Content Marketing Help: How to Blow Up Your Content Marketing (In a Good Way)

Content marketing is not optional. Not only does it aid your SEO efforts, but it also serves as the pulse of your company. Businesses that actively blog, release ebooks or post videos are communicating to their prospects and customers that they are active in the space, that they are thought leaders, and that they mean business. The numbers don’t lie - about 88 percent of B2B organizations and 76 percent of B2C businesses use content marketing in some way, shape, or form. While that’s a healthy number of organizations, it also doesn’t paint the whole picture. “Using” content marketing is very different than having a fully-functioning, well-oiled content marketing machine. The truth is - maintaining an active, engaging, and effective content marketing program is hard work. A lot of organizations need content marketing help. Generating ideas, producing content, and distributing that content on a regular basis requires a lot of effort and manpower. Let’s look at some ways to maximize your efforts and blow up your content marketing program (in a good way). Work Smarter, Not Harder Many view content as individual pieces of information rather than looking at it from a bird’s eye view. In other words, content is a living, breathing thing that can be molded, deconstructed, and reconstructed to serve different purposes. Let’s say a business produces an 8-chapter ebook. It’s written, designed, optimized for SEO, and added to the website as a gated piece of content for lead generation. Boom. Done. Right? Could be. But that’s a waste of a lot of great content and hard work. Instead, businesses should get creative with how they utilize a bulky piece of content. For example:

1. Break it into blog posts: An 8-chapter ebook lends itself well to 8 different blog posts. Each can be tweaked as needed to evolve into a standalone piece. What’s more, these blog posts can be used as promotional tools with a CTA pointing back to the ebook/ebook landing page.
2. Snip it into snackable, shareable pieces: An ebook can also be broken down to a more micro level than blog posts. If you’ve included interviews, quotes, images, or other bite-sized bits in your ebook, those can all be pulled out and repurposed into social posts. Anything visually appealing is a great candidate for social distribution. Call-out quotes can quickly be turned into images and shared on Twitter.
3. Convert to another media: The content in your ebook can wear many outfits. It can be distilled down into a SlideShare deck. It can be animated into a video with voiceover. These new content pieces can then be shared on Facebook and LinkedIn to be presented to new audiences.
4. Highlight main points in an infographic: Not everyone has the time or patience to read through an ebook. An alternative way to present the information is through a series of infographics that summarize and visually present the information in a more digestible format. Infographics also perform well when shared on social channels.

Source: http://www.jeffbullas.com/7-social-media-infographics-will-blow-mind/

  K.I.S.S. - Streamline Process Content marketing can be complex with many moving pieces. There are ways to simplify and streamline these processes to reduce the amount of internal resources needed to execute. There are tools to augment your efforts at every stage of content marketing, from developing a strategic plan to content creation and the promotion and sharing of online materials. Need a better way to collaborate? Utilize Google Docs to share content and ideas across your team. Not a photoshop expert but need a quick way to produce quality graphics? Try Canva. Looking for a way to optimize content and earn more conversions on your website? Implement SumoMe to find quick-hit ways to grow your site. There are plenty of tools that provide content marketing help and support.

Thanks to technology, businesses can execute fairly complicated content marketing programs without breaking the bank or exhausting internal resources. It’s just a matter of finding them and integrating into your own workflow and getting buy-in from your team. Take a look at a more extensive list of popular content marketing tools here. Still Feeling Limited? - Get Content Marketing Help At the end of the day, different businesses have different goals and needs. If you’re just getting started with content marketing, your best bet may be to get content marketing help from an agency or consultant that can provide guidance on strategy. Or maybe you have content marketing strategy nailed down but lack the internal resources to execute. In any case, it can be beneficial to tap external resources. The key is finding the right fit for your organization. Some things to consider in a partner:

• They understand your unique needs as a business - Find a partner that understands your industry or niche. This cuts down on the time it may take to get up to speed. Find a person or agency that can jump right in and execute can turbocharge your content marketing efforts. Working with a person or team who understands the pain points, motivations, and other nuances of your target audience will position you for success.
• They are creative - This may seem obvious but it’s an important consideration. Your partner should be creative in the sense that they can make people care about the content they produce. You can find almost anyone who can produce content, but finding someone who can create compelling stories about your product or brand is another story.
• They are trustworthy, transparent, and credible - Trust is a must-have when choosing a partner for content marketing help. Look for partners that are transparent in the way they do business and vet them through reviews and referrals. Review other work they’ve done or talk to some of their current or former clients to get a sense for what working with them would be like.

There’s no right or wrong way to run your content marketing program. Each organization will have different goals, unique strategies and tailored tactics and execution roadmaps. If you want to get the most out of your content marketing program and blow it up beyond just “good enough”, consider some of the pointers above as well as hiring or outsourcing content marketing help. Even small, incremental improvements can greatly shift your content marketing game.

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