Whether you’re a B2C brand or a B2B brand, the end of Q4 means getting budgets for 2016 finalized and strategies in place to Resolve to Improve Marketing start the new year off ready to meet goals.
For many SEO and marketing departments, this year’s resolutions include a commitment to creating more content, efforts toward better measurement, and improving their ability to show contributions to the bottom line. To help you keep your resolutions, we thought we’d give you some ideas for tools and best practices to get started now, instead of waiting until January.
Tracking Keywords Still Important
Tracking keywords is harder than ever with keywords not provided and all the other changes that have happened, and continue to happen. If you want to make a buy telemarketing data resolution that will make tracking keywords and discovering what’s working and what’s not working a lot easier, consider creating keyword groups.
Create keyword groups to track:
Products
Features
Campaigns
Audience segments
Topics
Messages
Geographies
“One of my tips, if you’re not using a tool to make it super easy to create these groups, reconsider your tool. Having a tool that makes it easy to create keyword groups will give you the best insights and the ability to make decisions based on the performance of general topics for both you and your competitors,” advises Erin O’Brien,
marketing conversion dashboard filter for marketing content filters for marketers keyword and topic groups
Measuring Content in Groups
The same reasoning exists for creating content groups as it does for keyword groups. If you create content groups that mirror your keyword groupings, you’ll get data that allows you to target your efforts and create an overall picture of the topics that are resonating with and converting your audiences.
In addition to the creating content groups that are the same as keyword groups, group content by content type to track how your audience is consuming your content. Create content groups to compare and contrast the performance of different content types or locations. Content types include:
Videos
Podcasts
White papers
Blogs
Case studies
Webinars
The third way to group content is by user flow. If you have content that you share with your audience at specific points along the customer journey, create content groups to see which segments may need to be reviewed and refreshed. Content flow groups include:
Lead generation content
Consideration content
Comparison content
Customer support content
Educational content
“If you’re using a tool that allows you to see your keyword, content, and social media data alongside your competitor’s data and allows you to create keyword and content groups, you can get really granular data that’s going to give you the best information about what’s going on in your market space,” notes Erin.
Social Data – Not Just For The Social Media Marketing Group
Even if a marketer’s role isn’t social media, social signals can help marketers to make better strategic decisions. Social signals are often an early indicator of what’s organically popular and relevant to your audience at the moment. Look beyond the likes, re-tweets, and followers your competition is getting and find out what content they’re sharing that’s causing increased audience engagement.
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“You want to be able to view all your competitor’s content and sort it by top performing social metrics,” advises Erin. “Gathering that information at the specific content or content level will give you insights into where they’re getting the most traction and give you the ability to compare to your own content.”
Some of the insights you can gain from identifying popular competitor content include:
What channels need increased engagement
What messages to use for future content creation
Influencer engagement and outreach needs
When looking at your social channels as indicators of content popularity, gather a blend of your data and your competitor’s data at the keyword and content levels.
Where you might be missing traction
Update Existing Content to Reflect Market Shifts
Getting the most SEO value out of your content can be as easy as polishing up some older, relevant content. When you first promoted your content, the environment may have been crowded with similar content, or audiences were engaged in other topics. Trying that content out again is a way to get a quick win and increase your overall rankings without taking the time to create lots of new content.
“Take content assets that were ranking highly at one point and spiff them up a little or take some evergreen content and update it with newly discovered keywords that reflect how people are currently discussing a topic,” suggests Erin.
If you’re tracking your content and keywords by groups, you may find an older piece of content that fits into a current campaign. Refresh that content, or increase its visibility by sharing it as a different type of content or on
The end of the year is a time when we look back at what worked and what didn’t and get our content marketing and SEO initiatives in place for a successful start to the New Year. This is a good time to make sure you have a plan in place to accurately measure content and set your editorial calendar for next year based on what worked and what didn’t.
When we look at content effectiveness, it’s important to consider exactly what aspect of our content has been successful. What about your content is resonating with your audience? Are you gaining share of voice through your content message, the medium you use to distribute your content, or the method you employ to publish your content? Once you know exactly what content factors are attracting your audience, you can capitalize on those successes to plan future content.
Medium, Method, and Message
I’ve talked a lot about the medium, method, and message before. To recap, the medium is the type of content and can include:
video
blog post
slide deck
ebook
podcast
white paper
The method is the channel you use to publish your content including:
YouTube
Instagram
Vine
Pinterest
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
SlideShare
The message is what you say and can include:
campaign message
tag line
feature
benefit
topic
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Once you segment out your content measurement based on the medium, method, message model, you’ll be able to get real insights into why your content is working or not. Once you know what your audience is responding to, it’s easier to create content that addresses those preferences.
In other words, if you find that a specific message or topic has gained a lot of interest, you may want to leverage that message on other mediums or through different channels. However, if it’s the medium your audiences like, you may want to take some existing content and recreate it on that medium to see if you get more interest. If your audience is largely coming to you from a specific channel and you haven’t published all your content there, start a campaign to get that content out to those audiences.
Looking at the medium, method, and message separately may give you an opportunity to get additional audience engagement without creating brand new content. Maybe you have existing content that just needs a refresh or needs to be distributed differently.
Track Competitor Content
It’s useful to use the medium, method, and message measurement system to keep track of competitor content, as well as your own. if your competitor is constantly taking traffic from you in one particular area, take a look at what they’re creating and compare it to your own content. you may find they’re beating you on a specific channel or a particular the most important thing about Let’s encrypt medium and you’ll only need to re-purpose or re-distribute content you’ve already created to win back your audience.
If you’ve already created keyword and content groups (a strategy I highly recommend), you can compare your content at the keyword level to see if they’re gaining readership through specific topics or perhaps through content that uses keywords more effectively.
Tracking competitor content is easier if you have a tool that automates the process for you. The digital. Marketplace changes quickly and you may get blindsided by a new player or an existing. Competitor who is distributing content that competes with your own. Look to discover new content and competitors at least. Once a quarter to make sure you’re not losing your audience without knowing it.
Use Social Media to Know What’s Trending
The best new content ideas come from answering questions and joining in on discussions your audiences are already having. Monitor various social media sites and forums, like Quora, to discover topics that are consistently discussed. Before you rush off to create new aero leads content, consider looking through existing content to see if you. Have already created. Something around this topic. You can refresh content to make it more current and to reflect how people are talking about a topic currently.
If you don’t have content that addresses
Questions and hot topics on. Social media, consider adding those topics and phrases to your editorial calendar and create new content to match. Look to your medium, method, and message measurement statistics to. Help you decide how you’ll create the content.
Creating new content doesn’t have to be a. Huge project, record a short video or fill in a landing page template and share your content on the social. Channels where the topics are being discussed. You can always go back to those topics and create other content such as blog posts or slide decks later.
Focus Your Content Creation on What’s Working
If you’ve struck content gold with a particular area, make sure you’re utilizing it. If you’ve created a large following on a specific channel or particular content type,
