1) With time the work becomes easier
I know it might sound very cliché but believe me it’s the truth. Initially our first blog posts were a struggle in terms of keeping out the marketing fluff, finding something entirely new to say or in generating new ideas. Now that same work is something we look forward to. To have another blog post all we need to do is some research, brainstorming and determine a sense of flow.
2) Analysis paralysis should be avoided
In content marketing constant eyeing of the actual MQL counts was made with a conscious choice to not over analyze content marketing. It was done in order to avoid analysis paralysis. For instance one of the guest posts generated a lead almost immediately but a similar post on the blog didn’t generate any leads. Various conclusions like- we shouldn’t use such posts on our site and only guest blog, maybe the whole set of data we were using is not statistically significant or so were made. We were looking forward to explore where we could decide for ourselves what worked and what didn’t. Also all leads were considered to be coming from content marketing.
3) Calls-to-action really work
I have come across many content writers who had written about how placing CTAs on blog will increase conversion rate. Keeping initial skepticism aside when we tried it on our own blog , it worked very well. As a matter of fact, we have been bringing in two times the MQLs on the blog and the pace hasn’t dropped since.
4) Stand out
In the market lots of content related to gamification can be found. In order to stand out and be special, various questions like ‘’is competition better or completion?’’ were asked. While challenging conventional wisdom by writing on diverse but interesting topics, I was afraid that we might not engage the readers. Soon we realized that this fear was worthless as people value authenticity.
5) Read about your industry
About four months after investing in content marketing, I started worrying if we would eventually run out of ideas. Then a blog post inspired by an ad for Walter Mischel’s book, ’The Mashmallow Test’ became a big hit and I realized that it is beneficial to read books and articles about your industry, business, management and human behavior as they can lead to thought provoking blog posts down the line. Simple Steps For Conducting Creative Content Research
6) Not all guest posts are equal
Many times this question arises if a guest blog post is beneficial for a site’s SEO or not. I will say that even when there is a guest blog for high quality sites, the results obtained vary widely. We realized at gameffective that even our popular external guest posts did not perform well at all. When we saw referral traffic on our analytics, guest posts on the larger sites pleased us but we were disappointed with the results of our high quality posts on the smaller sites with the niche vertical focuses as the referral traffic was very low.
7) Usage of ineffective content promotion platforms should be stopped
Key to success is to stop using platforms that aren’t working for you. For instance Twitter doesn’t work for us. Hence we spent less time on it and use other platforms which do work for us.
8) Do what works for you
It is beneficial to find what works for you and spend more time doing that. For us, LinkedIn generates more leads than Facebook or Twitter. The best converting channel for us has been e-mail marketing. E-mail truly is the cherry on top of the content marketing cake for us.
9) Re-purpose content works
A single blog post can be purposed into an info-graphic, a Slide Share, a podcast or even an e-book with multiple blog posts on similar topics. There are a numerous ways in which content can be re-purposed so that the audience can grab similar information in different ways.
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