Free Guide 👇
The ultimate growth marketing playbook
The exact 41 strategies we used to grow from 4-figure to 6-figure traffic in one year.
Related questions
A 17-minute overview of the Core Content and Core Marketing. Learn about Pages, Blogs, News, FAQs and more!
[Read more]A 10-minute overview about Pages app on Core dna. Learn about configuration, permissions, setup, and many more via the Core dna DXP admin.
Video transcription
Welcome to the Coordinate Pages application.
Through this video, we will explore how the Pages application can be used to create content for your website. We'll then look at the Admin interface to see how Pages actually works. And then we'll deep dive from a technical standpoint to see how the Pages application can be built.
So the Pages application is one of the most commonly used applications within Core dna.
When you scroll down a page, most likely the Pages application is being used to render the content, whether it be Video content, image Content or different types of components within the site.
The Page's content also has the ability for us to create what we call Style Guides, which are the various components that we create for our website user to use. In this case here we can see the variety of components that have been constructed for that particular site.
The Pages component also can have content that comes in from other parts of the website. So as we scroll down the bottom here, we can see two blogs that have been posted inside the Style Guide. And when you click on them, it takes you into the Blog Posts area.
So how does the Pages module work? Well, let's log into Core dna.
The Pages application sits within the Content family over on the right. So when we kick off the Pages application, it serves two major functions. The first one, it provides the various navigations for the different parts of the system. And secondly, it provides the content. So when we look to the left, we can see here the main navigation pane which highlights Insights, Editors, Reader Group, Resources and Sample Page.
If we go back to our website, we'll notice media room, insights, resources and sample page. There are a number of menu options missing. The reason for this is one of the first features of the Page's module is its ability to segment content. So if we click on the Editors page, we can go across the top and see the Authority tab. The Authority tab is what allows us to segment content.
When we look down the Authority tab, we can see the major components. Firstly, we have what we call Inherited Access. Inherit Access tells the system to go to the parent and look for the access control at the parent. In this case, we've unclick the Inherit Access and by default, if we don't know who you are, you won't see the page. So, because we don't know who's logged in, the system will not show this particular page.
If, however, you're part of the Editor Group, you will have all access to this page. So let's see this. In practice, we go over to the login, we log in as Editor and now we'll find the Editors page.
When we log out of the system, the system will say no editors Page. This is a really cool feature that can actually allow you to create multiple segments and you can see here, we've used it for the reader group, and within the reader group, we've broken it down into internal readers, external readers and common content.
One of the other features of the Pages application is its ability to create multiple menus. And so here when we look down the main navigation bar, we can also see the footer navigation, which corresponds to the bottom of the page, and the info navigation, which is used somewhere within the system to provide linkages.
We can also create what we call landing pages. Landing pages are the ones that we define, that customers are sent to and may not see a menu or may want to have specific content that's part of a promotion or a campaign that we may be running. So let's go back to the home page.
Now, the Page's application allows you to put content in many as forms. In the details page. You can see here that we can create content. We have publishing settings. We also have some custom fields that we've created to provide us some tagging.
In addition, we have the SEO button across the top. This allows us to create focused keywords, the metadata and meta description, and also the social media overrides that we may want to put in place for when people copy the page.
We've spoken about the Authority module. We then also have what we call Linked Content. Linked Content provide us the ability to create components that are linked to other parts of the system.
I won't go into too much detail into this application. It's part of the application as I'll cover some other areas in terms of attachments. So attachments in this particular implementation of Pages is the way that the site is created. And what we can see here is all the different components that have been created for the page to render.
So as we go through, we'll see we have the top image, which is a hero full.
We have tapped content. Further down, we have posts by tags from the blogs. And if we go back to the home page of the site, we'll notice that there's the Hero, there's your Tabbed Content. And then these are the posts from your blog posts. And we can continue to build these pages for as far as we like.
Editing these pages very easy. Just press the edit button. You asked for the title, you asked for a category. And we'll talk a little bit more about how we construct these categories. And these represent all the components.
We then have a link heading, and within here we can also have custom property. So here we've created some custom data, we've created some background colors, we've created some button colors and various other aspects that we want to run for the component.
Pages also has the ability for you to allocate layouts. So layouts are the different page layouts that you may want to construct. In this case, we have five different layouts, content layout, a features layout, default layout site, an XML layout and a pricing layout. And we can also see here we have the ID of the page and a Gui ID that can be used to transfer the page across sites from a share perspective, we also have the ability to share the page using social media as long as we configure the social elements that we need.
Finally, the config area of the site allows us to configure the various aspects of managing the page's application.
So the first part is our Blueprints. Our blueprints are the descriptors for the different types of layouts that we have and also and are used within the layouts area. We also have the categories. So we saw these categories earlier. These are the definitions for the components that we create in the page and where they're actually used.
So here we can see the two column, three row blue is used in three pages or four pages and we can go and modify those pages. When we get into the technical aspect of Pages, we'll discover how the ID here is used within the coordinate system to connect the component to the actual descriptor.
Here we can also manage properties and these are generally the custom fields for the pages. And here you can see the various dropdown types of properties that we've created for us to use within the categories. And we also have the layouts.
And the layouts allow us to connect the layout file and give it a description so we can use it within the system. Finally, we have the manage configuration.
So manage configuration throughout the system is where we can extend the platform or provide features to the platform that customers have asked for in the past that allow us to set the application up in a way that makes sense for our use. And you can see here that we have various elements. For example, takeover pages.
We may have an upgrade that we've done, we may have metadata that we want to apply and also some SEO bits. That's the first part of our discussion on the Pages application.
Our analytics module allows you to capture information about customers and prospects, providing detailed information regarding how they find, interact with and eventually leave your site, helping you determine whether or not your goals and objectives are being reached.
[Read more]