Posted by People don’t want to see intrusive ads, banners, and pop-ups. Instead, they want to see content that educates them, provides value and helps solve a problem.
That’s why you need to scale your content marketing efforts to attract and engage wider audiences. However, remember that you can’t compromise quality if you want your content to drive actual conversions.
When asked about factors that contributed to their success, both successful and budding bloggers ranked content quality as the most important factor.
So, the question is: How can you scale your content creation and distribution efforts without sacrificing quality?
That’s exactly what you’ll discover while reading this article. It includes actionable tips on creating more engaging content in less time and with fewer efforts.
Let’s get started.
1. Capitalize on the top content marketing trends
Staying up-to-date with the latest trends is essential for all content marketers. It can help you understand what people like and which types of content, topics, strategies, and campaigns can help you capture attention.
According to a recent report by Influence & Co.:
- 93% of publishers plan to increase or maintain the volume of guest post content they publish.
- 33% of publishers plan to publish video content while 20% of them plan to publish infographics, newsletters, and podcasts.
- Posts that receive 1000+ shares have an average word count of 986 words. In 2017, this number was 722 words only.
Above all, original and value-driven content will rise to the top. User experience will differentiate the value of your content from that of your competitors. Most brands will focus on creating content that is interactive, engaging, and fun.
Capitalizing on the latest content marketing trends can help you boost content engagement and generate more qualified leads and conversions.
2. Choose the most popular content types
When planning your content strategy, it is important to invest your time and resources in creating content types that are more likely to generate engagement. And videos totally top the list.
Other than videos, marketers are focusing on blog posts, ebooks, infographics, case studies, and interviews.
Why is it so important to use these content types?
Because they are more likely to get shared, which can help increase your brand’s reach, drive more conversions, and boost your content marketing ROI.
Regardless of the content type you choose, you should:
- Pick a topic idea with high demand and comparatively low competition.
- Research the topic thoroughly.
- Choose and include relevant keywords and side words to help search engines like Google understand what your page is about.
- Make sure that your content is unique, relevant, and easily consumable.
- Link to authoritative resources.
- Use relevant statistics and examples to help readers understand your point.
- Encourage readers to engage with your content and share it.
3. Make your content more shareable
Another way to scale your content marketing strategy is to create content that people are more likely to share.
What can you do to encourage people to share your content within their circles?
First of all, you should create content that is share-worthy. It should address the pain points of your target audience, provide solutions, or list actionable tips.
For example, if you’re writing content for a web hosting company, you can create well-researched guides on:
- How to Start a Blog [A Beginner’s Guide]
- 5 Types of Web Hosting to Consider in 2021
- 7 Mistakes First-Time Bloggers Make [And How to AVOID Them]
The target audience of a web hosting company is likely to be interested in thorough guides on these topics.
Choosing the right topics isn’t enough. You should make sure that your blog post, video, or infographic solves the purpose.
For example, if you create a guide on the above topics, you should:
- Cite lots of examples.
- Write in simple, easy-to-understand language.
- Include step-by-step processes to buy a domain, buy a hosting plan, or publish the first post. Make sure you include proper screenshots for clarity.
- Include comparisons of different plans and companies to help readers make the right choice for themselves.
This is all about providing value. What else can you do to encourage readers to share your content?
Add Click to Tweet calls-to-action (CTAs) within your article to prompt people to share your content. WordPress offers a simple Click To Tweet plugin that can help you create these sections easily.
4. Monitor, measure, manage and tweak your content
Just posting content isn’t enough. If you’re not monitoring how each piece of content you create performs, you might be wasting your content marketing budget.
When scaling your content marketing strategy, you should:
- Be selective.
- Only invest time and resources in creating content that drives good results.
- Analyze which channels drive maximum visitors and engagement. Use those channels for content distribution and syndication.
- Identify dead content that is not generating any results. Tweak it by adding more information or changing the content style to see if its performance improves.
You can use tools such as Google Analytics, Instagram Analytics, and BuzzSumo to track the performance of your content.
Keeping your content updated is another way in which you can ensure that it stays effective when it comes to its role of lead generation. Updating your content with the latest facts and figures, new developments or changes goes a long way in keeping your content relevant in the long turn.
5. Reuse and repurpose your most successful content
When you regularly monitor your content’s performance, you can easily identify your most engaging and high-converting content. Then, you can reuse it to get more ROI out of your best content.
How?
By repurposing it and reusing it on a different channel or at a different time.
Need some ideas to reuse and repurpose your top-performing content? Here you go:
If a blog post is performing well, you can break its content to create multiple short videos and publish them as a series on social media. On that same note, some platforms, such as Instagram, require a lot of consistency to drive results. If you want to squeeze as much juice out of your content as possible, it might be worth considering a dedicated tool to shape your Instagram content strategy.
Similarly, if one of your podcast episodes received great engagement, you can turn it into an article or infographic using well-designed charts and graphs.
You can also cut important sections of conversation from the episode and turn them into short, engaging videos.
Another way to repurpose existing content is to continuously update it. You can upgrade your traffic-generating posts by adding new examples, statistics, and tips to them. This will help you ensure that all of your top-performing content remains relevant and valuable to readers.
Promote your best content on multiple channels to make it reach highly-targeted audiences across platforms. Many marketers republish their old blog posts on LinkedIn and Medium to increase their visibility and give them a new life.
Buffer once announced the “No New Content” challenge and didn’t publish any new content for 30 days. Instead, they:
- Created new drip email campaigns using blog posts’ content.
- Updated older posts with new information and graphics.
- Created presentations on SlideShare using content from their blog posts.
- Republished content on Medium.
The results?
Even without any new content creation, their traffic didn’t suffer any huge dip. They were also able to attract many new visitors to their site.
Repurposing old content takes less time and costs lesser than producing something new because it allows you to get your content in front of new audiences and generate new leads and conversions.
6. Encourage user-generated content (UGC)
Want to save time on content creation?
Let others create high-quality, engaging content for your brand.
Many brands are putting their customers and prospects in the spotlight to build stronger communities, especially on social media apps like Instagram.
For example:
Adobe, the brand behind Photoshop, often uses customer photos to build a community. The brand promoted the “#CelebrateBlackCreativity” hashtag to encourage people to share creative photos.
Along with supporting a cause, Adobe also created UGC for their Instagram account and build a community that believes in supporting the Black community.
To encourage user-generated content, you can:
- Run a hashtag campaign.
- Host a contest and giveaway.
- Offer to feature the best photos on your brand’s profile.
- Ask questions and feedback.
- Support a cause.
- Leverage influencer collaborations.
- Find and feature your customers’ photos on your brand’s social media profiles.
User-generated content will not only help you scale your content marketing efforts but will also help you:
- Understand your audience better.
- Improve engagement.
- Build a stronger community.
- Increase customer satisfaction.
- Improve your brand’s online visibility.
- Make your brand more credible and trustworthy.
The famous watch brand, Daniel Wellington, constantly runs the #DWPickoftheDay campaign. They ask people to post pictures with their favorite Daniel Wellington watches using the hashtag, “#DanielWellington,” for a chance to get featured on their Instagram page.
This strategy has helped them increase the reach and usage of their branded hashtag, “#DanielWellington,” exponentially.
7. Build the right team
Having the right team in place can help you scale your content strategy effectively.
Focus on building a team of talented writers, editors, copywriters, and strategists. You will also need to hire designers and audio and video editors to create visual content.
When I say that you should build a team, it is not only limited to hiring people in-house. You can also choose a content agency or partner with freelancers to outsource your content creation efforts.
You’ll be surprised to know that 84% of B2B marketers outsource content creation while 31% of them outsource content distribution.
If you plan to outsource content creation, I would recommend that you should focus on hiring in-house editors. They can help you ensure that all of the content created externally aligns with your brand’s voice and messaging.
When outsourcing content, you should:
- Test the skills and knowledge of the freelancers or content agency.
- Create detailed guidelines to define your requirements and expectations.
- Create style guides to help them understand your brand’s voice and messaging.
- Hire in-house editors to review the outsourced assignments and request or make changes (if required).
Working with freelancers can help you cut down on the cost of hiring more people and still get work done in time. It gives you an opportunity to scale your content marketing efforts without elevating costs.
Ready to growth hack your content marketing?
Growth hacking and content marketing are both about generating results. And when you combine them together, they should bring you maximum returns on investment.
Growth hacking your content initiatives is all about using consumer psychology to drive measurable results.
You need to rethink and reinvent your approach towards creating, publishing, and promoting content. Make sure that the right content reaches the right people at the right times to increase your chances of driving conversions.
Do you have questions about scaling your content marketing strategy? Leave them in the comments below. I’ll be happy to guide you to amplify your content’s reach, engagement, and conversion potential.