Image source
Content Marketing Strategies To Boost Your Website Traffic
Do you want to use effective content marketing strategies to drive a ridiculous amount of insane organic traffic to your website?
Are you serious about catapulting your website to the first page of Google's organic search results?
Is it your goal to boost your local or global influence in your chosen niche and location?
As if those were not enough questions, please permit me to ask you yet another question, 'In this digital age, are you spending tons of money on traditional marketing with minimal or no results?'
If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, then you will benefit immensely by reading the rest of this timely and thoroughly-researched content marketing article.
You get the beef of this article by making content marketing strategy a holistic and important pillar of your marketing campaigns.
By the time you get to the end of this article, you would come to the same conclusion that most professional inbound marketers and I have come to - and that is - effective content marketing strategies drive a ridiculous amount of organic traffic to any website and catapult the sales of tons of products or services.
If that arrests your attention, stay put then as I address important content marketing topics and then answer the following questions:
- What is organic traffic?
- What is direct traffic?
- How do you create the best content for organic search?
- What is content marketing?
- What forms do content comes in?
And then I will show how to craft an effective content marketing calendar and then implement it by using massive and ruthless social media promotions to achieve the results you have envisioned.
Finally, I'll show you the steps that you would take to achieve your content marketing goals.
Is that what you still want?
You see, companies and people that understand the secret and power of content marketing, embrace it as a seamless mix of their traditional offline and inbound marketing strategies.
What Is Organic Traffic?
In its most simplified explanation, organic traffic is traffic that comes from search engines. In other words, these are people that find your website by typing a keyword or phrase for example in Google or Bing's search box and they display their search results or ranking based on their secret ranking formula.
When inbound marketers talk about content marketing and organic traffic, they talk about the hardest work you’ll ever put into your website to drive the sales of your products or services.
Having said that, amazingly, it’s also the greatest investment of your money, time, and effort you can make.
One of the awesome benefits of content marketing is that the content you put on your website today is properly optimized. will drive tons of traffic tomorrow, next month, next year, and probably even several years from now.
Now you see why many marketing professionals consider content marketing a no-brainer.
It is worth every dollar invested. That kind of ROI is much more than what you get from paid traffic.
However, as far as getting an incredible amount of organic traffic there are pretty good and tedious ways and there are also some downright awful ways that should be avoided at all costs.
What Is Direct Traffic?
Since I have discussed in detail what organic traffic is, you might be wondering what direct traffic is.
Direct traffic is defined as visits with no referring website.
It could be traffic that comes from people that see your business card or billboard.
They could be people that heard a radio show or advertisement where your company website was mentioned.
Many could have seen your TV advertisements. In other words, direct traffic is the audience that comes to your website through offline engagements.
Create The Best Content You Possibly Can For Organic Traffic
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” – Benjamin Franklin.
There was a time when 'SEO' experts told everyone that would listen that creating tons of content regularly is awesome for SEO.
The truth of the matter is that you get organic traffic because you have created a valuable online space.
The best reason you would give your target audience for coming back to your digital storefront (website) is to create interesting and engaging content, useful information, and/or resources that would arrest and earn your visitor’s attention.
When you craft stunning content, your visitors start to view you as a credible source, because the content on your website adds great value to their life or business.
This is especially important when you consider that your website is a representation of your business.
In fact, in most cases, it’s the first impression a potential customer may have of your business.
Just as you wouldn’t deliver a sub-standard product or service you should not be publishing low-quality blog posts.
You must publish only your best content every time you hit the publish button.
That’s why it’s worth the effort. You don’t see that kind of ROI from paid traffic.
What Is Content Marketing?
Image source
According to the content marketing institute, "Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action."
In his book "Epic Content Marketing," Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi offers the best definition of "content" I've seen.
Pulizzi describes content marketing as "the marketing and business process for creating and distributing valuable and compelling content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience -- to drive profitable customer action."
It consists of every tool and science used in using content to promote a company, product, service or, brand. So, how does it relate to organic search?
Get this: your content tells search engines what your website is all about.
Search engines rely mainly on text and keywords to interpret the meaning of your webpage. In other words, quality content on your website helps search engines interpret your site properly.
It is highly important to note that without content, search engines won't have any meaningful thing to crawl.
That means then that your website won’t be shown in the search results of search results for the keywords or phrases that are relevant to your brand if you don't have quality content.
An organic search result is a result you see that is not ads when you type in keywords or phrases and the search engine spits out the results.
Having awesome content is a primary ranking factor for search engines.
Relevant And Useful Content Can Come In The Form Of:
To earn that recognition and niche authority, you must provide new, engaging, and thoughtful information regularly.
This content can include things like:
Videos:
Image source
Videos help marketers to broaden their reach and to be able to connect with their target audience across different platforms like blogs, YouTube, social media, and importantly, search engines.
Effective use of videos in content marketing includes:
Customer testimonials.
Videos for a company's 'About Us', its Mission as well as Vision.
Interviews with key members of the company.
Call To Action (CAT) videos. For instance, ''call us, 'signup for a trial", and "tell your friends about us''.
A video that tells a before, during, and after scenes story of how the company provided amazing services that "wowed" the customer.
If you have not embraced video marketing, ask yourself candidly and sincerely, why is your competition using it massively and ruthlessly?
According to Cisco, an American networking equipment juggernaut, by 2017, videos will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic.
Infographics:
Infographics are a visually compelling communication medium.
Effective infographics can communicate complex data in a visual format that is potentially viral.
They take complex data or information and break them into a visual shorthand.
When information is presented in such a compelling and visual fashion, it makes it ridiculously easy for your site visitors to spend time on your site.
Editorials And Blog Posts:
Technically speaking, “Editorials” refer to opinion articles in newspapers.
Since most blog posts fall into the “opinion” category, “editorial blog content” means posts that the blogger has posted out of genuine interest (and is unpaid for that post).
Editorials then are longer blog posts that explain topics in more detail.
How-To Articles:
Image source
As the name suggests, 'how-to' articles are articles that give step-by-step directives on how to get a certain task accomplished. Such articles will keep your target audience coming back for more.
Memes: (/Miːm/ MEEM)
If you have been on the internet, you've seen memes. They are everywhere on the web these days and have grown stronger over the past few years because social media has grown and made them a great mainstream phenomenon.
They are used to satirize politics, popular culture and, common experiences.
They are popular on social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and Tumblr.
Interviews:
One overlooked content marketing strategy is telling your own or someone else's story.
It is one of the most amazing, yet effective ways to create awesome content that spreads because you are no longer alone promoting it.
Anytime you bring another person or other people into your content creation, they will be interested in sharing that article as well.
Besides, the blog always looks more trustworthy when there are known niche experts taking part in its life.
EBooks:
One of the unique reasons why content marketers use eBooks is that they’re downloadable.
Ebooks don't feel like a blog post or video to your audience, instead, they feel far more like a real object of value.
That is why many marketers use eBooks as lead-generation tools.
With quality Ebooks, you offer your users the chance to opt-in with their contact information in exchange for your valuable information.
Its beauty is that it gives you the ability to showcase your authority in your niche on a subject in a greater level of depth than a blog post allows.
Digital marketing expert Neil Patel lists eBooks as second on his list of ways to create lead-generating content, behind data-driven case studies.
Podcasts:
Image source
Wikipedia defines podcast: "A podcast, or generically netcast, is an episodic series of digital audio or video files which a user can download and listen to.
It is often available for a subscription so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web syndication to the user's local computer, mobile application, or portable media player."
They are awesome ways for people to listen or watch the content they want a the time they want without worrying about having a consistent Internet connection.
Additionally, more people are watching and listening on their mobile devices than they are reading.
Product Reviews:
Depending on the industry or niche, product or service reviews can generate tons of traffic.
A product-centered review is content that investigates in-depth both the benefits and drawbacks of specific goods or services.
List Posts:
Any headline that lists several reasons, secrets, types, or ways will work because it makes a very specific promise of what’s in store for the reader.
These kinds of superlative lists will improve your SEO efforts. People are attracted to list posts as they’re easy to scan and follow.
Online Polls:
Online polls help engage your audience because people like to share their thoughts.
Using online polls and engagement, you expand your social media community.
Just like in the real world, when a question is asked online, a conversation can spark.
Every answer, comment, or share helps your ranking on the social media platform.
The more interactions you get with one online poll, the more likely the next will be shared as well.
If engagement is your goal, try out a few fun questions.
They don’t even need to be directly connected to your product.
Think of the poll question as an icebreaker at a networking event. Your objective is to get people talking to you.
Guest Posts:
Guest posts give you authority, qualified traffic, relevant links, motivated leads, and sales of your products and services.
According to Social Marketing Writing, “62.96% of people perceive blogs with multiple authors to be more credible.”
That does not mean that guest blogging brings instant traffic to your website.
Many savvy bloggers agree with Copyblogger, that “content marketing results happen slowly and they happen over time.”
In other words, if you create awesome content, you’ll get a steady stream of insane organic traffic, new leads, conversions, and customers many years after the article is published.
Email Marketing:
Image source
In case you didn't get the memo, an effective email marketing strategy rocks!
That's because email content marketing helps your business or brand reach your target audience at a place that is ridiculously easy for them — and that is their inbox.
There are plenty of data that backs up the benefits or advantages of email marketing. For instance:
MarketingSherpa reports that a whopping 91% of adults in the US like to receive promotional emails.
According to McKinsey, email marketing is more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined in acquiring new customers.
Case Studies:
Should you use case studies as one of your potent content marketing strategies? What are case studies?
The basic definition of case studies is that they are in-depth analyses (studies) of any given situation. Let's break it down.
Let's say that you have this incredibly innovative mobile healthcare platform that benefits both doctors and patients.
The beauty of the platform is that doctors make more money by using it and patients pay less money.
Let's call the platform MobiHealth.
After a set of doctors and administrators gave your product a try, they fell in love with the convenience and ease of use!
Now the doctors are implementing your platform hospital-wide and are convinced that the technology can bring several benefits to their patients.
The example above illustrates a great subject for a case study.
Readers can relate to real-world clients (the doctors) that were skeptical about embracing the platform.
The doctors involved in the set can provide quotes so readers could understand the benefits of the platform.
The story concludes with the doctors implementing the product and provides a happy ending for your readers.
People who read this case study can understand how you addressed a problem for a customer.
What Is A Content Marketing Calendar?
Image source
At Anaconda marketing, we plan our work and work our plan.
That is why as content creators, we follow the same example as publishing houses that use editorial calendars. We go even further.
We use a well-planned content calendar as the hub of all our marketing strategies for the year.
We do the same for our clients. So what is a content calendar?
A content calendar is a visual representation of the timing and the nature of content that your marketing team distributes to various segments of your database, depending on…
What they’re interested in?
Where are they in your sales funnel?
What pace they’re moving forward?
The purpose of good content is to generate new sales leads and gently nudge existing sales leads toward the next stages of their decision-making processes inside the sales funnel.
The main benefit of the calendar approach is that…
You can see the consistency of the distributable or already distributed content.
You can see the exact timing of the distribution.
You can adjust your content creation team’s time frames.
Editorial Calendar Vs Content Marketing Calendar
Since a content marketing calendar goes further than an editorial calendar, I will highlight the major differences.
If you're like most people, your association with an editorial calendar might probably be a picture of a calendar with topics and authors written in on the dates when a piece is scheduled to go live.
And you would be completely right.
A content marketing calendar is much more than that.
The difference hides in the word content.
Content envelops more than just written pieces on your blog. Infographics, quizzes, newsletters, video tutorials – it comes in all shapes and sizes.
With that said, and with the notion that you’re using the content marketing calendar with clear long-term goals in mind, it shouldn’t be a surprise that it is more complex than an editorial calendar.
When your entire strategy is planned out on one calendar, it’s easier to keep organized, focus on deadlines, and be more productive.
Content Promotion Using Social Media
After any of the relevant forms of content is created, the next most important stage is content promotion using social media marketing.
Are you ignoring social media?
If you're a professional, you can connect with other professionals in your industry through LinkedIn.
For sharing information with your family and friends, there is Facebook.
Using Pinterest, you can show off your passions, while Instagram is there for you to deliver your engaging visual content to the world.
By using a well-crafted, user and mobile-friendly website as a hub, you can skyrocket your digital storefront, powered by engagements on targeted social media sites, to nudge your target audience to make a buying decision.
Such massive and ruthless social media promotion is effective through social media management.
What Is Social Media Management?
The most basic definition of social media management is that it is the online management of social media accounts.
Such internet management of social media accounts could be for individuals, businesses, or organizations.
While content development and postings are big parts of social media management, they are only a small part of this amazing business strategy.
When it comes to social media management, the most basic question we get is: 'How much does it cost?
Our social media management pricing is done in packages.
Creating the right mix of different kinds of content, and promoting them massively, ruthlessly, and strategically through social media, will result in more people visiting your website organically rather than through your paid marketing efforts.
To craft authoritative persuasive content that engages with your readers, contact us.
WhatsApp us at: +234 080 331 75396 or +234 080 579 37786
