It’s the question that plagues anyone who has ever published anything online: If a blogger has no followers, do they really make a sound?
Okay, so that’s a bit of a mixed metaphor, but you get the idea. Everyone who has a blog wants people to see it.
One of the most important aspects of any content strategy is building influencer relationships. Partnering with those people who have a strong following and high levels of influence in your industry can help get your ideas and your brand in front of the right people and help your business grow.
We hear a lot about the importance of engagement with content. Even the best content in the world isn’t going to help you meet your goals if it isn’t engaging — that is, if it doesn’t get your audience to actually stop and take notice of what you’re offering, and take action, it’s not going to do much to move your business forward.
Once only used on Twitter to help users find and participate in Twitter conversations, hashtags have become a ubiquitous part of life — even being used (to the chagrin of many) in actual face-to-face conversation. However you might feel about hashtags, though, they are here to stay and are an important part of a successful social marketing campaign.
By now, you’ve hopefully realized that in order for your business to be successful in content marketing, you need to have a strategy. Content is no longer something that you can think about occasionally with a blog or social post now and then. It deserves a much more focused effort.
You’ve heard it a million times: Content is king. You know you need to produce blogs, social media posts, videos, etc., but you are struggling to get it done.
If a lack of time or knowledge was keeping you from getting other important business tasks done, like payroll or taxes, you would hire some outside help.
Sometimes negative responses are inevitable: You write a blog post based on your extensive research, and hit publish, thinking that it’s going to be exactly what your audience wants to read. And at first, the responses are positive, mostly kudos and thanks and a few thoughtful questions that spark discussion.
We’ve all seen them as we scroll through our Facebook newsfeeds: Posts promising to shock and amaze us. You know the posts we’re talking about, the ones that are clearly designed to entice you to click, but rarely deliver on the amazement they promise.
Undoubtedly, blogger outreach is a key part of your content marketing strategy — and potentially a very frustrating exercise. Bloggers are often some of the most important influencers in your industry, and strong relationships can help extend the reach of your content and improve your visibility among your audience.
Backlinks are the foundation of any strong SEO strategy. The more high-quality sites that link to your site, the higher you rank in search results, and the more traffic you see to your site.
Building backlinks isn’t always easy, though, and some of the techniques that were popular even a few years ago (like buying links) are little more than an express lane to Google penalty land.
