Are you in a content marketing rut? You create and post a set number of items to your website, your mailing list and social media accounts regularly. You're proud of yourself, as you should be: consistency counts, and your content assets will grow.
You get traffic reliably, but you're not seeing the jumps in traffic you'd like, not even when you post stellar content. You're falling into a content marketing rut, and don't know how to get out of it.
Try one or two of these three ways.
1. Try a new format.
Content comes in many formats. If you're producing text content, with the occasional slide deck, why not turn some of that text content into audio, or video? Jing is free, and easy to use. You can post your videos to YouTube, and find a completely new audience.
Other formats to consider:
- Q and A: you get a stream of customer service and other questions each week. Why not develop some question and answer content from great questions people ask? If one or two people have asked a question, hundreds of others may want answers too.
- Tutorials: I love foodie blogs. I'm in awe of some of the wonderful content they produce. Food p0rn, indeed. Grab some ideas for tutorials from food or other blogs which use the tutorial format.
- Micro content: you don't always have to produce content which takes hours to create. Post a link, or a quote, or a fun piece of information.
- Quizzes. Why not create a quiz each month? I love quizzes, and search for them in magazines. Your quiz doesn't need to be confined to topics about your industry. Consider a seasonal quiz, or a trivia quiz.
2. Take it on the road: offer your content to new venues.
Please don't wince. I know that Matt Cutts has taken a big stick to guest posting. But he's not talking about genuine ghost blogging. He's talking about link-hunting.
Find a couple of websites on which you'd like to see your content. Don't worry about the links. Think about branding, and relationship building.
If any of your clients have a blog, offer them some great content which would appeal to their audience.
3. Experiment. Then create a case study.
Create an experiment - any kind of experiment you like. Set the parameters of your experiment. Then conduct it. Keep regular notes. Everyone loves case studies. You think you know what the results will be, but you may be surprised.
Announce your experiment, and its parameters. Tell readers how the experiment's going, as it progresses. Ask readers to help, if possible. When the experiment's over, announce your results.
It's easy to fall into a content marketing rut. Challenge yourself to get out of it by with new content formats, and new venues.