Forget the numbers, research, case studies, reports, and other info: Content marketing is simple.
It boils down to engaging followers with fresh, inspiring content that you create and share. But before sharing these 3 low-tech methods for content marketing success, let's look at a few easy-to-track numbers that do matter. Each of them is easy to measure, understand, and use.
- Social Engagement: Even without fully comprehending a Facebook admin page, you can easily see how many likes, shares, comments, and followers you gain with each post. The same goes for Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms.
- Blog Traffic: Most blogging platforms (like WordPress) allow even the most clueless writers to see how many readers visit their site. Page views, however, are not everything.
- Conversions: Head over to your sales department and ask how many customer captures they gain from inbound marketing. This is the most important number and the one we want to raise with content marketing.
So now, without further ado, a few low-tech ways to boost content marketing to increase engagement, online presence, and social activity:
1. Post Consistency
The first step is deciding how often you want (and need) to post content. Typically, editorial calendars will consist of the following for each day:
- 1-2 Facebook posts
- 2+ tweets
- 1 blog post
These are hard to define, of course, because every company has different online assets and needs. Do you use Pinterest? Don't forget to pin something. Do you have LinkedIn? Consider adding a few influencers every day. Google+? Make sure you link your daily blog post.
Editorial calendars come in handy once you start working a week or two ahead of schedule. You don't need any fancy programs or calendar apps, either, just a simple Word document or spreadsheet.
2. Quality Writing
Consistency helps, but nothing will pan out unless you post killer content. This means everything you write, post, and share needs to be original and superb. So, to help, I thought I'd draw up "guidelines" for self-auditing your content:
Shared Content: Pieces that you share, such as links to articles, other blog posts, and industry info has to be timely and relevant to your business. There are exceptions, of course, such as posting world news articles and commenting on relevant topics. Keep these tips in mind before sharing:
- Make sure the piece is original and not just a "recap" or blurb of the article.
- Properly source any photos and quotes.
- If the original creator has a sketchy site, don't post it.
Original Content: Edit for clarity, spelling, and grammar. In addition, be sure to include as much (relevant) multimedia as possible to better capture your followers' attention. Here's a checklist to prevent writing sloppy blogs and social media content:
- Edit
- Check for formatting
- Link to any relevant sources
- Have someone read over it
- Edit
Don't overcomplicate the process, either. Just focus on posting insightful, entertaining, and informative content that followers are willing to acknowledge.
3. User Engagement
There are countless tools and apps out there that help content marketers and social media experts manage multiple accounts at the same time. With these tools, they're able to efficiently respond to tweets, comments, and other follower-created activity.
But for a small business or newbie content marketer, these tools are more distracting than helpful. All you need to do is set a time every day to spend a few minutes observing follower activity on your social channels of choice.
Like creating content, it's better not to overcomplicate the process or you'll risk being overwhelmed and unenthused. (Nothing is worse than an unenthused content marketer.) Keep track of the numbers I discussed earlier and focus on quality, consistency, and engagement - done right, you won't need to deal with any other tools.