20 ways to make your content marketing strategy work harder for you

You’ve probably heard the expression ‘content is king’. It’s never been more true than today, when the Internet is so dependent on content, content, content.

If you write blogs and articles on your own website or blogsite, or as a guest author, you are doing what’s called ‘content marketing’. Here are 20 ideas to make your content marketing work harder for you. In no particular order:

1. Identify the keywords you want to be found for, e.g. using Google’s keyword tool
2. Join Ezine Articles and apply for Diamond status as soon as you’re entitled to
3. Use your desired keywords in the article heading, summary, body copy, sub-headings and resource box (the article is your ‘give’ the resource box is your ‘take’)
4. Write compelling titles e.g. inspired by Cosmo Online (!) but adapted to your own topic area/s
5. Share links to your articles all over your social media platforms, and get your friends/fans/followers to share them too (the more views your articles get, the higher they are ranked)

6. Search Technorati and Google blog search for other highly ranked blogs on your subject area/s
7. Add useful (non-salesy) comments on other people’s blogs (with a link back to your site) and/or offer to write them a guest post
8. Offer contributions to major blogs such as the Huffington Post – they are always looking for fresh, quality content and it’s a great way to raise your profile, demonstrate your expertise and get inbound links (which help your search engine ranking)
9. Also consider writing for newsletters such as Fresh Business Thinking  (UK)
10. Join MyBlogGuest $20pm and offer unique content to highly ranked bidders there (you can also source exclusive content this way at no cost in return for a link to the author)
11. Sign up to bloggerlinkup.com (free) to receive emails on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays that aim to match up guest bloggers and blogs
12. Add links on your own blog to your guest articles elsewhere
13. Get your own blog listed on Technorati
14. Encourage and reply to comments on your own blog
15. Add sharing buttons on your own blog posts and other ‘added value’ shareable web pages e.g. AddThis.com or ShareThis.com
16. Add a ‘Similar stories/Related posts’ plugin on your own blog, to encourage stickability
17. Set up external blog/s for a particular keyphrase
18. Check your Analytics to see what’s working, and continually modify, modify, modify
19. Set up Alerts for your blog titles to see when your content has been used elsewhere
20. Repurpose your unique content in the form of newsletters, ebooks and/or printed books

Admittedly, I don’t even manage to do all of this myself. But even if you take just some new actions, it is sure to be useful. Anyway, I hope that helps and wish you luck with your content marketing. Let me know how you get on (or if you have any other suggestions).

Edited to add:

As with all marketing, you need to decide your objectives before you start, so you can measure the results you achieve. For example:

• If you want to improve your Google ranking, search your key terms from time to time
• If you want to get more inbound links to your website (which in turn improves your ranking), use backlink checkers such as Backlinkwatch
• If you want to drive more traffic to your website, your Analytics will show how successful you are
• If you want to grow your network reach, monitor your likes, shares and subscribers
• If you want to increase your level of engagement, impact and influence, count the comments that your blogs and articles attract
• If you just want to demonstrate your expertise and have fun, enjoy!