When it comes to earning SEO juice, we all know that content is the search marketer’s preferred egress. After all, content is more than 70 percent responsible for awarding organic rank. One of the biggest challenges faced by content marketers is fading into a routine where one is fettered to a rinse and repeat sequence. Amping up your content with some pizzazz and sparkle will help improve SEO efforts and conversion rates because, ultimately, the glitz and glam will attract more search traffic AND target the right types of buyers who will engage with your content thus sending valuable signals to those finicky Google bots. Presented for your consideration are three creative ways that the best innovative inbound digital marketing agencies jazz up their content to enable growth for their clients.
The Alliance of Verbal and Visual
The best universities offer Humanities courses that combine the study of poetry and prose with painting and sculpture. They believe the best way for academics to have full, knowledge depths into particular genres is to see how humanity is represented through both verbal and visual art forms. In other words, to truly understand man’s experience in the Industrial Revolution, one should read Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’ while contemplating Turner’s painting ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’.
Just as academics are consumers of history’s artistic experiences, online buyers can experience a deeper den of knowledge and have a better experience by having a visual form that accompanies a blog or article. This is where YouTube creates opportunities for businesses to make more intimate connections with potential customers and current clients. In addition, YouTube videos appear in organic searches, so when leveraged with content, SEO can be greatly improved while creating sales growth.
For example, my brother and I are big Star Wars nerds. I want to get him a high-quality custom lightsaber for his birthday. I am willing to make it myself, or find a company who can create a custom solution. I did a Google search for “how to make a lightsaber”, and with 817,000 results the first four organically ranking are YouTube videos as shown in this screenshot.
Content marketers have a tremendous opportunity to create loved, informative blogs and cross-reference these with adjoining YouTube videos. These videos can be visual representations of previously written blogs or they can expand on previous blog topics.
If a company that makes lightsabers writes an article on the difference between Jedi lightsabers in the original canon vs. the new canon, then the company could publish a video showing how fans from Anglo-Saxon ancestry can incorporate their family’s crest into a Jedi original canon lightsaber design. This brings me to the second way creative marketers can jazz up their content: Niche Groups.
Focus Content on Niche Groups
Niche groups may be smaller segments of your consumer audience, but they are extremely vocal and therefore add a ton of value. These are people within your content generation community and those with topical interests. In continuing the above example of a niche audience passionate about their ancestral identity and the symbols associated with their family’s lineage, this would be a great niche audience to target because they purchase items that showcase their heritage, weaponry is closely related to Anglo-Saxon identities, and (according to a Quora Report) 90 percent of Americans have seen at least one of the Star Wars films and more than 60 percent of Americans consider themselves fans of the franchise. Clearly, there is an opportunity for companies that make lightsabers to reach out to a niche group like this one, sell some product, and get delighted customers singing their praise all over social media.
Regal Cinemas, one of the largest movie theater chains in the U.S., engaged visitors to their theaters with interactive displays that served as the perfect photo backdrops for Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.
Create content for the smaller, louder groups in your sphere of influence. In regards to our example of lightsaber companies, there are groups who loudly gripe over Disney’s acquisition of the franchise, those who continue to fight with Star Trek fan groups over which franchise is superior, and those who even take classes in learning made-up languages used in the various worlds of Star Wars. When small, loud groups feel like their voices aren’t being heard elsewhere, businesses can build solid brand advocacy in these groups by creating clever content that triggers their emotions.
Start Collecting Content Creators
Third, but not last, look for highly successful content creators. Types to consider fall under these categories:
- Writers who have a portfolio of hit pieces
- Media contributors
- Journalists
- Marketing agency writers
The authors of hit pieces are those who produce content that is widely shared and talked about. They have appeal and a voice that attracts fans, and they often have the skills required to write for a wide variety of audiences. Media contributors and journalists are also ideal targets because they are often underpaid and are hungry to make more money while building up a portfolio. Content writers from digital marketing agencies are also ideal because they have the business growth mindset and the skills to write content with the incentive to have it shared and dispersed all over social media.
There are a number of tools you can use, BuzzSumo being the most popular one used by marketing agencies. This tool allows you to search for, for example, lightsabers and see what the most shared content is with set time frames. You can discover that an article titled “How I Taught my 10 Year-Old Son to Build a Kylo Ren Lightsaber” got the most hits and social shares over the last three months. You can see who the author is, and, oh look, she works for this agency in Tampa and does freelance work on the side.
This is one of the best hacks you can do because it’s not technically “cheating” and it doesn’t run the risk of angering the Google gods. Also, this is an ideal way to recruit known individuals with a high likeliness they will create amazing content that will do extremely well and resonate with lots of readers.
Don’t Be Satisfied with Old Approach Content
2017 has already taught us that buyers no longer rely on sales teams to educate them on products and services. Consumers are savvy shoppers who do on-the-spot research looking for in-depth solutions to their pains and needs. As we are already into 2018, content efforts must be boosted to meet and exceed buyer demands, and by following these three tips you can expect to see this be the year that your
