How to create content for a content strategy
These days, marketers are always talking about content strategy and how blogging and creating posts and interesting content of all types on social media is one of the best ways to get customers engaged.
And getting customers engaged, and a lot of them is what’s important. After all, as Chad Hurley insightfully once said:
“When people are making the decision to put a piece of content online, they really do truly want to get it in front of the largest audience”.
When you create a post, or put up a photo, or share information, your goal is to get people to read it, or more importantly to click through and follow calls to action. You’re not just posting for the fun of it. Writing for OK Dork, Noah Kagan (2014) explains that if you are smart about how you create content you can create the sort of content that attracts as many as 40,000 targeted visitors.
This seems like the Holy Grail of posting. As Kagan outlines, there are more than two million blog posts made every single day. This can mean that making yours stand out can be attractive, but it can be done. This is how he explains it, based on the work of Brian Dean.
Dean argues that following traditional blogging advice that is out there will not get you results. Some of these kinds of tips include “publish every week” and “write lists”. He found that when doing that he was unable to achieve more than about 150 visitors. Obviously this was disappointing, having spent time trying to find posts that would be interesting and writing them up.
Syndicating Content
Looking for a new way to go about it all, Dean decided to start looking at other blogs that were doing well in his niche. This he calls “reverse engineering”. By doing this, Dean was able to identify what kinds of posts were working in his niche and what were not, and was able to adapt his approach accordingly. Once he did this, he saw his visitor numbers start to shoot up. So what, precisely did he do?
Well, Dean first looked for posts in his niche that had already achieved a high level of success. He then took this content and improved it to make it even better. Finally he promoted it in such a manner that it would be attractive to customers in his niche. Starting with the first step, Dean went to a website called Flippa to identify what had made other websites successful.
As Dean explains, when people post their websites on this particular site they will willingly show what they did to be successful. Dean recommends looking on Flippa for websites in your niche and then identifying the ones that get more than 1,000 visitors per month. From that you can look at what those websites were doing to get the hits, and the kinds of content that they were posting that were successful for them.
Find Good Content
Another approach that Dean uses to find good content is to look at Wikipedia references, which often include blog posts that were successful. Yet another website that Dean nominates for finding good content ideas is Reddit. Reddit has the advantage of showing you information about what is popular as well, helping you to be able to validate content creation decisions. Dean also provides an array of other websites where you can look for content that has been successful. Buzzsumo is one, and Pinterest another.
Content Creation
The second step of creating content that attracts 40,000 targeted visitors requires adapting the content that you identified to make it even better and more appealing to viewers. Dean argues that there are a number of different ways that you can make a piece of content better. One is to bring a piece of content right up to date. Another is to make it more thorough by researching and finding more details to fill it out in a way that is helpful for the user. Another still is improving the design of the content to make it more appealing to the viewers. Or, rewrite it better so that it is more accessible to those that will be reading it.
Finally Dean states that you have to make people aware of your content. He says of this:
“You need to hustle to get the word out”.
Getting People to read your blog
People will not automatically read your blog. You have to make them want to read it. This includes finding people that might link to it for you, and finding passionate people that might be interested in sharing it.
Ultimately, getting people to link to and share your information will find it a bigger audience, and that’s what you need to make your business a success.
Additional resouce: infographic done by BWHGeek on how to increase traffic to your website.
Paula Newton is a business writer, editor and management consultant with extensive experience writing and consulting for both start-ups and long established companies. She has ten years management and leadership experience gained at BSkyB in London and Viva Travel Guides in Quito, Ecuador, giving her a depth of insight into innovation in international business. With an MBA from the University of Hull and many years of experience running her own business consultancy, Paula’s background allows her to connect with a diverse range of clients, including cutting edge technology and web-based start-ups but also multinationals in need of assistance. Paula has played a defining role in shaping organizational strategy for a wide range of different organizations, including for-profit, NGOs and charities. Paula has also served on the Board of Directors for the South American Explorers Club in Quito, Ecuador.
