There has been a major shift in the way businesses market themselves online. Inbound marketing methods like content marketing are fast replacing the more traditional direct marketing approaches.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of producing and distributed quality content that is of value for your intended audience. It is a highly targeted form of marketing and is very effective for attracting the attention of prospective consumers.

An effective content marketing strategy involves distributing content on a regular basis. And this takes time. It is thus vital for businesses to do it right and get the maximum benefits for the business.

In this article, we take a look at 35 strategies that will improve your results and allow your business to get the most out of content marketing.

1.  Blog Actively

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to market a business. It is an integral part of any effective content marketing strategy. Blogs offer the perfect opportunity to publish content on your website. This will in-turn push up your ranking on Google and will help establish a loyal community around your business.

If you don’t already have a blog on your company’s website, you should start one today.

2. Make Your Content Worth Paying For

Don’t make the common mistakes of creating poor quality content aimed primarily at search engines as this will kill your brand.

Although your content should be free, it should be created with the same level of dedication as though it were for sale. The quality should be good enough for you to be able to ask customers to pay to access it.

3. Choose Compelling Titles

Make sure to choose compelling titles for all your content whether you are creating a blog post, video or an eBook. The title of your content plays a significant part in its success.

Catchy titles are great for attracting the attention of readers and also get shared more on social media. Compelling titles that users find interesting will attract higher readership, get more traffic and receive higher conversions.

4. Make Your Content Easy To Share

The more your content is shared by others, the better are your chances of success.

The chances of your content going viral will increase manifold if you can motivate others to share and promote your content. Integrate social media effectively into your content and make it easy for users to share your content on social media.

Here are some tips:

• Use Share and bookmark buttons in all your content
• Place share buttons strategically in more than one place
• Use the right social plugins e.g. Facebook Like Box, Twitter Activity Stream Social login, Ad This, etc.
• Pay more emphasis to the networks that work best for your business

5. Leverage Social Networking to Deliver Content

Social media is one of the most effective ways to deliver your content to readers. Make sure to share your new content on all your social profiles. In addition to keeping your social media profiles fresh and up to date, this will help to attract readers, get followers, improve brand visibility and drive referral traffic to your company’s website.

6. Use Content to Build Your Presence On Pinterest

Pinterest is the fastest growing social network of all times. Targeting Pinterest can be far more profitable for a business than other social networks.

Initial studies show that Pinterest outperforms even Facebook and Twitter on several aspects such as new referrals, average spend of users, likelihood of purchasing a product, and more. As a result, targeting Pinterest can prove very profitable for small businesses.

Sharing content on Pinterest is a great way to build your brand presence and tap into its ever-growing consumer-base whilst getting more coverage for your content. It can open up a whole new world of opportunities for your business.

7. Take Advantage of Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking services are a very effective way to promote content. Unlike social networks that have a wider purpose, social bookmarking services are designed specifically for sharing content with others.

Social bookmarking services like Stumble Upon, Digg, Delicious or Reddit have a huge potential for increasing readership and driving traffic to your content. Services like Stumble Upon can easily outperform Facebook and Twitter in terms of referral traffic.

8. Motivate Others to Promote Your Content

Making it easy to share your content by including share buttons is only one way to encourage sharing. There are other ways to motivate and involve users in promoting your content. This can have a significant impact on results.

Here are some simple tips:

• Consider offering an incentive to share your content e.g. Free eBook or discount
• You can also consider a charitable cause to boost sharing
• Simply asking others to share your content e.g. at the end of posts and articles or using “Please ReTweet This” in your tweets can make a big difference.
• Hold a contest or give-away e.g. “Like this Image for a chance to win Gift Voucher”

9. Use Variety Of Content In Your Mix

Content marketing comes in many forms. There are many different types of content that your business can produce. For best results, a business must use a variety of popular content mediums as part of its content marketing efforts.

These include:

• Images/infographics
• Blog Posts
• Videos
• Postcasts
• eBooks
• Whitepapers
• Surveys

10. Use Content to Build Subscribers

Building an email list can be a very valuable asset for any business. Content marketing offers ample opportunities to do this. Expanding your email list is an essential part of your content marketing strategy. Content marketing offers a great way to build and grow your email list. There are many ways to use content marketing to grow your email list. Some of them are:

• Starting a newsletter
• Promoting your email list in author byline of articles
• Displaying a prominent sign-up form where feasible e.g. on the blog
• Including call to action to join your email list in your content
• Allowing users to subscribe to your content e.g. RSS feed or via email

11. Take Advantage of Lists and Tutorials

Certain types of articles such as lists e.g. 10 ways to do something, Top 5 reasons are very popular among readers and tend to get a lot of attention.  Another popular content type is instructional content e.g. How to do something. Creating such content can be very effective and offer a huge potential. Try and take advantage of these popular content types.

12. Brand Your Content

Take into account how you want your visitors to view you as a company as well as how you are currently viewed in the industry. Every piece of content you produce either on your website and blog or other content such as presentations, eBooks or videos, needs to define and reflect your intended branding.

Here are some tips:

• Display consistent character and personality in your content
• Use Logo and company information in your content
• Make sure your brand message is conveyed

13. Make Sure Content is Well Presented

How your content is presented also plays a role in determining how well it is received by others. Your content must not only be well researched, but also beautifully crafted and presented. This is key for getting the best out of your content marketing strategy. Good formatting including sufficient whitespace, paragraphs, line-breaks, headings, bullets and lists can make your content easy to read and scan. I also try to use images in all my content.

14. Optimise Correctly

The real benefit of content marketing is determined largely by the readership it attracts. Well optimised content is much easier for users to find on search engines as well as on other sites. Good use of Meta Tags, Use of keywords in page title, sub-headings, keyword optimised image descriptions, are some ways to achieve this.

15. Limit Self-Promotion

Your main focus must be on delivering value and not on self-promotion. Trying to take a promotional tone can make your content appear as spam. Content marketing is more about building loyal user-base by delivering value to your audience than direct marketing.

If your offer quality information that adds value for readers, you will appear trustworthy and benefit in the long run from increased traffic to your website, loyal customer base, and brand awareness. A 90/10 rule can help i.e. 10% promotion and 90% genuine information.

16. Stay Focused On Your Niche

An effective content marketing strategy requires you to continuously create great content about your chosen topic and expertise. However, it is very easy to digress and lose focus, which should be avoided at all cost. All content produces as part of your marketing effort whether it is blog posts or videos, should be relevant to your niche.

17. Refine Your Content

Content marketing is a continuous process. To get the most out of content marketing, it is important to find the time to refine your content from time to time. This is is agreat way to revitalise and breathe life into your old content.

Updating your content frequently not only improves the quality of your content but also makes sure it is up to date and relevant. It will also boost your search engine ranking and generate fresh interest in your old content.

And don’t forget to let readers know through social media.

18. Use Multiple Distribution Channels

Distribute content on several channels helps to maximise your reach. There are many platforms that your business can target. It goes hand in hand with the type of content you create.

Following are some distribution channels that businesses can use:

• Document sharing sites like Scribd and Slideshare
• Infographic Galleries
• Image sharing sites like Flickr
• Video portals like YouTube, Vimeo and Metcafe
• Social Media Sites
• Social bookmarking and news sites like Digg, Stumble Upon or Reddit
• Visual bookmarking sites like Pinterest
• eBook directories and portals
• Blog

19. Use Content to Generate Leads

Although content you create as part of your content marketing efforts should not be promotional in nature, this does not mean you cannot use your content to generate leads for your business. In fact, generating leads is one of the primary objectives of content marketing.

Take a look at a snapshot of one of the pages from HubSpot’s Internet Marketing eBook below. Although the eBook genuinely teaches Internet marketing and does  not have a promotional tone, one of the sections is used to promote Hubspot’s marketing software which is relevant to the topic.   This is just one example of how you can use your content to generate leads for your business.

There are many ways to do this:

• Use of effective calls to action place strategically within your content
• Lead capture forms either embedded or a link
• Including full contact details in your content
• Consider asking users to sign-up to get your best highest value content
• Deliver content via auto-responders

20. Leverage Content Curation Services

Content Curation Services like Paper.Li and Scoop.It have become very popular in recent years among marketers and publishers alike. They act as e-zines and offer a visually appealing way to present your content. One of the best things about these services is that you do not have to create the content from scratch, saving you valuable time and resources. You simply have to combine interesting content from several sources and add your own spin. If used correctly, this can be a great way to build your audience with minimal effort.

Conclusion

Content marketing is the new buzz word in marketing. It is one of  the most effective ways to promote a business and is  being used increasingly by established businesses as well as small businesses and entrepreneurs. If done correctly, it can prove to be one of the most useful marketing assets for any business.

Given above are some effective tips that will help you to get the most out of your content marketing efforts. The remain tips are covered in the concluding part of this post, 35 Ways to Get More From Content Marketing – Part 2.