Daily Facts - Day #10: How to achieve your blogging goals

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According to Content Marketing Institute …

The #1 content marketing goal for B2C businesses is sales - 83% -, followed by customer retention, loyalty and engagement - 81%.

But of course, blogging and content marketing is about a lot of different efforts and end-goals. It can be about revenue generation, list-building, thought leadership, brand awareness, personal relationships, etc.

And let's face it ... Getting there isn't easy at all ...

There are 25 new posts published in every single second (only on Wordpress!) and getting heard through all of that noise is definitely not an easy task ...

And becomes almost impossible when a blogger or a content marketer neglects the most important "unwritten" rules.

Which ones? Well, I'd say that there are 3 very important rules here ...

1. In content marketing you won't - never ever - try to sell something.

Content marketing – just like any other marketing concept – covers a whole set of different methods and strategies and serves one ultimate goal: to attract, to engage and to retain as many customers as possible in order to fulfill certain well-defined business objectives. Yet, is very different from any other form of marketing. Why? Because content marketing has nothing to do with the traditional selling techniques.

The traditional marketing concepts have taught you to close immediate deals being direct, pushy and persuasive. Do yourself a huge favor and forget all that “sales pitch” rubbish right now!

Content marketing is a completely different approach. It’s a long-term strategy focusing on relationships, authority, trust and value.

2. CONTENT IS A BUSINESS ASSET and content marketing is a business process, NOT a campaign.

Content marketing is the process of creating valuable, relevant and helpful content in order to attract and engage a well-targeted audience group. This is why businesses need content marketing. This is why content marketing has become a literally vital and critical aspect of being visible in today’s digital busy world. An this is why you need to pay a great attention to the following tips when you are developing a content marketing strategy for your business …

As I said, there is a ton of information out there and on top of that it’s a complex multi-device and multi-channel world where your customers’ attention is highly divided among different areas, platforms, etc. In other words, the attention that they actually have for you is very scarce. But a well-grounded, powerful content marketing strategy can help you break through that noise! And of course, content marketing is much more than just content production. There is also SEO, link-building, promotion, monitoring, optimization, etc.

Basically, any basic content marketing process should involve at least 8 mandatory steps:

  • Aligning your content with your goals; business objectives, main and secondary messages, desired actions, technological considerations, choosing the perfect design and the appropriate content type, structure and style, etc
  • Creating valuable and unique content
  • Optimizing your content for SEO and link-building
  • Mapping the content to the sales funnel
  • Defining a diversified multi-channel promotional strategy
  • Finding the most efficient ways to monetize your content
  • Tracking your results and optimizing the poorly performing marketing elements
  • Leveraging the power of content curation

3. You need to re-wire – your brain for success achieved through thought leadership.

Relax, I am not talking about a surgical intervention … All you have to do, is to accept and to follow 5 core principles:

  • You always need to be relevant and available for your target audience; while you are trying to connect with your audience in that complex, multi-channel, multi-device world, you should never forget that content marketing engages individuals on their own terms.
  • The content must be aligned with its purpose; in order to achieve different objectives (lead generation, thought leadership, brand awareness, etc) you are going to need different content types and content formats
  • The content must be a right fit for the delivery channel too; you’ll have to create different types of channel-specific content for every communication channel. A social media post for example won’t work very well in an email campaign …
  • Your content marketing should rely on clear pre-defined metrics; you should always create your content with a specific end-goal in your mind (10 new customers, 25 new subscribers, 50 new followers, etc).
  • The real power of content marketing lies in evergreen content; putting aside certain trend-related or time-sensitive content types, content marketing has to be (almost always) evergreen. In other words, your content should last months or years.

I'd say that these are the most important "laws" that can help you to define what content marketing means for you or your business.

And I can tell you from my own experience, they will help you not only to become a trusted source of information, but also to achieve your content marketing objectives. Regardless of your goals ...

Any thoughts my friends?

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Recent Comments

31

My God i had to take some notes. Wow!

Thanks for reading!

Great tips Thanks for sharing

Thanks for reading!

Great advice, thanks.

Thanks Carol!

Great post. Helps to ensure I am focusing on the right things.
Justin

Thanks Justin!

I love how you laid this all out-precise and to the point:). Very good info.! Thank you so much for sharing, Zed:)
Blessings:)
Suzi

Thank YOU Suzi!

You're welcome:)


Thank you, Zed.
How can you make an evergreen content on a topic which is evolving continuously and literally everyday new stuff is created?

Good question Annusuya :)

How about focusing on the continuous evolution? Which - as you say - is "evergreen"?

Wow. Great tips. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for reading Sandra!

Sometimes the content needs more put into than some people are willing to give.

Derek

Well said Derek!

Sometimes?

Some people do it properly first time!

Derek

Have you ever met a same person :)

Thanks for stepping by!

Thanks for this.

Thanks for your time Jared!

Another great blogging tips Zed.

A lot of pointers that make me think.

Two very interesting pointers for me:

1) Mapping the content to the sales funnels
How do you create this through content?

2) Leveraging the power of content curation
I have heard that doing this correctly, one can be successful in online business. What is the best practice to avoid being picked as duplicate content or even worse, plagiarism?

Thanks for sharing Zed.

:)Joe

Hi Joe!

Thanks for stepping by :)

So ...

1. Not "through content" ... At least not literally. When you are creating your main content piece, you need to consider the "additional' content magnets that will be included in various stages of your funnel. You'll want to create a continuous logical flow through all the stages (interest, qualification, closure, nurturing, advocacy, etc) and your main content piece should resonate with every single additional element (first-hook, upsell, downsell, re-engagement, resells, etc).

2. That's a very good question Joe! And basically, the answer is really simple (yet usually completely overlooked): content curation is not copy/paste. Content curation requires added value! You must give your reader something he or she cannot obtain by reading the original post ...


Zed

Thank you for clarification Zed.
Those made senses.
Appreciated.

:)Joe

Thank YOU Joe!

Hey Zed, this is world class thinking you have. In terms of Mapping the content to the sales funnels
How do you create this through content, your response at 1 above is...world class! Have you got a training or can you link a training on how to create content and alight to to the continuous logical flow of the stages of the Sales Funnel?
Much appreciated if you could train further on this.

Thanks John!

I'm working on a similar training :)

But I have dozens of drafts, so won't be tomorrow :(

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