Inbound marketing is a great way to attract new clients to your site and engage with them. However, you have to make sure you’re utilizing the best methods to maximize your success rate. Take a look at the rules below to take your inbound marketing strategy to the next level.
1. Decide what kind of content you want to createA key part of successful inbound marketing is creating unique, engaging content. Take some time and do research on the type of content you want to produce. Blogging regularly is always a great way to drive traffic to your site. You might also try creating a video, podcast, or even an occasional e-book or case study if you want to provide more in-depth information about a topic you’re an expert on.
Identifying that expertise and leveraging your authority in that expertise is the key to creating content that makes sound marketing sense for your business.
2. Create a topic calendar or editorial calendar
Are you always consistent with the content you create and publish? For many people, the answer is no.
Organization is a must for producing regular, high-quality content. Try implementing an editorial or topic calendar—lay out the topics you want to cover over the next several months or year, and make a plan for when each item will go live. You can create this calendar yourself or take advantage of a digital template.
3. Commit to a rhythm of new content
Now that you’ve started creating your editorial calendar, plan how and when you will publish new content. Say you’ve committed to publishing a new blog post each week—instead of writing a post each week, you might want to create several blog posts in one batch and schedule them to go out at different times.
If you use an online publishing tool, you can also do research on the peak time of day users engage with your posts and plan to publish accordingly.
4. Analyze the content that’s performing best over time
Once you’ve been publishing content for a while, make sure you are publishing the right content. Take a look at the shares, likes, or comments that your content has received. What type of content is performing the best?
You might use tools to analyze user interaction. LinkTally shows how many times a URL has been shared on social networks, and TweetCharts reveals statistics on Twitter words, phrases, URLS, and hashtags.
5. Use data to inform your future content topics and create more of what your audience likes
Once you’ve done your research, tailor your content accordingly. If your Instagram posts are getting a lot of likes, maybe you should increase their regularity. If, on the other hand, you’ve been creating videos but they just aren’t getting the likes and shares to justify the time needed to create them, maybe you should move on to another content form.
As Hubspot states, “The better you know your audience, the better you can understand what kind of content will attract them to your website.”
6. Create downloadable content in exchange for a user’s email address
Engage with users on your site by creating downloadable content that requires an email address. When a user gives you an email address, you must give them something in return.
This content be something related to your business that users will find useful and encourage them to further engage with your services. You might try offering a free tutorial or even a guide that will give all the pertinent information about a product or service you provide.
7. Contribute content to other larger websites with bigger followings
Do some research, and figure out which websites in your industry have the largest followings. You can increase your visibility and attract new followers by posting content on these other sites. You might try writing a guest blog post or post a video.
According to Hubspot, “Contributing a post to a blog other than yours is another way of giving away something small for free, but getting more in return.”
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