Social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are valuable platforms for sharing information in today’s online world. We all like to read about the latest gadget or find out what’s hot in today’s marketplace, and social media provides the perfect platform to do that.
But with all the content being shared, have you ever thought about who’s behind the content? Someone has to create it before it has a chance to be shared.
Content Marketing
That is the purpose of a content marketing strategy. Content isn’t something you can create once in a while, its something that needs to be planned and created on an ongoing basis. Enter a blog – the starting point to any good content marketing strategy.
Blogging works well when you have an idea that you would like to share. Yet in most cases, people think too generic – too generalized when describing what they do. The more detailed you can be, the more specific your posts will be, the more traction you will gain through the social world.
No matter what you do, no matter what business you are in, there are hundreds upon thousands of ways that you can write about what you do. Let me give you an example.
How would you describe a car to someone if you had to write a post about it?
In generic terms, a car is a car. It’s a means of transportation to get you to your final destination.
In reality, we can be a lot more specific than that.
The car has many parts to it, including a hood, door, windows, wheels, tires, engine, car seats, trunk. What if you were to describe each of these items in more detail? What if you created a “post” to describe each in a new way?
And even when we dive down to just one detail, that too can be broken down in many ways. Take tires for instance. How about where they were made? Or what companies manufacture them? Or how to determine if they are worn out?
Over time, say a week or month, or if you are really detailed, a year, you now have a blog filled with posts with detailed information for each component.
What is the value of your blog now? Not only will your potential readers find more value, the search engines will to.
Let’s take this idea one step further. Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines want to provide the best experience for their users by providing links to content that are relevant to the search request. One gauge to this experience is how the user interacts with the site they choose to visit. If they visit a page and immediately leave, due to the wrong content or a boring and uninteresting post, this is called a bounce. A high bounce rate tells the search engine that what was delivered was not sufficient for the request. Over time, this page could be eliminated from future results.
Dig Deeper: Is Ghost Blogging A Bad Idea?
One way to increase interaction to a page is through internal page links. Now that your blog has dozens or even hundreds of pages of information about your product or service, you have a variety of pages that are relevant to whatever your newest post may be written about. If you write about tires again, for instance, you can link to other pages on your site for digging deeper and providing more in-depth information. If your reader is interested and clicks around, you will lower your bounce rate. Links can be easily added to text within the post using keywords, or as a separate line that is placed within the post so the reader will dig further into your site.
The goal of any site or blog is to provide information. The more relevant you make the content, the more details you provide, the better it will work both on social media and on search engines and directories. Take time and start generating content for your blog and share it through as many social media channels as possible. You’ll be amazed at how quickly the concept works; it might just land you a new client.