When you look at website statistics day in and day out, trends start to emerge.
You’ll find that only some of the content on your or your client’s site is delivering most of the traffic. I haven’t tested it, but I’d bet you that the 80/20 rule applies . That is, 80% of your traffic is being generated by 20% of your content).
There is one critical principle you must always use with your content to maximize its impact.
Marketing success comes from maximizing your reach.
When I audit marketing programs (online or off) I look first for the data that indicates or will indicate the program reach. You never know which part of the marketing will have the greatest impact, but if your reach is not all that it can be, nothing else really matters. A great bit of creative that no one sees is no better than a no creative at all.
The secret to great online marketing reach is re-purposing your creative.
Blog Content Strategy
It all starts with a good content strategy. Choose 12 monthly themes that flow with the seasons and work for your market niche. Break those 12 themes into two primary topics that, in and of themselves, represent problems people have that are common in the industry and that you can solve.
Break each of those into six sub-topics that help define and resolve the problem. These six sub-topics represent your blog posts (three a week). Each sub-topic should contain 300 to 400 words of original, jaw dropping, valuable content (we’ll call each one a micro-article).
Maximizing Your Online Marketing Reach
Write your articles all at once or on an ongoing basis. Pull out three to four 120-character-or-less “sound bytes” from each article to use for Twitter and LinkedIn updates.
- Once a week, the micro-articles should be rolled up and revised into a single, 600 to 1200 word article that can be submitted to the article-sharing sites. The article should then be converted into a PowerPoint style presentation and posted to slide-sharing sites.
- Every two weeks, the two PowerPoint presentations should be revised and combined into slides to support a webinar. The webinar should be recorded, cleaned up, and converted into two video lengths: full (less than 10 minutes) and 2-to-3 minutes. The two videos should be posted to a YouTube channel, other video sharing sites, and promoted through micro-blogging and social bookmarking. The full-length version should have highlights and sound bytes transcribed to serve as blog posts. The sound bytes can also serve as micro-blogging updates.
- Once a month, the four articles should be combined into a white paper that can be made available for download from your website after registration, or posted to professional directories. The article can also be modified for professional off-line publication or press releases.
This strategy will allow you to generate a powerful online presence without having to build a large pool of content. When a car company creates an image of a car, they use that image in commercials, on billboards, in magazine print and in web banner ads. They don’t create a new piece of content for each medium. Your written content should be no different.
At Portland Marketing Analytics we assist companies of all sizes in developing an on-line marketing strategy that is based on sound marketing principles and supported by clear analytics.