So you want to improve your content marketing strategy. You’ve written blogs and followed all of the online guides to try to drive traffic to them. You’ve keyword optimised your website and have only had a minor SEO boost. Now what.

You’re left feeling deflated, demotivated and on the verge of giving up. All that time you’ve spent researching and writing those blog posts was for nothing. Or was it?

Blogging can take months, or even years, to reap the rewards. So what do you do if you want to see a return on investment from the start? Have you ever considered creating other types of content? I doubt it. Content marketing is one of the first things you should look into if you’re trying to get your business up and running.

Why is it that whenever someone mentions content marketing our minds jump straight to blogging? How many blogs do you read and engage with? It’s time that we stepped up the bar and started producing content that our audience wanted to interact with.

Rather than writing articles, think about other types of content you can create. Video has become increasingly popular over the years – but I’ll be honest, I have seen many brands fail creating them.

My company design and manufacture exhibition display stands for businesses to take to trade shows. We have a very niche product so it is impossible to keep thinking of fresh, creative content ideas!

Furthermore, our audience is a relatively small pool of business to business marketers and decision makers. We’ve found that they’re often busy and don’t have time to read lengthy how-to articles and they don’t want to sign up to another email newsletter.

Because of that, we’ve had to find a content marketing strategy that works for us. Blogging was one of the first tactics we tried. It went alright. But we wanted more. So we started looking for new ways of spreading our brand messaging and engaging with our target audience.

Did you know there are over one hundred different types of content you can produce and distribute for free? This is a list of the best types of content you should release if you want to increase engagement and drive traffic to your website.

1.     Whitepapers

A whitepaper is a fancy term for primary research results. It sounds scary, but it’s so easy! And everyone loves up-to-date statistics. If you have a platform that allows you to reach a large audience (hello social media and email marketing!) then you are in a prime position to release your own research findings.

If you can get 100+ people to partake in a small survey or poll with 2 – 4 questions you can publish a whitepaper. You’ll get more shares, likes and engagement on your content if it contains statistics and information about a current situation.

2.     Infographics

Sometimes people don’t have ten minutes to read a 4,000 word guide to extract one piece of information. That’s why infographics work well and encourage engagement. Many people are visual learners, as well as being time conscious. Giving them information in an easy-to-digest, striking graphic benefits everyone.

3.     Stock-Quality Images

So many people invest heavily in writing a blog when they could simply share their photography with the world. There are hundreds of websites that allow people to download stock photos for free. We all use them for our blog posts!

If you have a professional camera, smartphones have reached the same level, and then start shooting. If you are working for a business then get snaps related to your niche. We can share images of exhibition stands, venues, busy trade show aisles… the possibilities are endless. People share your photos because you’ve offered them on the public domain. You might even get a backlink or two!

4.     Formatted Spreadsheets

If spreadsheets aren’t your thing then this one might bring out a cold sweat. I’ve included it on this list because it works! Like you, people don’t like working their way through thousands of formulas to design a spreadsheet. They like using them though! And why wouldn’t they when it can turn a 2 hour job into a 30 second one.

Things like planners, budgeting sheets, checklists and timelines are great things to offer your audience. It’s about offering content that gives the audience value – a formatted spreadsheet certainly does that.

Summary

Have I convinced you to stop writing so many blog posts yet? Well, don’t stop. Writing blog posts regularly can still give you an SEO boost and your audience might engage with informative guides. All I’m suggesting is you should create a content marketing strategy that encompasses an array of content – not just articles!

Have a go at the types of content I’ve listed in this article. Maybe they work for you, maybe they don’t. You might have a list of your own that you want to share. Get in touch with us to share your favourite types of content to produce, and let us know which ones you typically see the most engagement on.

Marketing your website can seem like a challenge. There are so many sites competing for people’s attention. But you don’t have to spend a fortune to get your voice heard. Here are some cost effective ways of marketing your website and reaching new people.

Engaging Video Content

Videos can be great marketing tools. They can be used to raise the profile of your website. Once people start becoming interested in the videos you create, they will become interested in your website. You could upload your videos to Youtube, share them on social media and provide links back to your website. If the videos are engaging and can appeal to your target audience, then people will take an interest. They might also share them on social media sites, potentially sending them viral. If that happens, you’re really in luck.

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Readers are valuable to bloggers for obvious reasons. But engaged readers that stick around and comment? Those are practically gold dust. It’s true that a lot of the written word goes out on the internet without much fanfare at all. If you’re in that situation, you need to take the next step to get the readers you want. We’re going to look at methods to get more readers more engaged.

Be social

Blogging isn’t just about blogging. It’s true that content is king. No-one can deny that. However, you need to make sure you’re doing all you can to get that content out there. Then being a part of the discussion. Managing your own social media presence is important. The more platforms you can use to stimulate discussion the better. Of course, this takes a lot of time, so social media management tools can make it a bit easier.

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Video marketing is a great SEO tool. Although there are hundreds of SEO ‘essentials’, there are only a few that work effectively, and video marketing is one of the few. So, your business needs to start incorporating video search engine optimization into its site soon. But, how do you do it?

Video marketing is essential, yet that doesn’t make it easy. If you don’t know what you are doing, you are going to get it wrong and waste a lot of time and energy. What you need to do is go back to basics and start fresh.

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Are you still struggling to get to grips with SEO? It can be confusing, but don’t worry. Here are some essential tips that will help you out with it.

Figure Out the Best Keywords

The place to start when it comes to SEO is with keywords. The keywords you choose for your website are essential if your SEO efforts are going to be successful in any way. You should do some research into demographic search trends to identify what the best keywords for you to use are. (more…)

If you run a business, you will doubtless want to promote your brand as much as possible. The obvious answer is to devote much of your time to online marketing. After all; it’s easier and cheaper to reach a wider audience that way.

The only downside to online brand marketing is that it can often be a minefield. Why? Because there are so many options and “variables” that it’s easy to make costly mistakes. So, as you are reading this blog post today, it’s likely you want to find out what the right ways are of accomplishing such a goal. The following dynamite SEO ideas will help you to get started:

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We all know how important search engine optimisation is to build a profitable online business. If you want to be found by your target market, then you need to pay attention to SEO. However, unless you’re an expert in the field, it can be quite difficult. Thanks to the powers of the internet, there are some tools that can make life a little easier. As long as you know the basics, then these tools will ensure you can improve and monitor your SEO with ease.

Google Webmaster Tools

If you’re not using this then you’re missing out on some vital statistics for your website. Statistics that can seriously help improve your SEO. You can also use this to monitor which keywords people are using to find your website. This can come in really handy if you want to see how people are finding you. Google have recently made changes to their Webmaster dashboard, to reflect their mobile-friendly updates. Use this wisely and it could become your new best friend in the SEO world. (more…)

Staying one step ahead of your competitors is hard. Not allowing them the upper hand is essential to survival. What constitutes the upper hand is varied. It could relate to products and services. It could relate to price points and market share.
It could also relate to marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy is your lifeline. Even if you have a great product for a low cost, it is worthless without anybody knowing about it. It is even worse if they don’t know anything about your brand.

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If you have just started a business, or only moved it into the online world, you have probably heard about SEO. Search engine optimization is an online marketing technique that helps you get found by your customers online. It’s all about rankings, you see. When you use a search term for anything online, services like Google and Bing will look throughout the whole web for a relevant website or information. Then they produce the results in a list. If your site is on page one of that list, it will get more visitors.

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Search engine optimisation is a really important part of any online marketing strategy. You can’t leave it out, although there are so many different techniques to use. Using SEO alongside other techniques is the best way to go. Although you know SEO is beneficial, you may also want to know the downsides. There are pros and cons to everything and SEO is no different! Read on to find out more…

Pros of SEO

Higher Search Engine Rankings

The most obvious pro is that you get higher search engine rankings with SEO. That’s one of the main reasons to use it. With a higher ranking, you’ll get much better results from your business efforts overall. You don’t necessarily need to get to the top spot to get good results either. First page is a good achievement! (more…)