Great content can be expensive to produce so you want to make sure you are maximising it as much as possible. In my latest article 10 Ways To Get More Bang For Your Content Buck I’m going to show you how.
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Do More Research
Research more than you need to and your content will have the edge… at least from an information standpoint. When you are researching try to look at the latest articles from credible sources and be sure to cite them in your writing. Some great information sources are AgoraPulse , HubSpot and Social Media Examiner although there are hundreds more. Digital marketing moves so fast that the research in an article from one year ago can be radically outdated in terms of statistics and methods. If you will be writing about the same topic on more than one occasion then save any useful links for future reference.
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Keep An Evergreen Content Bank
Being a digital content manager is exhausting. Yes we have a million ideas but the day to day firefighting and social media management means that creating or even directing new content is often an impossibility. I find the best solution is to keep an evergreen content bank which can be reused, recycled and whipped out whenever you need to use it. Evergreen content means that it is not time or event sensitive so could be posted now or in May. You could also use tools like Buffer to revive old posts via your social media networks. Your content bank can include articles, eBooks, presentations and JPEGS.
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Get Inspiration From Social
Use tools like HubSpot, Hootesuite or AgoraPulse to monitor social conversations and mentions and gain inspiration from them. If clients are commenting on a particular feature of your product or asking a recurring question then it could be something to address in your content. Similarly, watch what your competitors and industry influencers are talking about on social media and watch out for trending topics. Addressing concerns and answering them in your text is not only useful but also beneficial from an SEO standpoint so don’t be afraid to play the devil’s advocate. It may also be a good idea to make use of HubSpot integrations to get the best out of this tool for your business. If you’re not sure which one to choose, go through some hubspot integration examples to get a fair idea of which might be the best option for your business.
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Subscribe To Industry Alerts
Add your favourite influencers to your Twitter lists, subscribe to RSS feeds from top industry blogs, signup for e-newsletters that are on topic and get Google alerts on key phrases. You may be too busy to write or direct content at the time but you can save interesting articles for later and use them to inspire your writing. Remember the copyright rules… it’s not ok to copy text but it is ok to get inspired and do your own research and writing accordingly.
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Provide Takeaways
When you are writing it is important that you factor in takeaways for your readers. This means that you are providing actionable and useful tidbits which makes your content more valuable. When you explain a technique, tell your readers how they can do it themselves or the tools they can use. This makes your content worth sharing or saving for later.
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Repurpose Content
There are hundreds of ways you can repurpose old content to make it relevant and unique. For example your old articles can become infographics, your videos can become articles and your PowerPoint presentations can become eBooks. You can also repurpose old blog posts by adding a new headline, a new image and a light respin on wording. Let’s also talk about translations… the same piece of content can be translated into a hundred languages and published with no SEO conflict! The best content to repurpose is evergreen to ensure that it is relevant for longer.
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Find Your Trending Angle
For every trending topic there is an angle you can take to make your article hot and relevant. Let’s look at the example of “Donald Trump” trending on social media: If I were writing for a hair salon the headline might be 10 Worst Donald Trump Hairstyles. If I were writing for a financial services company I might write How Would a Donald Trump Presidency Impact the Economy. Don’t be afraid to have an opinion or to take a stance but it needs to be measured and backed up with facts and figures to support the argument.
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Use Visuals
You will get a lot more bang for your buck in content terms if you incorporate powerful visuals into your articles. In fact, Socialbakers.com looked at the top 10% of posts made by 30,000+ Facebook brand pages and found that posts with photos saw the most engagement-accounting for 87% of total interactions! Think about infographics, hero banners and screen shots to illustrate your points and draw your readers in. Articles with high quality visuals are more sharable via social media and make it easier for readers to digest information.
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Play With Headlines
8 out of 10 people only read the headline and discard the article if they are not interested. If you’re still reading then thank you and way to go me with the headline! This means that the headline of your articles or emails need to be really compelling to make people continue through to the all-important CTA. Spend as much time thinking of a headline as you do mapping the article- even if that is just 5 minutes… think about it!
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Encourage Social Sharing
Does your content drive people to share? Content that’s informative, funny, exciting and fresh will of course be more shareable but what about the social CTA (Call to Action)? Ask readers to share in your article text, tweet you their opinions and be sure to add floating share buttons to all your articles. If you make it easy for people to share your work then you will certainly get more bang for your content buck.
Are you ready to get more bang for your content buck? Tweet me @Charli_Says and let me know. If you loved this article why not share it and browse plenty more digital content marketing articles at Charli Says.