Content creation strategies

I’ve been full-time with Internet Marketing since 2007 and have really come to appreciate the fact that this whole process actually has a pretty steep learning curve.

Running an Internet-based business as the owner of a product or service or as an affiliate of someone else’s product or service takes a lot of work and patience. Actually, it takes a lot of patience.

Looking back at 2012 in hindsight, I can now see that patience is the most valuable quality of all, especially with all the search engine algorithm updates.

When it comes to Internet or web-based marketing, ultimately successful efforts ultimately fall into two categories.

Category number one: content creation

Strong content is at the heart of each and every successful marketing campaign. Without it, you have nothing to motivate your visitors to take action. So basically, you don’t make any money.

Great content will do three things for your readers:

Great content will flow: This means that grammar, punctuation, ideas, connective phrases, and ideas will come together and the reader won’t be distracted by mistakes. Errors, whether grammatical or punctuation errors, will destroy the convertibility of your copy.

Great content will deliver value – This means your post or article will actually live up to the title. Nothing is worse than an article that doesn’t deliver on the promise of the title.

Great content will invite them in, not leave them hanging: Many copywriters like to write half an article and act like it’s the full article, when it’s really just the first half of an article with a call to action to do. Click on the bio box. Personally, I feel like this scenario is spam. If you write an article, make it a full article!

This is just the first step that one must take if they want to be a successful internet based marketer. The other is promotion.

Category number two: content promotion

I used to believe that all effort should be focused on creating strong content. Unfortunately, it takes more than solid content, much more, and the reason is because everyone has solid content. Basically, solid content is a minimum requirement.

Content promotion is just as important as having great content. However, promotion is not easy and requires just as much time and energy as content creation.

To successfully promote your content and determine the most advantageous ways to promote it, establishing a routine is absolutely essential.

A great promotion routine for an article you post on your blog, for example, might look like this:

Social Bookmarking – Social platforms are great for promoting your content. Choose three of your favorite social platforms and every time you post an article on your blog or website, share it with your friends and colleagues. Social sharing buttons make this easier than ever and if your content is quality then your friends can share it with their friends.

Blog Comments – Blog comments are a great way to drive traffic to your post or article. The CommentLuv plugin for WordPress makes sharing a link to your post a breeze. Don’t worry about where a “dofollow” link is or isn’t. We want traffic! All you have to do is search for “your keyword” + “CommentLuv” and comment on the blogs they link to. Be sure to read her post and leave a valuable comment. Bloggers love this and don’t mind linking to quality comments. Find three high traffic blogs in your niche and subscribe to their RSS feed. This will give you constant opportunities to comment.

Make your old articles available for distribution: Once an article is past its “honeymoon” period, in certain cases, it can drop down the SERP results. Hopefully, this won’t happen, but the cold, hard truth is… many do. But, just because an article sinks in the SERP results doesn’t mean its life is over. a lot of people haven’t read it yet. You can easily breathe new life into it by making it available for syndication in major article directories. Pick three top article directories and send them your previous content with a bio link to their site or landing page. I’ve had a lot of success with this and still do, even despite the 2012 search engine algorithm updates.

These are just a few ideas on how to promote your content without having to write more articles.

Personally, I think your marketing efforts should be split down the middle, meaning half your time should be spent creating content and the other half should be spent promoting your content.

Content Promotion Tip

A lightbulb went off in my head the other day as I reflected on the fact that some of my best converting articles were losing popularity.

I found that you could continue to promote them by running banner ads or a non-intrusive banner ad that drops down from the top of your website and gently pushes your visitors to your highest converting post, article or product.

Stick to your promotional routine

Remember, website and blog promotion is an endurance race. Having a consistent content creation and promotion schedule is the fastest way to be successful online because it allows you to see what works and what doesn’t.

Sticking to a solid schedule will ultimately pay off for anyone who does it…you just have to stick to it.

james hickey

Master of Business Consultant