If a tree falls in the forest...
Too often, marketers do an amazing job of creating a destination with rich, constantly updating content that keeps in mind the interests and perspectives
of the audience they seek to engage, only to discover no one is showing up.
They build their keyword list, and use keywords in headlines and copy appropriately. They use properly formatted
photography well. They incorporate video in all the right ways, and yet: no traffic.
Marketers deploying a content marketing strategy to get better audience engagement, SEO and metrics like
increases in conversions or lead generation often make a fatal assumption: If you build it, they will come. This assumption isn't false, but it's only half true. Here's the whole truth:
If you build it, and meet them where they're at, they will come.
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Building a terrific Web destination, be it a microsite,
website, Facebook page or mobile app, is step one. Ensuring that there's constantly updated content that is geared toward your audience's interests is step two. A critical third step is taking
that content -- or at least portions of it -- to where your audience gathers already and inviting them back to your awesome destination.
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To get the fullest SEO benefits from your
content strategy, you need more than carefully chosen, authentically incorporated keywords. You need traffic. You need links. In short: You need an audience.
It's so
chicken-and-egg, right? Strong SEO brings in a strong audience, but in order to achieve strong SEO, you need an engaged audience. The way to do this is through an effective distribution strategy. And
an effective distribution strategy means meeting people where their eyeballs are already engaged out on the Web.
Climb Every Mountain
You've likely got
many of the channels for distributing your content already open. Newsletters, advertising, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Groups, Twitter accounts and many others are great ways to preview or provide
snippets of your best content. Use all of them, Your Web destination is your base camp, and each of your marketing channels is the way to get your audiences to it.
What's important here,
however, is understanding where it is your audience naturally gathers already. They still use email, a lot. They're likely engaged on Facebook. Some use Twitter in one form or another. Many are
engaged on LinkedIn. They likely regularly read blogs or visit news websites. Understanding where your audience gathers is key.
For clues about how the busiest Web destinations drive
audience to their content, simply engage and then watch what happens. You'll discover these folks -- from NYTimes.com to Mashable to Eventbrite to Apple.com -- use segmented newsletters, mobile
alerts, Facebook news feeds, PPC ads, retargeting, and more to highlight content that captures the eye, then seizes the imagination, and finally drives a click-through to the destination site. Copy
all these strategies! Some work better for B2C marketers, while others work best for B2B marketers. Find the ones that will work best for you.
Measure for Measure
Make lots of bets initially when promoting your content. But be sure you're measuring everything. Once you've figured out which channels are producing not only the best
traffic, but the best engagement, double-down on those and optimize them through improved targeting, segmentation and tailored content. You should look for increased links, newsletter sign-ups,
conversion rates and social sharing -- all this indicates an engaged audience and delivers on SEO, virality and site traffic metrics, not to mention bottom-line business benefits.
A
marketing content strategy will only succeed if you also have a good distribution strategy. While I've offered only high-level tips here, there's many others I've left out for space
reasons. Offer any tips you may have in the comments below.