6 Underused Content Marketing Strategies That Get Results

You’re probably aware that content marketing is an integral part of SEO today.

With it, you can improve your brand’s online visibility and generate 3 times as many leads as traditional advertising (and at a fraction of the cost).

But not everyone is profiting from it…

According to a recent survey, only 30% of B2B marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing.

Plus, 55% say they are unclear on what content marketing success or effectiveness looks like.

If you’re part of that statistic or have been struggling with your content marketing efforts, recently, I’ve got your back.

In this article, I’m going to show you six under-utilized content marketing strategies that will help you generate more organic traffic, improve your conversions and introduce your brand to new audiences.

Let’s get started.

1. Perform a content audit

In today’s content-driven world, many business owners are cranking out more content in a bid to outrank their competitors.

But in doing so, they’re overlooking an important fact:

Not all content serves your website.

If it isn’t high-quality or optimized correctly (on-site or otherwise) your content might be hurting your domain authority (or worse, affecting your rankings).

The solution, then, is to perform a content audit.

According to Neil Patel…

A content audit is a careful look at your website’s existing content in order to make sure that it’s doing what you want it to do – driving the right kind of traffic, containing the right kind of keywords, and improving conversions.

While auditing your site’s content might not fill you with enthusiasm, the results that come from it might…

In an interview with Pat Flynn, writer Todd Tresidder revealed deleting a third of his content tripled his traffic.

And he’s not the only one.

When Nick Loper deleted and consolidated 650 articles on his site, he boosted his organic traffic by 65%:

To perform a content audit of your own, login to Google Analytics, go to “Behavior > Site Content > All Pages”, and do an 80/20 analysis of your content.

Ask yourself, “What is the 20% of content that is producing 80% of the traffic?”

Optimize that 20% by adding additional keywords or a content upgrade (more on that in a moment) and improve or remove the 80% that isn’t producing any return.

To learn more about how to conduct your own content audit, read Everett Sizemore’s thorough article on the subject.

2. Relaunch old content

We’ve all been there:

You write an epic blog post, hit ‘Publish’ and…

Crickets.

No comments. No backlinks. And no influx of organic traffic.

If that’s ever happened to you then you might consider doing what Brian Dean calls a “content relaunch.”

Inspired by a HubSpot post, Dean revisited a blog post that dropped in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and improved it by updating its images, restructuring its copy and adding a case study.

The results were remarkable:

He got 260.7% more organic traffic in 14 days.

Experiences like Brian’s reveal an important fact:

It’s not always necessary to create new content; often, you just need to improve what existing content you have.

Here’s how to do that:

Go back into your Google Analytics and view your lowest-performing content.

Ask yourself,

• Is any of it re-launchable?
• Could I rewrite, update or improve any of it?
• If so, how? Could I update its images or stats, or add a case study?

Often, it’s the marginal improvements that yield the maximum results.

3. Repurpose your most-popular content

It’s a common trap many business owners fall into…

They write a blog post, hit ‘Publish’ and then move onto another without considering how they could maximize the reach of their content.

That’s where content repurposing comes in.

As the name suggests, content repurposing involves taking existing content and adapting it for other platforms to reach new audiences and create further link-building opportunities.

As Arnie Kuenn writes,

With so much content being published every day, people are bound to miss a blog post or video once in awhile. However, through repurposing, your audience may come across your content after it has been altered, through a different channel.

A good example of a marketer repurposing content is Eugene Cheng.

After repurposing his existing content on Slideshare, Eugene was able to get over 2 million views for his presentations:

And that’s not all…

Cheng was able to rank an additional page for the long-tail keyword, “presentation design Singapore”:

Whether you repurpose your content into a Slideshare presentation, an infographic, a video, or any other medium, content repurposing expands the life cycle of your content even further, making it evergreen for years to come.

4. Syndicate your content

Have you ever read a popular blog post only to later notice it everywhere?

If you have, that’s because of content syndication.

The idea is simple:

When an article performs well on one platform (driving a ton of traffic and backlinks in the process) it’s pitched to other platforms (often major media outlets) in the hopes of achieving similar results.

The thing is…

You don’t have to wait for other outlets to accept your work.

Take Benjamin Hardy, for example.

By copying and pasting all of his blog posts onto Medium, he was able to get 20,000 subscribers in 6-months:

Image Source: Goins Writer

But growing your email list isn’t the only benefit that comes from syndicating your content; it increases your brand’s reach too.

James Clear illustrates this perfectly.

By syndicating his content on multiple outlets, he’s able to increase his reach and expose himself to new audiences he wouldn’t have otherwise:

Guess what I’m going to ask you to do?

Go into Google Analytics and identify your highest-performing content. Then, pitch it to domain authorities in your niche with audiences similar to yours.

If you can provide screenshots of statistics such as social shares, traffic, and more, you’ve got a good chance of getting it syndicated and improving your brand’s visibility in the SERPs.

5. Add content upgrades to your content (Hint: Not how you think)

You’re probably familiar with content upgrades.

And for good reason:

They’re super effective for increasing conversions.

When done right, it’s possible to boost conversions by as much as 785% (no, that’s not a typo).

But there’s a problem…

Everybody’s using them.

In fact, it’s hard not to visit a site now without noticing the yellow call-out box that’s become a standard feature of the content upgrade:

So, how do you get noticed in a busy online marketplace?

You use content upgrades on other mediums.

Check out this recent YouTube upload from Jack Canfield:

Instead of including content upgrades in his blog posts (something everybody’s doing already) he includes them in the meta-descriptions of his videos:

While it’s impossible to know his conversion rate, it’s safe to assume they’re high with the number of subscribers he has, likes his videos receive, and the fact that so few people are following this strategy.

Add content upgrades to your content, of course, but try thinking beyond blog posts.

How could you use them in ways others haven’t considered?

6. Write case studies

When we think of content, we tend to think of epic blog posts.

After all, long-form content ranks higher in Google.

But long-form content isn’t everything.

If you’re looking for content that converts prospects into customers, you can’t go wrong with having case studies.

In its 2014 B2B Technology Content Survey Report, Eccolo Media found that case studies rank as the third most influential content type in the purchase process for both small businesses and large enterprises:

We utilize case studies at Sleeknote for this very reason.

In fact, we have an entire category on our site dedicated to companies we’ve helped improve their conversions:

Be warned:

Crafting a compelling case study requires a little experimentation on your part. No two companies are alike. Different readers respond to different copy.

Take word length, for instance.

When Neil Patel shortened his case study from 2,286 words to 615 words, he increased the number of leads he generated by 39%.

Case studies aren’t just an under-utilized type of content; they’re an integral part of helping your prospects move through the buyer’s journey, too.

If you have case studies at the bottom of your funnel (BoFu), you’re more likely to nudge prospects into becoming customers and produce measurable returns on your content marketing.

Conclusion

Content marketing is – and will continue to be – an essential part of SEO in 2017 and beyond.

And with more business owners competing for the coveted front page every day, getting noticed is more than an advantage – it’s a necessity.

I’ve given you six proven ways to help you cut through the noise and rise above the fray.

The question is…

Which will you choose?

Which of these 6 strategies is your favorite? Leave a comment below.

Guest Author: Sam Thomas Davies is the content marketing manager at Sleeknote: a company that helps ecommerce business owners capture and convert more leads without hurting the user experience.

The post 6 Underused Content Marketing Strategies That Get Results appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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