5 Secret Data-Driven Ways To Kill Your Competitors With Content

Welcome back guys!

Even though I'm super busy at Firtal Web with running Made4men , Incover & Helsebixen on several different markets I found time to write a little something for all of you!

Today I would like to introduce you to a topic, which for me, personally, is one of the most interesting! I would like to introduce you to the term content marketing; the ability to create content, which in itself is marketing.

I am sure that you are all familiar with the term content marketing – but what does it mean? And how do you translate this concept for use in your own business? Today I would like to guide you through 5 tips which can get you to kick ass in relation to content marketing.

In short, the concept content marketing is about the ability to create content, which is so attractive that it becomes your actual marketing channel. Instead of drawing users into your site through advertising banners and pushy ads, you can through content create a relationship with your audience and then create sales.

In reality, content marketing gives you the opportunity to grab your potential customers at an early stage in the buying process and you thus have the opportunity to create a relationship with the purchaser, shape the purchasing behavior and directly educate the purchaser about a particular product!

Content marketing has come to stay!

As it is seen above, more and more companies begin to invest heavily in content marketing. But still, few people actually know what they do – most people just want a piece of the content marketing cake, and that is why, we are going to have a closer look at this part; how do you go from the stage of knowing about it – to the stage of having 100% control over what you are doing - and knowing why you are doing as you do?

Let’s get started!

1. Solid platform

Without a solid platform it is going to be difficult to experience a real impact on the content you create. Therefore, it is very important to start having the fundamentals in order. Content marketing can be all kinds of content – but in this article we will have a closer look at the written part of it, since the written form is relatively easy for most companies to handle.

WordPress

If you are thinking about starting a blog – whether it is business or private related – the platform named WordPress would be a good tool for you. The reason for this is that WordPress is created for bloggers and is a platform, which has all the necessary features that make blogging a breeze.

Example of a layout sketch I made for Trendsonline

(It might be advantageous for you to make a print or screenshot of this sketch, since I will refer to it later on)

If you have a programmer attached to your business, you can hard code everything from scratch. However, I would not recommend you to do it, as you then have to educate the writers in the system too. Most people prevailing WordPress relatively easy – even when it comes to outsourcing – and therefore you can save hours and money on this. (This blog is created on WordPress) 

Responsive design

Having a responsive design means that your website is available on all devices such as laptop, tablet and mobile phones. I believe that many companies aren’t aware of the importance of having a responsive design. They seem to forget that 50% browse from their mobile phone or tablet. 

The curve of growth on mobile devices

Therefore, you must always make sure to optimize your website for mobile phones. It can be anything from the distance to the buttons, font size and pop-up functions you have to optimize.

Everything looks different on a mobile phone and users can easily click on to another website. If you are on the forefront of this, you are a good step ahead of being secured on a future basis.

Speed

A very underrated parameter is the speed. Being able to browse quickly through your site is crucial if you want the users to stay on your website. Keep in mind that not all people are sitting on high- speed internet. As I already have said, many users are using their mobile phone and these might only have 3G access. You need, in other words, to optimize for the slowest connection and not the fastest.

Read more: How loading time affects your bottom line

Google has also stated that they’ll count the speed of the site in their algorithms – so there’s no excuses not to optimize the speed.

Tips to optimize the speed 

• Optimize your images to fill as little as possible before you post them! You can use various programs for this. If you have WordPress, you can use this plugin to optimize your images when they are uploaded.
• Be careful not to install many advanced plug-ins such as email popups, Facebook buttons and smart galleries. Too many plugins and features can often have a negative effect on the speed!
• Optimize your code. There are many good guides for this - but I recommend my good friend Rune's article from Trendsonline, about how he has beaten Amazon and Microsoft's speed.
• Avoid to have too much graphics on your website. A simple design is often good to have - both for users and for speed's sake. 5-10 years ago it was considered very good to show how much graphics and fancy effects you could put into a website (we all remember the classic snowflakes, which were falling down on the screen) - today it is accepted that we have a simple design, which keeps users in mind. Keep it clean!

 

 30% of your visitors leave your website if it loads slower that 3 seconds

The social effects

We all love to see what others have read or commented on. In fact, several major media are built on this effect - did you know that Reddit created a large amount of users and started creating content themselves to start with?

Through this self created content, Reddit got more and more users to be a part of their platform.

Comments

When people comment on something, it creates a certain energy around your content, whether it's Youtube comments, blog comments or Facebook comments.

Comments create commitment!

Example from Sarahposin.com
306 comments in relation to a competition

Therefore, it is important to show the comments – if we use my previous example, you can see that I have created space for comments.

In fact, you will see this as soon as you have finished reading my article. If you end your article with an opportunity to discuss – which I, personally, recommend you to do – you can easily get lots of comments on your post.

#Tip: To kick start your comments you can ask your family and friends to comment on your first post. A few comments to start with will create credibility – and then more comments are coming. 

Social share buttons

Well, I can’t avoid to mention the so called social sharing features, which make it possible for use to share our (or others) content on social media. Take Facebook for example – you can share anything on Facebook – maybe an article or a picture.

The social sharing features are important elements when it comes to creating viral content. Make sure it is as easy as possible for people to share your posts. You can use different options if you are using WordPress. Find out what works best for you and the content you write, and then implement your buttons accordingly.

• Visually content? Try Pinterest
• Very technologically? Try Twitter
• B2B related? Try LinkedIn
• Mainstream? Try Facebook 

With this I do not mean that you should exclude the various media, but instead of using all the social media, it is advantageously to focus on a few – like three different.

Rating

Amazon and TripAdvisor do this to perfection! Their algorithms are unique in terms of rating. Therefore, we can learn a lot from their strategies.

That does not mean you should do it just as advanced - they have to do it more advanced due to the amount of data and number of visitors.

Example from Amazon

You can make rating very simple by adding the rating option to your content. You can, for example, add rating stars to your posts – then it becomes easy for users to rate your content.

I believe, it would be good to set up the rating stars in the end of your post when people actually have read your content – and therefore can rate it honestly.

#Tip: If you use WordPress you can find a plugin in their library, and then it should be relatively easy to implement.

Tracking

I think it is fascinating how you can track and trace everything you are doing on the internet. Whether it is through Facebook ads, content, banner advertising etc. Everything can be tracked and traced!

Google Analytics

I have previously mentioned Google Analytics – a free tool provided by Google to tracking and to do data analysis. It is both simple and advanced – it depends on how you use it. Basically, it is about using the data you need - and leave the other elements behind.

Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it...

Click to tweet this quote

When creating content, I recommend parameters such as:

• Time of the page (how good is your content?)
• New vs old users (how good are you to hold on to your users?)
• Top pages (which pages perform best for your users?)
• Goals (a little more advanced, but if you set goals in Google, Analytics, you will be able to see where your users come from when they sign up for a newsletter. If you run a shop, you will directly see where your sales are coming from.

Search engines

Google is still a huge source when it comes to traffic of quality. Especially when it comes to the sale of products and services. Often people misunderstand the quality of Facebook versus Google.

It's easy to drive traffic to Facebook, but if you compare the behavior of the users on the two traffic sources, it is clear that users through Google spend much more time on your side than the easy visitors from Facebook – visitors from Google often passes due deeper interest where Facebook visitors visit due to interesting headlines.

An interesting development, but remember my point above.

Optimize title-tags + meta descriptions

One of the most important elements, when wanting Google to understand your website, is to optimize your title-tags and meta-descriptions.

As you can see the title tag and the meta description are the two elements, which are very important since wee see these elements as the very the first thing when using Google – and therefore also the two main factors that affect your users to click through to your particular page.

If we compare the two examples above, it is clear that the last one is well considered and it has been taken into consideration, which things they would like to rank high in the search results. There are many good tools out there.

If you use WordPress, you can’t avoid the Yoast SEO Tool. If you install it (it's free, and can be installed under plugins in the left side, when you are logged in) you will after each blog post get the following option:

Under " SEO Title" and " meta description" you can then fill in the two tags. It is very simple, and you even get the opportunity to see a draft of how it's going to look like.

Good tips to title-tags and meta-description

• Keep all title-tags and meta-descriptions as unique as possible.
• Keep them short and precise and avoid long difficult words.
• Make sure that the words you are using invite people to click on them.
• If you are local, you may want to include the city name and postal code.
• Would you like to strengthen your brand; you can include the name at the end of all title-tags.

Social graph

Have you ever tried sharing a post, article or other content on the social media and and ever been wondering why it didn’t look as good as on your own page? Perhaps, the image isn’t the one you have chosen or perhaps the headline isn’t updated – which is really annoying!

But just as we can optimize our content to Google, we can also optimize our tags to social media, so our content is sharpest in these media.

Again, we are starting from WordPress and using our tool Yoast SEO. You can also hard code it in the code, but it is a larger process, so tend to keep it as simple as possible.

Under the Yoast SEO Tool you can activate the social graph so you get the opportunity to add social data to your articles.

It is a very simple process and you can have different title-tags to Google and to Facebook. The smart part is that Facebook often requires headlines, which are really click bait.

It could be a headline such as ”5 insane tips to Google AdWords (double your turnover)” It would also be advantageously to upload a fitting image, which also increases the chance of getting more clicks from Facebook users!

Example of a good and solid Facebook post

If the problem is that the content of your website has not been updated, when you try to share on social media, you can use the tool Facebook has developed called "Facebook Debugger".

You are then, basically, asking Facebook to scraping NEW information from your side - so you will find that the latest version is updated with when sharing.

1. What should you write about?

I believe that nothing beats passion. You have to write from your heart. I wrote this article in 5 days – but it has taken me 5 years getting enough knowledge to write adequate about content marketing.

I might not be unique but we all have something to say, which is worth a lot to others. If you have a great knowledge – share it. In the beginning it seems like crap to blog – many companies and bloggers feel that way. BUT you can skip a few instructive years and still blog like the pro’s do. You just have to use data!

Use data

As the internet has grown – and there is more content on the internet that ever before, we have to analyze this content. Furthermore, Buzz Sumo created an excellent tool for marketers.

Suppose I was writing a blog post for Forbes about content marketing. How would I approach the task? I would start by looking at which things perform very well on Forbes in general.

Go to Buzzsumo og insert Forbes.com

 Now I can see which articles perform very well on Forbes. Can I include this knowledge in my articles or can I link to these? I can see that there are more Facebook shares than shares from other social media.

This gives me an idea of the structure of the header as discussed earlier.

Likewise, I would also note Facebook as a tool to promotion via ads. Well, go back to the Buzz Sumo and enter ”content marketing”.

Here I choose a time slot so I can see what has been trending the past few months.

Now I even have a few good ideas on what subjects to write about. If you have a free user on Buzz Sumo you can only use it a couple of times a day, and you can only see up to 5 results. That might also be enough, but if you are a larger media, I recommend that you buy the full version!

Let's combine the data with Google Trends

Go to Google Trends and enter ”content marketing”

Under ”queries” I get a good idea of what items I can include in my article. Now I already have a good idea of what article I would like to write.

I also know that content marketing is a very competitive industry, so the more niche based I can stay, the greater is the chance to become successful.

There are many methods that can help you test if the article you write have chances to perform well.

The Google method

If you start by entering your topic you then have a good opportunity to be inspired by Google Suggest. I know that many people would like to have examples and templates. Basically, people will probably like something executable, which is perfect for me!

Keyword Planner (advanced)

We are lucky that Google has lots of tools available for us when working with Google. When it comes to Googles advertising platform we will also see a lot of good tools. To find the right keywords, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner.

This method is highly recognized among American content marketers, since this method gives you a very concrete idea of what will work on Google; including how much ”value” the different words have according to the search volume. Again – the more specific you are, the better!

From this knowledge above I could advantageously write an article about “Content Marketing Strategy for B2B [With templates]“.

I hope that above-mentioned has given you the impression that even though you write from your heart, so to say, you must also write on the basis of data. Unfortunately, most people are waving the white flag when it comes to content marketing as their content doesn’t perform well.

#Tip: Remember these tools for your own sake! I recommend you to bookmark them, since I’ll be using them several times in this article – and they might become indispensable – also when it comes to advertising.

How? Keep on reading!

1. How to create the best content?

Previously I have explained how to identify what to write about. In this section, I will briefly review a few ways you can optimize your content so you get the most out of your posts.

The headline has to work!

The headline is one of the most important factors, when it comes to writing blogposts. But generally, everything concerning content marketing , otherwise you will experience that no one clicks at your posts! 

Only 2/10 read more than your headline

The statistics above makes it obvious. Headlines are in focus at the moment – and therefore it is important to have a good and catchy one! The big media giants want us to we click on articles more than before.

Unfortunately, this has also created a culture of click- baiting, which figuratively means that we write headlines in order to click, without always focusing on the quality.

Good examples

• 5 reasons to drink wine every day (without exaggerating)
• 5 reasons why you do not lose weight – what to do about it?
• Therefore, does the juice therapy not work

Keep it ethically - you can easily get the strategy to make sense. The worst thing you can do is to bet everything on getting more clicks and forget to check if your article fits in with the title!

Tools

There are many options when finding the best possible headline for your article. If you look in the previous section, we have already circled around some of these options. Among other Buzz Sumo, Google Trends and Keyword Planner.

Let's just take a few more!

If you write in English, you can use a headline analyzer and see how your headline performs. Of course you can also use it in English and translate into Danish on your own.

Let’s test it.

It is difficult to get more than 70, but you can keep on trying unlimited – maybe you’ll find a headline, which is really good and catchy!

This tool analyzes how well your headline will perform – especially on the social media. Basically, it analyzes the use of words and how these words are composed.

If you are out of ideas, I’ll recommend you to use a headline generator.

To outsource content

If you aren’t the best at writing articles, I recommend you to consider outsourcing your content, which is much better than forcing yourself to write a post, which isn’t that good anyway. Focus on the things you do well, and leave the rest to others, who can do it better and have the time for it.

Lots of media could properly write an article for you – but quality is important, of course! Often you’ll experience that you get what you pay for. The less you pay the worse quality, I believe.

Textbroker

When I outsource my texts I use Textbroker. Often it is on English but usually you can find someone who can translate from English to Danish, if necessary. Textbroker is relatively easy to use – but you need to shape some guidelines where you explain what you want; you might explain what audience the article should apply to.

You are, as mentioned, paying for quality and a good and professional post will cost between 80-150 dollars.

For relatively new companies, which have just started, this could obviously be a big expense. You might also just want to start by outsourcing one article per month and then work your way up.

If you use my above-mentioned tools you can set up some very specific guidelines for your articles, and you can even come with specific topics and headlines in these guidelines.

#Tip: Remember that every article you write should be unique. No copy-cats here, please. So you need to be aware of the fact that your articles comply with the roles. Textbroker has a system where they check if the content is duplicated – but it is always a good idea to be sure from the start. If you choose cheap solutions, you can often experience duplicated content. 

Small tips to setup

 

• Keep your paragraphs short and your sentences shorter. The best blogs have a lot of whitespace around each section, and this is deliberate. It creates transparency across the reader - there 's nothing worse than a long text with no content.
• Support your articles with facts, data and references. When you read my articles, you'll experience that I often link to well accepted sources and cases. It is quite deliberate. It creates credibility! Furthermore, I give the reader the opportunity to delve further into the subject.
• Initiate your content with an interesting introduction so that you maintain the reader and then exit your content with the possibility of interaction with your readers. No one knows everything - if you offer others to add their experiences to your post – you both get wiser.

1. Create an audience

The hardest part, when it comes to content marketing, is to create an audience. You need an audience you can apply to. 80% of all bloggers give up because nothing happens on their blogs. You need to be patient, but yet again; you can optimize your content by using small hacks.

Social media

Suppose I want to know what social media I have to be present at, then I would start to analyze my competitors. In this context I would use Buzz Sumo again, and this time enter Quick sprout, one of the world's most renowned marketing blogs, which is run by Neil Patel.

Now it is seen what social media are the most used ones. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the largest social media in terms of divisions.

Then I would spend 2 minutes to compare with what social media is the most popular geographically, specifically in Denmark since this is where I want to write my posts.

I also have a tool installed in my chrome browser called Similar Web. It can be used to check how much traffic a website gets from the various media.

It is a very simple tool, which gives a good overview of what social media provides the most traffic. Furthermore, this also gives an idea of where it would make sense to advertise. Again - these tools – provide an incredible insight into what works in many areas and not just one specific area.

Use others' audience / target groups

A good tactic is to exploit other websites’ social media. Be sure to mention the big industrialists, software companies and educational sources. Once you have written your blog post, you can write them an email:

Hello Trendsonline 

I have just written a post about content marketing, and because I find so much inspiration in your media, I have chosen to link to you.

Find my post here: (Insert link)

You are very welcomed to link back or share it via your channels. I just wanted to give a little social karma on, as i have followed your site for a long time.

Sincerely

Micky Weis

It doesn’t always work but 8/10 wants to share my posts on their media, and the traffic can be really good for you and your site, and if you're a bit crafty, you can quickly get these new users to follow you on social media or signing -up for your newsletter!

Email list

You must leave now! An email list is your most powerful tool to sell more online. We have seen a shift in how we sell things online. Previously, it was only through ads and pushy sales statistics we could sell our products, and it was like an one -way communication.

Today things are different!

Here comes your email list in as a very important element - especially since it is the most personal channel.

Get more email sign-ups

It is very simple to send an email today compared to previously. There is a myriad of different e-mail clients. I use personally Mailchimp because I think it works perfectly. (Mailchimp is where you send out your emails and make the design part).

To get more people to sign up for the newsletter you can use the so-called e-mail boxes. You can see them here on my website both at the top and at the bottom of each post and sides.

If you're using WordPress, there are a lot of different plugins you can use.

SumoMe is, what I call, a very delicious App for new bloggers or companies. It is in fact free when you do not need their pro features and you can even connect it to your Mailchimp account so the new sign-ups come directly to you - and is ready to receive your newsletter.

Another extremely important detail about SumoMe is that the app works very well on mobile devices. Unfortunately, I still experience websites with these email-popups – and they do not work well.

Tips for email signups

• There are lots of plugins. I highly recommend SumoMe and Bloom to WordPress. Both very simple to work with, and even though Bloom is a payment module it doesn’t cost that much.
• Play on emotions and interests. No one wants to receive product-related news. For example, Sarah's readers want to receive free training tips and recipes, but they wont sign up if they are told directly: "Buy my magazine" - test, test and test.
• Make sure that they can be clicked away again, it's perfectly okay that people will not sign up, do not force them to. Make it possible to remove your sign-up boxes for the readers. Think constantly about the mind of the, if it is annoying to you, it's probably also annoying for your users.
• If you have many visitors, you might consider making a free PDF book with your 10 best tips. People should then sign up to receive your PDF book by entering their e-mails. A win / win for both, and widely used in the United States. Remember of course to make sure that you send out newsletters, so people do not feel exploited.

1. Promote

The last thing I want to tell you about is promotion. Do you have a budget or do you have time for promoting your content? You should have since you must spend more time on promoting than on writing for traffic in the beginning.

Let’s have a look on the various options.

Facebook advertising

Do you have a relatively small budget? Then start by advertising on Facebook. The reason I am recommending Facebook is due to their huge amount of data. Facebook has created an ad system that can segment far better than most. This also means that you can target a very specific audience.

Step-by-step guide

• Start by creating a Facebook site. Then create your first campaign via Power Editor. When creating a campaign, you have to be aware of the goal – the so called objective. In this context, I would like to have more clicks ( visitors) to my website.

• Once you've created the campaign you need to create the audience. You do this by creating what is called an ad-set. Here you can define your target audience and choose on which devices you want your ads to appear. For example, if you have not optimized your site on mobile devices, it would be foolish to draw traffic that way.

• There are lots of different audiences you can turn to. I am working on a guide for Facebook marketing where I will review all of these, as well as advantages and the down sides.

• Usually I always recommend to market against visitors to your website (custom audiences), fans of your page , your email list (which you can upload to Facebook) or a segment called look-a-like which find similar users based on the above-mentioned target groups.

In the end you are getting to the creative part. Namely ads. This is where you need to be creative.

I usually always recommend people to have 10-15 ads for each audience (ad-set) . That way you can test different ads against each other.

Guest blog

To establish yourself as a brand or when wanting to create a hype about a new product guest blogging can have a huge value. For example, if you would like to launch a new tech product such as a new antivirus program you can go to smaller tech blogs.

For them you can write about a solution for users such as " 5 tips to make your computer faster " – then you can include your new product without seeming too pushy.

I have previously written about guest blogging as you can find in this post - otherwise you also read this ultimate guide. I highly recommend you to do that, especially if you want to use the strategy as a regular part of your promotional strategy

Use 70% of your time to promote and brand your content and use 30% to write it.

Small tips for promotion 

• In the beginning everything seems hard - use all the little tricks such as getting your friends and family to share your posts, and use the network to get the snowball rolling. No one experiences millions of visitors from day one!
• You need to observe the posts you write – in the beginning you might only write a few a week. It is not realistic to write five of these kinds of posts every week, but it is possible to write one per week, and then combine it with shorter articles.
• If you write about other products in your blog posts, you may want to contact these companies and hear whether they will share it through their channels, it means a lot to you, but it is a relatively easy thing for the big companies to do – it takes 2 minutes for them. Remember to use all the good tricks. (Now I can for example allow myself to write to Trendsonline, Rune Jensen, Slikhaar and many others due to this post – that is smart – right?)

Conclusion

Wow, I hope you made it all the way through!

That is all for me this time guys! I sincerely hope this post could give you an idea of what content marketing is - at least for the blog-related part. Content marketing could just as well be a video and so much more.

What is your best experience with content marketing – did I forget anything?