Putting your content to work

Content – It’s that magic little gem that offers information about your brand and enables a conversation with your consumer.

But even if you plant the sweetest little seed of magnificent content, it will struggle to grow and flourish into brand awareness if it never enjoys the light of the sun.

So, once you’ve created compelling content, how do ensure it gets seen? Whether it’s an article, a blog post, a video or an infographic, here are the top tips for putting your content to work…

Content statistics

The internet is a wealth of content, with brands creating information every second of every minute of every hour of the day.

If you’re wondering just how much content hits the digital airwaves, the following statistics help illustrate the volume that swamps the internet on a regular basis…

Each month, 70 million new posts appear on WordPress blogs alone
300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
Every 60 seconds on Facebook: 510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded.
75 billion pieces of content were shared daily on Facebook as of May 2013 which was a 94 percent increase from August 2012.
More than 95 million photos and videos are uploaded to Instagram every day.
There are more than 500 million tweets sent each day on Twitter

By anyone’s measure, that’s a lot of content, and it can be challenging to differentiate yourself in a noisy internet space.

As a guide, the content that’s most likely to gain views is:

Quality
Informative
Consistent
Engaging

However, even though your content may be all of the above and more, it will have some stiff volume competition on its hands. So once your content is locked, loaded and ready to go live, you’ll need to put it to work. Here’s how that’s done.

Post

Creating an audience is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. On one hand you need great content for your audience to want to visit your site. On the other hand, creating compelling content that falls on deaf ears is frustrating to say the least.

But you still need to establish a website with quality articles that you are looking to drive your audience to. You’re also looking to tick the boxes of SEO via this content to ensure your website ranks and more people organically strike it first in a search engine.

So, in the content game of being seen, step 1 is to create great articles, videos and information and post them to your website on a regular basis.

Step 2 then involves using all available channels to drive the audience there.

Social media remains the prime place for sharing, and every business should have associated business social media pages that are properly formatted, regularly updated and facilitate a conversation with the consumer.

For some businesses, Facebook will be the tool of choice, for others Insta will be the go-to, YouTube will be the must-have and Twitter will also play a major role in any content sharing strategy.

Regardless of whether you’re using one social media channel or them all, business social media profiles should contain up-to-date information about a company, contact details and be used regularly to post informative content.

Importantly, social media is the space you will most likely use to drive traffic to your website.

Therefore, once a blog or article has been posted to your website, also post a channel-appropriate snippet, image or video to social media that links back to your site.

This allows users to view part of the article on your social media page but then the full articles on your website.

It works to create traffic, boots your viewership and helps raise your SEO ranking.

The share buttons

As an extension of this, every article that you post to your website should have the ability to be shared. That’s where the social media share and email buttons come into play, allowing readers to share your post to their Facebook Page, timeline or via email.

This grows organic traffic and audience reach.

In addition to your website offering the ability for users to share your insightful content, they should be able to subscribe to it. That means they can be updated when new articles are posted.

But subscribe also offers other potential, it allows a business to create a database of loyal followers who can then be alerted to other information as well through newsletters and email campaigns, which brings us to…

Disseminate

You know that database of clients you have or that list of contacts, there’s a good chance they may be interested in the goings on of your business, the latest industry news, the upcoming deal or the most recent informative articles you have posted. And this is where dissemination through things like emails and newsletters kicks in.

Newsletters and targeted email campaigns allow you to feed your content directly to the inbox of your subscribers, complete with links that drive them back to the full content on your website.

Repurpose

Earlier we mentioned social media, but the truth is each channel lends itself to a different format of content.

To really put your content to work, redesign or recreate it in a way that’s tailored to the channel. That may mean you create a blog, then some Insta friendly images for Instagram that lead back to the original article on your site.

Or you might do a YouTube video highlighting only a few select points from a blog, and you point the video back to the article, or you might tweet key statistics from a really informative article.

And so the repurposing goes on and on, using every ounce of value that has been poured into the original piece. Ultimately it can also go further. A series of great blog articles may lend themselves to an e-book, a course for your clients or more.

Meanwhile, repurposing also works in reverse. If you do a great Facebook Live, write it up as a blog, or if you have an insightful YouTube video about a product, use it within a written article to spice up the content type.

Relink

By the time your website has an established article bank, there’s a good chance it will be referring to common themes, and this is where you have the opportunity to encourage the audience to spend extra time on your site through re-linking.

Time spent on site is recognised by Google, and it also means you have something worthwhile to offer.

So, say for example you write an article that touches on but doesn’t fully cover a topic you have discussed before. Be sure to link to the previous article within that blog post.

This allows users to become engrossed in your site, enjoying the library and wealth of information on offer.

Engage

Often brands fail to understand just how much the audience wishes to be in on the conversation, which is where comments, reviews, feedback and testimonials play a role.

Invite your audience in to have their say through comments on websites, questions on social media and a general encouragement for them to weigh in.

After all, content is a conversation not a monologue (that’s us illustrating relinking in action btw). However, audiences tend to be a polite bunch, so you will need them to invite them to express their valued opinion.

Meanwhile, when they do take the time to offer commentary, feedback or a snippet of what they think, be sure to engage, responding to them with timely commentary of your own.

It’s a bit like thanking a guest for taking the time to attend your dinner party, in the knowledge it’s not only polite but more likely to make them feel welcome and inclined to visit your home again.

The final word

Bill Gates once famously noted Content is King, and indeed it is. But by no means is this a token ruler or gormless front man. The true art of realising the power of content involves putting it to work, on every occasion, in every form at every opportunity. True content is a hardworking royal indeed.

When you work your content, repurpose it and squeeze every ounce of value from it, you are actively building an audience and allowing your brand to be seen.

Meanwhile, working your content allows you get maximum bang for every buck outlaid and every ounce of effort involved in its making. And that not only makes good business sense, but will likely increase your brand identity, recognition and website SEO in the process.

About Openseed

At Openseed we specialise in planting the seeds of customer reach through compelling brands and SEO optimised websites. We then nurture kernel of great content, devising strategies and storytelling to support business in their ongoing conversation with their customer. Ultimately it reaps an ongoing harvest that delivers business real and proven results.

You can learn more about our services here or contact us directly to start that customer conversation.