As so many businesses continue to dedicate more time and money toward content marketing, most of those very same businesses struggle in pursuit of a positive ROI. Regardless, content marketing represents an expectation for modern businesses and therefore deserves your attention despite the cost involved.
But social shares and comments don’t grow your bottom line, do they?
Perhaps not directly. However, when you figure out to get the most out of each and every piece you publish, the concept of a positive ROI for your written content becomes much clearer.
If you’re simply publishing content to your blog and walking away, from example, you’re inevitably setting yourself up for failure.
So, what does the process for proper content promotion actually look like?
Set Your Goals First
Do not make the mistake of jumping blindly into the world of content marketing. You absolutely must have a results-driven and innovative business process that goes hand in hand with you written content strategy. In other words, you need to figure out from the word “go” why you’re creating content and how content marketing supports the bigger picture of your business.
Whether that means generating leads or building brand awareness, you need to assess internally what the end-goal your content is before you get started.
Don’t Neglect SEO
If you think that SEO is dead and buried, think again.
Although the days of keyword stuffing are long gone, you should strive to focus on at least one relevant keyword per piece of content you publish. WordPress plugins such as Yoast make this process easy and essentially save you from crafting spammy content. Even if you’re not crafting content specifically for organic search, you can rank for low competition keywords with a bit of legwork.
Include Sales and Opt-In Opportunities
From capture pages and in-text links to opt-in forms and calls-to-action, give your audience something to do on-site with every blog they read. If you don’t encourage your traffic to take action, you’re inevitably leaving money on the table. Don’t simply rely on a single CTA stuck at the end of your posts, either: the more opportunities you have to capture leads without spamming them, the better.
Smarter Social Sharing
Social promotion is about much more than just blasting your content to Twitter. If you’re in the marketing world, for example, you can probably gain more traction by republishing your content on Medium or LinkedIn. Additionally, educational marketing content is prime for private Facebook groups where you can position yourself as an influencer over time.
Repurpose Your Content and Repeat
After your content has been published and has had time to stew in the SERPs, you can squeeze even more out of it by repurposing it as a video, infographic or marketing email. Likewise, sites such as a Slideshare allow you to turn your blog posts into step-by-step presentations. These channels provide your content with more reach, and repeating this process with every piece of content effectively ensures that your brand gets in front of more eyes.
Don’t give up on your quest for a better ROI for your content marketing efforts. Instead, do everything in your power to set actionable content goals and give your pieces as much sharing potential as possible.
