Content marketing is a great way of spreading your message across a range of people. If you’re looking for some winning content marketing resolutions for 2014, use this list of new ideas. Incorporate these ideas into your content marketing strategy and see how your results change, as a result.
The Ultimate Guide
When you have a diverse portfolio of content, you get to the point where it can be hard for people to find what they need quickly. If you have a print and marketing blog, for example, you might have different sections on prepping for the presses and getting your published content into the open.
Create what is known as an ‘ultimate guide’. The ultimate guide is a single webpage that almost acts as a directory. It’s a series of links that sends people to different areas of your portfolio.
If your site is convenient to use, visitors will spend more time on it.
Combining Value
Instead of trying to pass off snippets of information as your own, collaborate with other feeds and repost their content updates. Find out what your audience needs and connect with another feed. Link this feed through your social media accounts. This offers a way for your audience to get what they want as soon as possible.
Firstly, find out what your audience wants. You’ll need to do your research first, because the top online marketing trends that will dominate 2014 will differ from those in previous years. Discover what works and apply it to your specific industry.
Infographics
Different types of media have always been essential for promoting yourself. Google wants to see examples of text, video, and image content. Infographics should always figure as part of your operation. They’re a popular way of imparting a lot of information in a short space of time. They’re dynamic, eye-catching, and easily shareable.
One other reason why infographics are essential is the growth of Pinterest. Pinterest is a social media platform that involves sharing different images. It’s traditionally used for creatives to market themselves, but businesses in any industry can promote themselves if they have exciting image-based content to share.
You can use a number of free infographic makers on the Internet to build them up.
Pinterest Board
Create your own Pinterest board. Leading on from our last point, this is something you can’t afford to miss out on. The majority of large corporations still haven’t paid any attention to this social media phenomenon, and they’re seriously missing out as a result.
Make sure you don’t fall victim to complacency by signing up to Pinterest. There’s a board for every industry. Think about what your audience is likely to be doing. Unless you’re an accountant, you have a use for Pinterest.
Sharing Data
Corporations have gotten into the habit of keeping their information completely secret. People have to understand we no longer live in a world where data is hidden away from the general public. This is a world where we can access data at any time.
Diversify your content marketing strategy by releasing some of your own data. Many websites will do an annual review where they survey their own bloggers to ask about what they want to see and what they’ve done over the previous year.
Not only does it demonstrate the transparency of your operation, it shows you’re committed to making things more exciting and jazzing everything up. Overall, it’s going to make the rest of your content more appealing.
On a side note, you could even combine your shared data with an infographic to make your content even more appealing.
Slide Decks
Have you ever given a presentation and have lots of slide decks doing nothing?
If not, it doesn’t matter because you can make them. Sites like SlideShare.net offer an outlet for you to share your slide presentations. It’s a new way of sharing content. It’s slightly more formal, but it’s also educational. If you’re in the right industry, this can work extremely well.
For example, instead of doing a step-by-step guide or tutorial in a conventional blog, you could turn it into a slide presentation.
When using slides in an online setting, you need to ensure you’re explaining everything to do with the slides. You aren’t present to fill in any gaps. If there are any gaps, you won’t be able to fill them in with a witty comment.
Conduct an Interview
Guest blogging is always a way to market oneself. The reason for this is because it brings in another voice. An interview can bring in another voice and another format. By conducting an interview, you’re further diversifying your content and getting the opinion of someone else.
An interview doesn’t have to involve a video posted online or an audio transcript; although if it does this is always a bonus. An email interview that you write up into an interview is just as useful.
Furthermore, some content marketers have taken to conducting interviews and splitting them into different parts. They’ll publish each part every few days. It creates a sense of excitement and gives your visitors a reason to return to a website on a regular basis.
Give Something Away
It’s the old method off bringing in visitors yet it still has the effect of a new marketing method. Give away something new. It can be anything from a new eBook to a free report. It doesn’t even have to be related to content. It’s something to encourage people to read through your content. That’s it.
Make sure you don’t give too much away, though. You don’t want to have to dilute the quality of your free giveaways to entice people to read the rest of your content.
Always maintain the same level of quality. You’re shooting yourself in the behind by giving out something that doesn’t offer value, or weakening a later blog post to cover for the fact you revealed so much within your free content.
In short, your content marketing playbook should never consist of anything that lowers the value of the content you’re producing.
