By Holly Korten
Blogging is gradually becoming the most sought after way of promoting a brand naturally, without incurring heavy costs. According to the Hubspot Inbound marketing statistics, marketers who blog on a priority basis are 13 times more likely to enjoy positive ROI. Blogging serves multiple purposes like:
- Driving huge organic traffic to your website. These visitors may land on your website just because of the high quality of blogs.
- Helping you to build trust and authority in the domain. If your blog is actually useful, your visitors start to trust you unconditionally.
- Giving long term results. Let’s say you invest massively in a campaign for an offer which lasts a week. After that time all your marketing resources and material will be useless. But on the other hand, a meaningful blog will stay useful for a long, very long time.
Although blogging is huge, but most of the bloggers are unaware of the tricks which go into making a successful one. First of all, learn how to make a blog. After exhausting your creative juices, adopt the following hacks to market it like a pro.
Personalize User Experience with Programmatic Marketing, Proximity Marketing and Dynamic Content
Personalization is a great way to refer directly to the prospect. It gives a more humane and personal touch to the quality of experience, your service offers. While there are well known personalization techniques like customized emails and persona based website experience, let’s look at some other novel ideas:
Programmatic Marketing: It is a data driven strategy which uses contextual data (like age, gender, interest, marital status etc) along with geo-targeting, to tailor advertisements. Bring all silos of data together and add the element of real-time data in it. Organize insights for a cross-device, cross channel view to gauge about user-preferences. Build creatives with HTML5, that is ready for all screens and channels at all times. Identify a preferred partner for your programmatic advertisement and reach relevant users. Make sure to measure the performance and implement useful changes in the subsequent cycle.
Proximity Marketing- Wide usage of mobile data and a constant GPS tracking allows marketer to serve customers on their mobiles as soon as they enter into a specific zone. Content can be pushed with an RFID chip, NFC and Geofencing which even works when the system is offline. Apple’s iBeacon and Google’s Eddystone are piece of hardware known as beacon for transmitting personal communication. Companies are also utilizing Wifi by providing free internet access and additionally providing marketing material to the users.
Dynamic Content- With this technique, edit your website according to your visitor based on the referral source, interest or past interaction data. Javascript, DHTML and HTML5 make use of client side scripting to add dynamic dimension to the webpage. Conditional content is added by specifying If/Else statements. If a specific condition is met, the experience is customized accordingly. Additional filters (like greater than, range etc) can further enhance the web page.
Upgrade your Site Silo with Tier One Backlinks, 301 Redirects and Niche Specific Links and Comments
Web 2.0 linking is dead. You SEO can suffer penalty due to this archaic technique. Before generating valuable backlinks, make sure to optimize your website for best UX. After that, focus on improving your site structure and authority by using the followings tips:
Site Architecture- Use tier one links to directly connect your landing page. However, avoid tier one links from irrelevant site, public networks and forums, blog comments, sidebar, footers and other black hat areas. Distribute the link juice evenly across various sections of your website. If blogs and content marketing is your USP, develop a reverse Silo site hierarchy which focuses on your blog or knowledge base section and then moves on to other important pages. Focus on real website with real traffic and keep away from “bad neighborhood”
301 Redirects- Check if your website has 404 errors and dead links with Google Search console. Ensure to follow the important on site SEO factors for 2016. Find and fix the errors with 301 redirects which is a safe way to reclaim the lost link juice. Repair redirect chains that usually drain the authority from backlinks. Avoid buffer and middleman pages to redirect. 302 redirects block authority flow to your website. Find such redirects with Screaming frog and change 302s to 301s.
Foundational Backlinks- Use naked links or branded anchors for foundational backlinks. A naked link is when the anchor text is the link itself. Secure all your social media properties and share content to create the base. Local listings are one of the most secure ways of getting unoptimized DoFollow link. If your blog relates to a specific category of content, find good authority niche sites and directories with do follow links. While most niche directories are useless but there are some exceptions. Blog comments on forums and niche sites are no follow links but it creates a layer of relevancy and authority around your website. Build power links, editorial links and authoritative links from guest posts.
Utilize Native Advertising to Market your Blog or Products
It is a form of disguised advertising that matches the form and function of the platform. It is basically used for placement of product and blends with the content as opposed to the embedded marketing techniques, where the ad “stands out” to look like a promotional entity. It matches the visual design of webpage experience and looks, behaves and functions like the native content.
Emarketers reports that 97% of mobile media buyers found native ads to be very or somewhat effective. Google’s DoubleClick enables marketers to use native advertising that are styled according to publisher instead of the advertiser. Native ads can be placed at multiple places like:
- Print media
- Online advertorials
- Blogging websites
- Sponsored posts and content on major sites
- In-feed ads
Use Marketing Automation and Integrate it with CRM, Sales and HR Departments
Marketing Automation softwares are becoming a rage amongst the marketers for distribution of content and tracking the response. Well built systems like Hubspot and infusion soft offer excellent deliverability across various channels. But the most important feature of an MA software is its integration capability with CRM, sales, HR and other departments.
Integrating with the customer database of CRM marketers can easily score the leads and categorize prospects accordingly. Know your most valuable visitors and channel your blogs accordingly.
Aligning the system with other departments give the updates of leads to the relevant departments like sales and HR for further nurturing the leads. Relevant data about the leads give a clear picture of visitors for developing the campaign.
Employ Dedicated Tools for Analytics, Influencers, Optimization, Distribution and Curation
Internet is replete with free and paid tools for various content marketing activities. Some serve diverse functions while the dedicated tools provide finery for specific purposes.
- Analytics- Use Google analytics for measuring the traffic and the impact of various sources which drive visitors to your page. SEM rush for tracking keywords across both paid and organic search campaigns.
- SEO- Use yoast plug-in for wordpress CMS to create content that is Search Engine Optimized. The plug-in quickly reviews your content and shows a red light if your content looks weak from SEO point of view. Change and update your content till the light turns green.
- Influencers- Use Klout, Ninja Outreach or Buzzsumo to find influencers in your niche on major media platforms. Use an IRM (similar to CRM) to manage the communications and relations with influencers.
- Distribution- Use MA tools like Hubspot which facilitates distribution of content on social media and other platforms. Use Hootsuite to manage content on social media, in a better and easier way.
- Curation- Easily find, organize and share blogs and content for your business to position your brand as a leader in industry, with Curata. It enables marketers to create better content and review what actually works and creates an impact in your niche.
Many marketers debate the relevancy of Content marketing and its implications in the real marketing world. But the truth is that, all it takes is time, distinctiveness and relevancy, and with regular content updates, it can be a gold mine for your business irrespective of the size of your firm.
A senior VP of Business Intelligence Development, Holly Korten is a relentless net worker with several years of experience in marketing domain for small and medium businesses. Assisting several Fortune 500 companies in revamping their marketing strategies from ground up, he seeks to achieve the entrepreneurial dream of startups to make it big in the market. A thinker, communicator, counselor and entrepreneur, he aims to spread his marketing finesse to upcoming businessmen.
