SEO and online content marketing have never been more competitive. Companies and individuals are using every tool at their disposal to get their content in front of readers. However, some tactics are more effective than others. Additionally, some strategies may be doing more harm than good.
If you want to create an aggressive content marketing strategy, you have to take on the mindset of your readers, subscribers, fans, or clients. What do they want to read? How do they want to consume information? How do they want to be introduced to your company? Most importantly, what tactics will keep readers interested without overselling your brand?
To answer these questions, let’s take a look at a few best practices for marketing your brand’s content!
Limit Your CTAs
When it comes to CTAs (Calls-to-Action), many bloggers and businesses think that more is always better. Unfortunately, this is definitely not the case. Unless you practice very careful wording or marketing strategies, readers will almost always be able to identify a CTA. In a sense, this is a good thing; you want your readers to know how they can further engage with your brand.
However, blatant or frequent CTAs can be a huge turn off for readers. For example, let’s say that you’re trying to market a stem cell procedure because you run a health blog. You do all of your market research and create a blog that is SEO-friendly and visually appealing. However, you find that no one is engaging with your CTAs.
There are a number of reasons this can happen, but the most common one is that your CTA strategy is simply too aggressive. Adding more than two or three CTAs per article (1000+ words) can feel like a bit much. So, try to limit yourself to just one or two CTAs per post.
Target Your Ads
Nobody really likes ads. They are more of a nuisance than anything else. That said, they can be an effective way to market content. The key — and the most difficult aspect of advertising — is getting your ad in front of the right audience.
To do this, you first need to identify the demographics of your prime audience. How old is your audience? What kind of devices or browsers do they use? Which social media channels do they prefer? What language(s) they do speak? Where do they live? What are their interests?
These are the kinds of questions you need to answer before starting an ad campaign. Once you know the answers to these questions, you can build a successful campaign without bothering people. This is due to the fact that a person is more likely to engage with your ads if he or she finds them relevant to their lives, needs, and interests.
Build a Quality Network of Links
Bloggers often assume that if they randomly link to different pages on their site, it will inherently boost their SEO, increase user engagement, and boost overall traffic. This could not be further from the truth. In fact, linking to low-quality or irrelevant pages is a quick way to have your content overlooked.
Instead, work on building a network of internal links that makes sense. For example, if you have a homepage or landing page to which you want to direct clients, you should make sure that all (or most) of your articles point to this page. However, if linking to the page doesn’t make sense for a particular post or article, don’t do it. Internal linking needs to be logical, otherwise, you’re doing yourself and your brand a disservice!
