This article is a list of lessons learned from Quick Sprout as we’ve grown our blog. These 10 tips are how we stay up-to-date on marketing trends, make sure you have the best content for your visitors and continuously improve our success.
The “quicksprout com the advanced guide to content marketing” is a blog that has an extensive list of 35 lessons learned from successful content marketers. The article includes quotes, statistics, and case studies.
Although not every company will be required to tackle a particular issue as part of their content marketing, the most of them will.
You may usually find techniques to improve the effectiveness of your existing or future content marketing.
Studying other individuals who have effectively utilized content marketing to develop their own or their clients’ businesses is one approach to do this.
There are two schools of thinking on the subject:
Examine firms that are comparable to yours and try to replicate their tactics. Alternatively, research organizations that aren’t yours and adapt their strategies to your niche.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
You’ll need a comprehensive understanding of content marketing as a whole, and to do so, you’ll need to look at a range of instances.
For example, you should research how various organizations employ content marketing for various goals.
According to a recent survey, content marketing’s top three priorities are:
- generating leads
- leadership in thinking
- brand recognition
Each of these three basic objectives may be accomplished in a variety of ways.
Some may come readily to you, while others will not make sense until you see how others have done it.
The difficulty is that you can’t simply choose any firm to research since most don’t comprehend what you’re looking for.
According to another study, just 30% of B2B marketers believe their firm is successfully using content marketing.
Although this is a good proportion, it also indicates that a lot of bad material is being generated at the same time.
You should avoid it since there isn’t anything to learn from it.
Case studies are useful in this situation. Typically, only companies with anything to brag about publish public case studies.
I’ve compiled a list of some of the most compelling case studies I’ve come across that highlight key features of content marketing.
I’ll break down 12 key takeaways from five case studies to show you how to apply them to your content marketing efforts.
Some will serve as helpful refreshers, while others will be completely new to you. Most marketers, I believe, will be able to take away at least a few useful lessons from these case studies.
After we go through the case studies in detail, I’ll offer you 23 more lessons that I’ve learned over the years of content marketing and testing.
Let’s get this party started.
PTC employed content marketing to grow from zero to 100,000 monthly visitors.
(This is the original case study.)
Crossing the 100,000-visitor-per-month mark has always been a major objective for me.
If you can reach to that point, you can expand almost any kind of company indefinitely.
This content marketing campaign was more about brand recognition than anything else.
PTC aimed to raise awareness for their new product introduction in a congested market, with the secondary objective of generating first sales.
The most popular goods aren’t always fresh new innovations. You are unlikely to ever sell one.
You may, however, market creative items that outperform the competition. Breaking into a crowded market will be your biggest hurdle.
You may be able to learn something from this case study.
A fast overview: I won’t go into great detail, but let me give you a basic breakdown of what PTC is all about.
It’s a massive software corporation that sells software to other businesses in a wide range of high-tech fields.
First, they decided to use content marketing to raise awareness of a new product called Creo that was due to be released.
Creo is a design program that addresses many of the issues that other CAD programs encounter.
It is, without a question, a high-quality product, which is where you should start.
Lesson 1: Outsourcing content marketing may be beneficial.
One of the reasons businesses are hesitant to spend heavily in content marketing is because they feel it will detract from their current marketing efforts.
They feel that their staff should devote time to writing and marketing blog content.
It’s understandable that making such a commitment is difficult when most people are already overworked.
Furthermore, the majority of workers have no idea how to make effective, results-oriented articles.
Companies who do attempt content marketing almost often find it ineffective.
Outsourcing your content marketing makes sense for two reasons:
- You lack the personnel to carry out a content strategy.
- You don’t have the skills to create or implement a content strategy.
Lesson #2 – Be aware of your content marketing objectives.
Content marketing may help you achieve a variety of objectives.
What sort of content you generate and your entire content strategy will be influenced by the real objectives you’re attempting to achieve.
As an example, consider the corporation PTC. PTC’s major purpose was stated clearly from the beginning:
The goal is to generate excitement and launch the new Creo product (in the next 8-9 months).
Another key reason was that their target demographic had never heard of Creo at the time.
You may be successful authoring material such as product tutorials if you start a blog for a popular product (e.g., Canva’s design school).
Tutorials won’t attract much attention if you don’t have a product yet. Instead, you’ll have to educate the market in order to provide value.
You may direct attention toward a product launch as you gain greater trust.
Goals determine not just what sort of material to create, but also how much to create.
Because there was only so much time before the launch, Robert and Joe planned their editorial schedule aggressively. They averaged one post every day (although the posts were on the shorter side).
Lesson #2b – Objectives might shift.
Your content marketing strategy should evolve and expand in tandem with your company.
They changed their focus after the initial introduction to increasing sales and market share.
Today, if you visit the Creo blog, you’ll notice a new style of content:
Now that Creo is well-known (and numerous versions have been launched), material may include product lessons demonstrating how Creo differs from its rivals.
PTC would have ended the blog following the product launch if they hadn’t re-evaluated their aims.
Instead, they were able to maintain the blog’s growth and reach 100,000 monthly readers in a somewhat “unsexy” sector.
Over 70% of individuals who come to PTC for the first time are prospective leads.
Case Study #2: Using content marketing to increase income to $100,000 per month
(This is the original case study.)
Groove is a good place to start if you ever want to examine a current example of a company expanding utilizing content marketing (also check out my 0 to $100,000 case study blogs).
When Groove launched its content marketing, they were far from a failing business, but they still had a long way to go to reach their target of $100,000 in monthly revenue:
If you’re unfamiliar with Groove, they provide help-desk software that requires customers to pay a monthly membership fee.
They’ve significantly exceeded their initial target since they began blogging in 2013, demonstrating the impact content marketing can have on sales:
Lesson #3: Content marketing isn’t necessarily a gradual process.
When I write about content marketing, one of the things I always make sure to convey is that results generally take time.
You won’t attract tens of thousands of readers overnight, but getting traction doesn’t have to take months.
Groove was one of the few significant exceptions to the rule that a blog should expand at its own pace.
They got over 100 comments on the very first post they published:
You may look at the dates on these comments to see when they were made, although the most of them were made when it was initially published.
It wasn’t just any old person. Gary Vaynerchuk even added his two cents:
It’s hardly unexpected that these influencers were able to get 1,000 subscribers from a single post, given that they not only commented on it but also shared it.
These aren’t common outcomes, but they’re feasible if two factors are in place:
- A fascinating concept.
- Promotional blitz
Groove’s ability to convey the notion of a behind-the-scenes look at how they were increasing their revenue was crucial. If it’s done correctly, even seasoned marketers will be fascinated.
In the second section, they identified a large number of influential people and devised means to communicate with them.
They then wrote a well-crafted email to officially explain the concept and post:
If you want to get large results fast, you need to use content marketing methods that are better than everyone else’s.
Lesson #4: Transparency and content marketing should complement one other.
If you look at any of Groove’s blog posts from its beginning, you’ll be struck in the face by the openness (in a good way).
Groove took it a step further now that openness is increasingly widespread (thanks to marketers like Pat Flynn).
Groove doesn’t conceal much of anything, unlike other “transparent” bloggers, who just highlight their triumphs (which is still fascinating).
They include it for the reader as long as it adds value to the article.
When they conduct various tests, they reveal the outcomes of all of them, even the unsuccessful ones:
The true value comes from telling how they overcome obstacles and attained their goals.
They, of course, share that as well.
Finally, don’t be transparent just for the sake of being transparent. If it adds value to your material, be upfront.
Because Groove’s marketing efforts and experiments are frequently the emphasis, the private data behind them adds a lot of value to the material, thus it makes sense to provide it.
Decide which aspects of your company your readers are most interested in, and don’t be hesitant to discuss them.
Lesson #5 – Be actionable at all times.
In principle, content marketing should be rather easy to master. Simply make information that is as useful as possible.
Of course, in fact, it’s more difficult than that since there are several approaches.
There are a lot of aspects that go into creating good information, but none is more vital than its capacity to be actionable.
You will make your material highly useful to your readers if you can persuade them to take action and succeed with it.
You draw devoted throngs of readers by consistently giving actionable material.
They share how they tested anything on the Groove blog whenever they have a chance.
Case Study #3: One content marketing technique yielded a thousand new email subscribers.
(This is the original case study.)
This case study is about a single content marketing method, not a whole content marketing strategy.
Vero’s Jimmy Daly employed Brian Dean’s skyscraper approach and came up with some incredible results:
- 30,000 unique visitors
- a thousand new email subscribers
- #2 Google ranking for a keyword with a lot of competition.
Most content marketers, I believe, would be delighted if they could get these types of outcomes with just one piece of content.
Lesson #6 – Quality is always the deciding factor.
The skyscraper technique’s main premise is to look at material that has a certain keyword or theme and then develop something on a much higher level from it.
You’ll obtain amazing results on a constant basis if you have high-quality content and promote it effectively.
Here’s Jimmy’s post if you’re interested in taking a peek. Judge for yourself, but I believe the quality is pretty excellent, particularly when compared to his competitors at the time.
He had the following table of contents for the post at the time, which I think is extremely clever:
I’ve previously used this table of contents as an example of how to structure a document effectively.
As an example, consider the following table of contents based on Wikipedia:
Sure, it’s still helpful, but it’s no longer of the same caliber.
When you show a reader the two distinct tables of contents, the majority of them will be underwhelmed by the second, but blown away by the excellence of the first.
If you look at his article now, you’ll see that he’s updated the table of contents to:
Even though it’s simpler, it’s still more appealing than a traditional table of contents. I believe this update was made to improve the usability of mobile readers.
The purpose was excellent, regardless of the result. Jimmy was attempting to provide material of the highest possible quality.
You’ll see incredible benefits with your content marketing if you increase the quality of your material in as many ways as possible.
Lesson #7 – Influencers may have a huge impact.
There are several methods for increasing the audience of a website (or, more precisely, a blog).
Successful blogs may be divided into two categories.
The first is a blog about grinding. They conduct all of their own advertising, discover their readers, and persuade them to visit the site.
It does the job, but it takes a long time.
The other kind is the one that appears out of nowhere and quickly becomes a hit in its niche.
They’re the ones that other well-known influencers like.
Once you’ve enlisted the help of influencers, you’ll be able to get a steady stream of high-quality visitors. You’ll have all you need to become an influencer if you have enough influencers behind you.
This is the ideal scenario; yet, unless you’re delivering something genuinely outstanding, it’s quite tough to put into practice.
It isn’t, however, an all-or-nothing scenario.
Just because an influencer isn’t discussing you all the time doesn’t imply they won’t mention you at some point.
Getting a few shares or mentions in an article from an influencer is a far more practical, yet still very powerful, strategy to develop your blog.
Jimmy’s ability to deliver the first spike of attention to his article was aided by his connections with a few key influencers.
He contacted them ahead of time, informing them of the story and asking for a brief bit of advise to include in the piece.
Alex (the principal contributing blogger) at Groove was one of the influencers:
What happens when someone is included in an article like that?
They are considerably more inclined to share and promote the content if you ask them to (at least in little ways).
Look for opportunities to engage with influencers in your field and provide them with value (in some form). That’s how you’ll begin to win their support, which will help your site expand faster.
Case Study #4: A basic technique generates 500-700 organic search traffic visits each day.
(This is the original case study.)
The previous two case studies focused on the outcomes that may be achieved with a strong content marketing strategy, but I appreciate that not everyone is ready to aspire for hundreds of thousands of monthly visits.
This case study has positive outcomes, but nothing that anybody else couldn’t accomplish as well.
Express Writers were able to obtain roughly 18,000 search visits per month to their site after implementing their content marketing strategy—a good amount, but not impossible for someone else to achieve.
They’re competing in a saturated market: selling writing.
They provide organizations with a broad range of writing services, including blog post development, press release writing, and more.
What was the game plan? Julia McCoy, one of their bloggers, put it thus way:
Four 2000-word articles each week for our own blog, plus 4-6 more pieces per week for high-authority guest blogs such as Search Engine Journal, Site Pro News, SEM Rush, and Content Marketing Institute.
As a consequence of using that technique, they were able to outrank the majority of their rivals and get constant search traffic:
Lesson #8 – Consistency is key to successful content marketing.
Unlike a handful of the other case studies we’ve looked at so far, this method isn’t particularly bold or unusual.
That is, in fact, a really excellent thing.
You can’t rely on getting viral to be successful. It’s fantastic if it occurs, but if you require it to substantially increase your site, you have other issues.
Most marketers should be continuously providing high-quality material to develop their blogs.
Every week, Express Writers produced 8-10 high-quality pieces, which resulted in these outcomes. Keep in mind that in this sector, the typical visitor has a high perceived value. A company that hires a writer on a regular basis might spend thousands of dollars.
They also receive roughly 700 visits every day to their content store from regular readers, new readers via search engine results, and visitors from other areas (main sales page).
They are earning strong, steady, and recurring income with a fair conversion rate.
Lesson #9 – Put what you teach into practice.
In addition to boosting visitors to their website, the organization reaped another significant advantage from their content marketing strategy: evidence of success.
This is significant since Express Writers provides article production services, mostly to assist customers enhance their own traffic.
A prospective customer could come across your blog, see that you know what you’re doing, and decide to hire you based on that impression.
That is enormous.
More importantly, I believe you should be able to show to yourself that your product works.
You will never use low-cost sales tactics to sell things if you do this; you will sincerely think (and have the evidence to back it up) that your product or service is worthwhile.
It’s simple for this group of authors to market their material and say that it’s some of the finest available since it achieves the outcomes they claim.
If you’re telling leads or consumers to do or purchase anything, make sure you do it first. It will give your message a sense of authority and persuasion.
Case Study #5: Using an image-based content marketing strategy to boost total organic traffic by 175%
(This is the original case study.)
This fifth case study is another one that Brian Dean has given, but this time with his own outcomes.
In order to obtain more backlinks for a page and boost its search engine results, he employed a method called guestographics, which he created.
Originally, he published an article regarding on-page SEO.
This was a high-quality piece, as is every other one he publishes.
There was some search traffic, but not quite as much as Brian had planned. As a result of using this strategy, he was able to boost organic search traffic by 175.59%.
It’s not bad. It would have also helped his ranks for other pieces on his site that were connected.
The strategy is straightforward:
- Make a fantastic infographic.
- Make a list of websites that cover the subject you’ve chosen.
- Send a link to your infographic to them.
- If they agree to put it on their site, offer to create a personalized intro for them.
Lesson #10 – Using different forms of material allows you to reach a wider audience.
We’ve mostly looked at how normal blog posts are utilized in content marketing so far.
Yes, they may account for the majority of the material you create, but there are several more forms of content you may create.
There are superior types of material than ordinary blog postings for certain messages.
Brian prepared an infographic in this instance.
Then he put it together with his original article.
He was able to re-promote his content and enhance its ranks as a result of this. He was able to take the article’s original content and rewrite it in a more digestible way, which helps his readers.
The Conclusion from this case study is that you should consider two things anytime you develop content:
- What is the most effective method to approach this subject? (to your audience)
- Is it possible to make this information available in numerous formats to improve the reading experience?
If you answered yes to the second question, you may be more inventive with your repurposing to generate more promotional chances.
You may also expose your material to a new audience that you would not otherwise reach by developing other types of content.
Lesson #11 – Without marketing, great material is worthless.
All content need promotion, which is one of the most important parts of effective content marketing that you should have driven into your mind until it’s a habit.
Only if you have a huge audience can your audience effectively market your material for you by sharing it.
Aside from that, there’s no purpose in developing material if it doesn’t reach new readers.
Brian was able to contact additional sites that didn’t previously connect to him and get them to link to his post after he made the infographic. Take a peek at his referring domains graph immediately after that:
That’s a lot of fresh backlinks, and they’re the cause for his increased organic traffic.
Lesson #12 – Simple marketing may be effective.
You may imagine that popular blogs use some kind of hidden marketing strategy since you see them all the time.
However, the fact is that marketing is all about making the right connections with the right people.
In the vast majority of situations, there is nothing mysterious or sophisticated going on.
Brian published the basic email template he used to persuade website owners to display his infographic on their sites and link to him in his case study:
Couldn’t you come up with anything like that?
One of the concepts we’ve previously discussed—consistency—is the difference between someone like Brian and a lousy marketer.
He doesn’t send these items to ten or twenty website owners; he distributes them to hundreds.
He doesn’t simply do it for one of his postings; he does it for each and every one of his posts.
Backlinks and the search traffic that comes with them are obtained via this kind of constant advertising.
Don’t let the fact that the content marketing approach seems to be too straightforward or that you believe there must be more to it deter you from taking action.
Simple techniques are beneficial. You’ll obtain the outcomes you want if you follow them regularly and enhance them when you can.
Following that, I’ll give you 23 additional lessons that I’ve learnt from various case studies and extensive testing and that are as crucial to know.
I may have mentioned some of them in the case studies above, but I’ll go over them again to highlight the ones that are most important.
Lesson #13 – Quantity is more important than quality.
I like to write high-quality blogs rather than vast amounts of material, but that method won’t cut it if you’re aiming for 5 or even 10 million unique visitors each month.
All of the 20 blogs with which I collaborated prioritized quantity above quality. They made sure that no garbage was posted on their blogs, but they also had quantity objectives… For example, writing four blog entries every day.
When I gained access to all of their analytics data, I saw a strong link between the number of posts they published every day and the amount of visitors they received. The most popular blogs were those with the most material.
It has nothing to do with social media. It was all thanks to Google. Search engines accounted for 55 percent or more of the traffic for sites that produced more than four pieces of content every day.
In the graph above, there are two lines that you can see. The first demonstrates that their core user base’s traffic is growing at an annual rate of 8%, with new material being uploaded every week.
The second line shows the most popular content items that resulted in traffic surges. Because the blog provided material on a regular basis, the odds of encountering these traffic surges rose, boosting their growth rate from 8% to 10%.
Lesson #14 – Your influence has an impact on the popularity of your blog.
The majority of prominent blog proprietors are well-connected. Sure, their blogs helped them expand their network, but they were already well-connected even before they had a popular blog.
They were able to break news and increase social media traffic thanks to these ties. These bloggers used their relationships to garner as much traffic as possible, from encouraging their friends to tweet about it to having them share it on Facebook.
If you want to start a famous blog, you must improve your networking skills. You will produce more social traffic if you get to meet more powerful individuals.
Hire prominent writers (lesson #15).
None of the blogs with which I collaborated were “one-man” performances. It’s just impossible to be that well-known with only one author. One individual cannot possibly create 10 or even 4 high-quality blog entries every day.
As a result, you’ll need to hire additional writers to create more material. When recruiting authors, consider not just their writing talent but also their influence.
Bigger blogs like to hire well-known individuals. I recruited MG Siegler when I founded Pronet Advertising because he was a top Digg user, which helped me produce more visitors.
Later on, TechCrunch recruited MG, and it didn’t hurt that he had a lot of social influence, which can be used to increase traffic. As a result, he is one of the most well-known tech blogs on the internet.
Lesson #16 – Edit everything, regardless of who wrote it.
You won’t know whether the author has linked to dangerous sites, published a plagiarized copy, or made remarks with which you disagree if you don’t revise a submitted copy before it goes online.
At the end of the day, the material you post on your blog is your responsibility. It doesn’t matter whether you or someone else wrote the book. It’s your responsibility to ensure that it meets your expectations and adheres to your company’s values.
Lesson #17: Trust the numbers, not your instincts.
It’s uncommon for blogs to become famous by mistake or by chance. The majority of the time, huge blogs use analytics to find out how to increase their visitors.
Author statistics are one of the most important indicators for these sites. They look at each author’s average traffic, amount of comments, and social shares per article.
They can observe which authors produce the most traffic by breaking it down at the author level. The averages are then used to determine which writers generate the most traffic each post. This is crucial because some people will write less than others, and you want to encourage those who have a better traffic-per-post ratio to write more often.
This also helps them in deciding which authors to fire. Paying a writer who can’t create traffic is the last thing you want to do.
Lesson #18 – The title is everything
Some editors devote as much effort to editing as they do to enhancing the headline’s impact. Your article will not be read if it does not have a compelling title. That’s why post titles are so important to editors.
If you want to reach a large audience, you should employ a skilled editor who concentrates on fixing other people’s entries and making sure that the blog’s headlines appeal to both users and search engines.
It’s not simple to learn or teach someone in this area; instead, search for editors who are imaginative. It’s really difficult to educate someone how to be creative, so find someone who understands what they’re doing right away.
In most circumstances, a competent editor may be found by hiring someone from the magazine industry.
Lesson #19: Acquire in order to develop
Consider purchasing additional sites to drive your development if you have the traffic and high Google authority. Years ago, GigaOM purchased The Apple Blog, which helped them significantly grow their Apple traffic.
They were able to boost their authority in the eyes of Google by combining all of their blogs — both those they established and those they bought – under one domain name, gigaom.com. This helped them raise their total traffic.
It is not necessary to spend a lot of money on purchases. For five figures or less, you may buy a blog with 50,000 or even 100,000 readers. You can do this since most of these sites aren’t profitable, so offering someone $10,000 for their blog piques their interest.
Gym Junkies was getting 170,000 monthly visitors when I acquired it for $30,000. Given that the site made $30,000 in profit per year, it’s not a terrible bargain… So, in essence, I purchased it to make a profit for a year.
Lesson #20 – While high quality does not guarantee traffic, it does increase loyalty.
You may produce excellent content, but it does not guarantee increased traffic. You may churn out a lot of bad content and yet see an increase in visitors.
In the long run, though, poor content will leave readers dissatisfied, reducing your long-term traffic. Yes, things will increase like a hockey stick in the short run, but if search engines see that people are bouncing away and no one is willing to tweet or even link to your material, your traffic will ultimately collapse.
You must think about your plan not just from the perspective of direct traffic, but also from the perspective of search engines. The amount of pages you have indexed, the number of sites linking back to you, and even the number of social shares you generate are all factors considered by Google. Google will reward you with better ranks if you have a good ratio. If you don’t, your ranks will inevitably plummet.
You must concentrate on good quality content if you want to establish a long-term blogging strategy like the big players. Quality will attract devoted readers who will share your material on social media on a regular basis, increasing your total word of mouth rate. This will help you grow both direct and referred traffic.
Lesson #21 – Aggressiveness may irritate consumers, but it seldom slows development.
If your content is fantastic, being aggressive with development techniques is typically forgiven by your viewers. With Quick Sprout, I’ve employed aggressive techniques in the past, and I’ve continued to expand. I tried everything from numerous pop-ups to content blocks. Every time I’ve done so, I’ve seen that although this technique annoys a few readers, my traffic continues to rise up and to the right.
Upworthy is another fantastic example of a blog that employs aggressive tactics. Even though they employ popups to attempt to get you to friend or like them on Facebook, their site is incredibly popular.
Now, I’m not suggesting you should be pushy, but evidence indicates that it doesn’t usually result in higher bounce rates or a loss in total traffic. Upworthy is the fastest-growing blog on the internet, and they’re not afraid to show it.
Lesson #22 – A lot of spam is created through user-generated material.
You may not be aware, but we used to have a Quicksprout forum. There were 346,299 users, 2,788 topics, and 12,731 responses on it.
Although the number of users seems to be large, almost 95 percent of them were spammers. My developer and I continued to battle these people, but they discovered new methods to register.
Fortunately, thanks to Akismet, only a small percentage of these spammers were allowed to participate. However, every now and then, a few would slip through, and Google Webmaster Tools would notify me through a notice identical to the one you see at the start of the piece.
Additionally, the number of spam comments increased dramatically. Quick Sprout used to create 1,000 or so spam comments each day, so I could have someone check through them to ensure that real comments weren’t mistakenly labelled as spam.
Now, I’m creating 50,000 to 60,000 spam comments every day, and having someone sift through them is practically impossible. This was preventing real comments on the blog from being posted.
As a result, I deactivated the forum since the traffic was little and it was causing too many Google warnings.
Lesson #23 – People are born with a tendency to be sluggish.
There’s nothing wrong with it since I’m also naturally lazy.
However, it’s difficult to attract individuals to contribute vast amounts of high-quality language to user-generated material. This resulted in an average of 327 words per forum page, which isn’t particularly helpful in terms of search results.
As I’ve previously said, Google favors sites with 2,000+ words of content on page one.
I was replying to every single topic to assist increase the word count. In addition, I hired moderators to assist me in providing high-quality answers to user inquiries.
But I couldn’t get the word count up to a reasonable level without adding a lot of fluff, which I didn’t want to do.
As a result, I was unable to build extensive user-generated material in the manner of Wikipedia. When you consider that Quick Sprout receives at least 500,000 visits in a terrible month, it’s clear that you’ll need a lot of traffic to generate a lot of high-quality user-generated content.
Lesson #24 – Infographics are really effective.
Infographics are 42.4 percent more likely to be shared than a typical blog article. They do, however, get 129 percent less comments. Furthermore, I obtain 28.3 percent fewer traffic from emails when I send out an email containing an infographic.
Regardless, infographics do well in general. You may be wondering why I would say that since the majority of the data indicates that they are doing badly.
The fact that an infographic gets 37.5 percent more backlinks than a typical blog article explains why they continue to perform effectively.
So, what exactly does it imply? Infographics get 22.6 percent less traffic than conventional blog entries in the first three months after they are published. Infographics, on the other hand, attract 35.1 percent more visitors over the course of a year.
In other words, infographics are excellent at attracting long-term visitors. They continue to create even as they age, but ordinary text-based blog postings do not.
People appreciate reading personal and contentious tales, which is lesson #25.
By far, my most popular blogs are both contentious and personal. Here are several examples:
Those three tales did very well. I got a lot of hate mail and comments in response to those pieces, and I may have been mistaken in some situations, which is great. Those pieces, however, have garnered more traffic than others I’ve written.
People assess you based on the titles of your blog entries, as I discovered. Many individuals don’t even read the substance of the message, instead relying on the title to draw Conclusions.
These sorts of content do particularly well in terms of social traffic. When compared to the second most popular article on Quick Sprout, the one on clothing garnered almost twice the amount of social shares.
This has taught me that if I want to increase my audience quickly, I need to publish provocative, personal tales. I have to be cautious not to upset anybody or cross any boundaries while doing so. In addition, I must ensure that the material remains informative.
Lesson #26 – It’s all about the timing.
I’ve experimented with publishing on various days and times throughout the years. Monday through Thursday at 8:00 a.m. PST, the winner usually emerges. This isn’t to say that 8:00 a.m. PST is the best time to publish a blog, but it is for Quick Sprout.
I’ve tried publishing on several days and times, but the 8:00 AM slot always does well. The greatest day of the week seems to be Monday, but Tuesday through Thursday aren’t far behind.
I haven’t done much testing with publishing on Saturday and Sunday, but those days tend to be low traffic days for all of my other sites, particularly in the business-to-business sector. As a result, I never publish to Quick Sprout on weekends.
The only exception is news articles.
And not just any news…mainstream news, since more people search for it, implying a higher possibility for traffic. You must actively track trends and breaking news in order to publish them as soon as possible.
Mahalo was one of the sites that used this method in the past. When they first began out, they wrote about anything that was discussed on Google Trends, which helped them get a lot of traffic.
They don’t use this method as much as they used to, as seen by the reduction in traffic in the graph. However, as you can see, it was highly successful before.
Lesson #27 – Posts rank lower than guides (but for a different reason than you think)
Guides rate higher on Quick Sprout for head keywords. This surprised me at first since they get a lot of inbound links and social shares, and they average over 30,000 words, but that’s not the case.
All of those qualities assist, but when I looked into what led them to rank for phrases like “online marketing,” I discovered that one single modification I made improved the rankings of all of the guides.
Can you figure out what changed? In the Quick Sprout sidebar, I put a link to each and every tutorial. Within 30 days, the ranks began to rise, and within three months, I saw a significant increase in the number of people searching for such instructions.
Add links to your high-quality pieces in your blog’s sidebar if you want to improve their ranks.
Lesson #28 – People are fascinated by data.
One thing stood out among all the text-based material I created for Quick Sprout. Statistics and data-rich blog pieces garnered 149% more social shares and 283 percent more backlinks.
This is understandable since postings with graphics, such as charts and graphs, get more trackbacks and social shares.
I don’t have to do much more here since many of my blog entries, like this one, begin with a lot of metrics and statistics. Instead, all I have to do now is keep up with the trend of publishing more data-driven articles.
To improve the quality of my postings, I should also consider employing a full-time statistician to dig out data for me.
One thing I haven’t done well in my postings is include enough graphs and charts. This piece, for example, includes a lot of data, and I could have used charts to make it more visual and understandable.
I’ve just become too lazy, which is something I need to address. If that fails, I can always hire someone to comb over my postings and insert charts and graphs for me.
Lesson #29: Don’t put all of your faith in the marketing department.
The first and most typical mistake is to blame everything on the marketing team. When compared to other departments within the organization, the marketing department seems to be the most natural candidate for the position. You’re not alone if your firm does this:
Content marketing, on the other hand, should not be seen as a simply marketing, journalistic, or public relations function. It should include contributions from a variety of areas, such as design, engineering, and even sales, to mention a few.
Why? Because the marketing department may not always be aware of the best kind of content to produce. Our engineering and design departments, for example, at KISSmetrics, advised the following sorts of content:
- How to track people – “How do we track people?” is one of the most often asked topics at KISSmetrics. The marketing staff is unable to produce such a post since it would need a thorough grasp of our technology.
- How does design effect conversion? – Many of our ideal customers want to improve their conversion rates. Not only is the design team more prepared to write such an article, but they can also offer design examples.
- How to defer the loading of external javascripts – many people are worried about the performance of their websites, therefore deferring the loading of external javascripts is one technique to increase the speed. Not only can an engineer explain how to do it, but he or she can also break down the code you’ll need to complete the work.
The marketing staff, as you can see from the examples above, would not be able to create all of those content pieces. As a result, having various divisions in your firm participate in your content marketing plan is critical. Here’s how you can enlist the help of other departments:
- Encourage other departments by explaining the advantages of content marketing to them, both for the firm and for themselves, such as improving their personal brand. One simple method to achieve this is to search out employees in the organization who are currently connecting with consumers, since they will be more receptive to blogging.
- Create an editorial board for all content pieces; this will serve as a source of inspiration as well as a tool to maintain brand and voice consistency across all content marketing platforms.
- Create an email alias or a Skype group for all of these people so that you can simply contact with them when an idea strikes or a concept piece is completed.
Lesson #30 – Persuade people to buy from you
You have the material, but is it effective in converting customers? Even with the best of intentions, one typical content marketing error is to put a positive spin on every article. For starters, your clients aren’t buying it. Both you and them are aware that the product or service has problems and is not suitable for everyone. Every piece of content marketing seems like a sales pitch.
You could wish to ask visitors to join in your content marketing efforts to prevent this. Jay Peak, a Vermont ski resort, achieved this by asking customers to tag the mountain in their Instagram images by saying what they like about it. The mention of Jay Peak is secondary to the consumers’ emphasis on what they like about skiing there, but the ad does an excellent job of conveying the passion without overselling the destination.
So, how do you go about doing it? You could do the following:
- Encourage people to take pictures with your product or display your logo in an unexpected manner. Nylabone encourages people to share images of their dogs using the product along with remarks, offering actual social evidence in a manner that marketing films and photos cannot.
- When you publish the submitters’ material, give them a shout-out since they’re likely to share both the content and your reaction with their friends.
- Instead of focusing on the brand, think on how you feel. Customers identify the brand with such sensations through engaging with Coke’s Happiness Tumblr blog and Chobani Greek Yogurt’s Pinterest page, which don’t always mention the items.
Make sure you’re not depending only on user-generated material. Check the origins of submitted photos or videos before publishing them, and inform consumers that any material they provide becomes the property of your organization to use as you see fit. This will assist avoid any potentially contentious or legal concerns that may arise if the campaign takes on a life of its own.
If you really want to reap the advantages of user-generated content, you should solicit (and react to) both positive and negative feedback. For many consumers, knowing that the firm cares and is ready to work with them to remedy the problem alleviates their anger or irritation, which may be the catalyst for additional angry customers to join in.
Lesson #31 – Evaluate the outcomes
Finding out which pages or campaigns have the most influence on consumers and why is the simplest approach to get meaningful content marketing information. Click-through rate, time spent on site, bounce rate, and unique visitors are all sales-oriented metrics to track. You should also consider the following:
- This is a basic measure that comes down to the amount of pages, downloads, or other raw data that consumers interacted with the most. You can figure this out using simple tools like Google Analytics.
- Where and how the material was shared on social media – platforms like Hootsuite can help you keep track of the amount of social shares and the channels via which the content was spread.
- Whether or not content turned into customers – if your visits do not convert into paying customers, your content marketing efforts are in nothing. Begin by determining who is doing what on your site, how often they interact, and how quickly they make a purchase.
Here’s an example of what our KISSmetrics blog tracks:
The content URLs are on the left, and the number of times visitors visit the blog after reading one of those URLs is at the top, as you can see in the picture above. As a result, the larger the proportion, the higher the quality of the material. If your content generates a low proportion of repeat visits, it suggests you’re posting information that people don’t want to read.
We aim to optimize our blog for repeat visitors at KISSmetrics since we know it helps build brand loyalty. Those visitors are more likely to become clients in the long term.
Lesson #32 – Don’t merely focus on generating traffic; instead, concentrate on attracting the correct audience.
Another thing I’ve learnt since starting the KISSmetrics blog is that traffic isn’t everything. Social media and content marketing are two of our most popular topics. However, there is a problem with these subjects and the kind of people that frequent them.
Although these visitors are engaged in internet marketing, just a small percentage of them purchase our goods. Why? We don’t want them since they aren’t our ideal customers. E-commerce and SaaS businesses are examples.
As a result, rather than concentrating on growing a marketing audience, we should concentrate on creating analytics-based content for our target audience. We’d probably do well even if we just gave them standard marketing tips.
Our blog editor is doing an excellent job of producing more blog pieces that are relevant to our target demographic. He is quite selective about what he posts on his blog. He also understands that switching to a new form of material the following day isn’t as simple as flipping a switch: it takes time.
If I were to start again with the KISSmetrics blog, I would concentrate on assisting SaaS and e-commerce businesses with their online marketing. This would assist our sales staff in generating more quality leads.
Instead of focusing just on increasing your blog’s traffic, concentrate on attracting the correct audience.
Lesson #33 – Keep your foot on the throttle pedal at all times.
Infographics were one of the most effective ways for us to build the KISSmetrics blog. We’ve most likely created more infographics than anybody else in the marketing industry.
It certainly paid off. It is the fundamental cause for the blog’s development, as I mentioned in this blog article.
Over the course of two years, the 47 infographics have earned 2,512,596 visits and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 different sites.
However, we made the error of slowing down on infographics.
It wasn’t that we were at a loss for what to do. Our design resources were simply moved to other projects. Cash has never been a problem for us since we are a well-funded company. We should have employed a firm or a person to create additional infographics for the site, even if it cost $5,000 or $10,000 per month.
We’re getting back into our weekly infographic-creation pattern, but if I had it to do again, I wouldn’t have slowed down in the first place.
Consider making infographics if you want to increase your site quickly. They are more likely to be shared than text-based blog postings.
Lesson #34 – Start monetizing as soon as possible.
I used to think that you should wait until your site had 100,000 visits before monetizing it. That way, you won’t be sidetracked from your goal of growing an audience.
We didn’t start generating leads from our KISSmetrics blog until we had over 200,000 views in a month. The major issue we encountered was that we discovered that some pieces of content produce higher-quality leads than others.
Webinars, for example, have a high conversion rate. We would have received this data if we had monetized early enough, and it would have helped design the blog from the start. Now we must clean up and change the sort of material we create as well as the lead generation strategies we use.
You shouldn’t try to monetise your site if you just have a few thousand monthly visits, but if you reach 10,000, you should do testing. You may then design your blog and readership in whatever manner you choose.
After the tests are completed, you may switch off your monetization, but before you do, experiment with alternative approaches to determine where you stand.
Lesson #35 – Make use of your resources (like BuzzSumo)
For marketing, I utilize a variety of different tools and applications. BuzzSumo, on the other hand, is one of my absolute favorites.
It’s fantastic!
At this point, I consider it a cornerstone that can be used in a variety of marketing situations.
And it seems that I’m not the only one.
BuzzSumo is used by big name businesses like TechRadar, TechTarget, and even Rolling Stone magazine to improve their campaigns.
And, since I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to some things, I’ve developed the practice of checking BuzzSumo every day.
As you would expect, I’ve discovered some fascinating facts along the road.
I’ll share what I learnt by monitoring BuzzSumo every day for a month in this article.
It’ll inform you without a doubt who to target as influencers.
One of BuzzSumo’s main selling features is that it enables me to do efficient influencer research.
BuzzSumo can tell you who to pursue for a guest post, brand endorsement, and other opportunities.
Here’s an example of how to put it to good use.
Enter the subject or term you’re interested in from the dashboard.
It’s “digital marketing” in my case:
“Search” is selected:
This will show you which pieces of content have gotten the most attention.
But I want to take it a step further, so I’ll go to the top and choose “Content Analysis”:
You’ll see a section named “Most Shared Domains by Network” if you scroll down a little:
This informs me of which newspapers, websites, and blogs get the most shares, indicating their influence.
I really enjoy the pie chart since it shows me how things are stacked up fast.
I’d target some of the top businesses on the list if I wanted to present a guest-posting concept, such as Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, Social Media Today, and so on.
There’s more, however.
Return to the top and choose “Influencers.”
What I get is this:
It’s a vast list of influencers with crucial criteria like page authority, domain authority, and follower count included.
In the digital marketing field, I can practically discover hundreds of influencers.
I may then contact any of them by visiting their websites or tweeting at them (BuzzSumo provides links to both).
There isn’t a more streamlined and effective technique to locate the top influencers that I can think of.
BuzzSumo is a lifesaver if influencer marketing is your bread and butter.
You may examine where your rivals’ connections come from.
The importance of backlinks cannot be overstated.
It’s a toss-up between content and links as to which is more significant.
However, I believe we can all agree that the quality and relevance of the sites connecting to you have a significant influence on your search results.
“Backlinks” is one of my favorite BuzzSumo features.
You may find out who is connecting to your rivals and from which precise pieces of content those links are coming from with a simple search.
This is how you go about doing it.
To begin, go to your dashboard and choose “Backlinks”:
Now type in the URL of the rival you’d want to investigate.
As an example, consider Kissmetrics:
Select “Search.”
Voila! I can tell where their backlinks are coming from in a flash.
Here are a few examples:
I can even go one step further by looking at the remainder of the backlinks that come from a certain website.
Take a peek at the “View [X] More Links” section:
If you see a site referring to your competition often, it’s a good sign they’ll link to you as well.
This is beneficial since it provides me with several backlink chances.
Knowing who is most likely to link to material in my business allows me to choose who I should contact and who is the best use of my time.
You can figure out which subjects are popular in your field.
Content that is evergreen is essential and serves a purpose.
Long-form evergreen compositions, in particular, appeal to me.
However, as useful as evergreen material is, it’s still critical to address current hot subjects.
This is particularly true in fast-paced domains such as journalism and politics.
Striking while the iron is hot is a guaranteed method to get your business noticed and expand your audience.
BuzzSumo, it just so happens, is ideal for discovering which subjects are hot in your business.
It just takes a brief search.
To begin, go to your dashboard and filter by the most recent date.
I normally look at information from the preceding week, but depending on your sector, a month or even 24 hours will do.
Select the filter you wish to use by clicking on it:
Enter your keyword here:
Now press the “Search” button.
I can check which subjects are hot and how many shares each piece of content has gotten in seconds:
I’m more interested in material that obtains greater interaction since people are clearly reacting positively to it.
I have no doubt that this information is now connecting with my readers.
I have a strong possibility of receiving favorable results if I make a comparable content or skyscraper it.
And trust me when I say that this beats painstakingly combing the Internet to see what’s working.
Going that path is very difficult and time consuming.
It also requires far too much guessing for my liking.
I know what’s trending and have access to various useful indicators thanks to BuzzSumo, which means I’m basing my Conclusions on solid evidence rather than a hunch.
You have the option of selecting which material formats to utilize.
This is a huge one.
Which content formats should you employ to efficiently reach your target audience?
You could always try something new and build your content strategy on guesswork.
You might also base your plan on data.
Although I believe that most great marketing efforts need some level of experimentation, I am a firm believer in using data whenever it is available.
In this scenario, BuzzSumo makes it simple to find.
This data may also be found in the “Content Analysis” section.
Look for the heading “Average Shares By Content Type.”
A list style is your best chance for digital marketing:
It’s video for “IoT” (Internet of Things):
Simply put your sector or specialty into the search box to see which style of format is most popular with your target audience.
It may be used to determine the ideal content length.
I’ve written a lot on determining the appropriate length for your material.
I’ve even written an article that details the appropriate word count for your sector.
And, to be honest, word count is one of the most hotly debated subjects in the field of content marketing.
BuzzSumo can surely steer you in the proper path if you’re not sure how lengthy your posts should be.
You’ll want to go to “Content Analysis” once again.
Then scroll down to “Average Shares By Content Length,” which is towards the bottom of the page.
Here’s what comes up when it comes to digital marketing:
I think shooting for about 3,000 words is my best option for getting the most shares.
However, this isn’t the case in every industry.
When I searched for IoT, I received the following results:
In this situation, 2,000-3,000 words is a better target.
Here’s another bizarre example: marathon running:
1,000-2,000 words would be ideal in this sector.
This example demonstrates how this functionality may be used in practically any sector.
It tells you which social media sites generate the most shares.
Another dilemma that many marketers have is which social media platforms they should concentrate their efforts on.
Should you focus your efforts on Facebook since it has the largest user base?
Is it preferable to switch to a different network?
BuzzSumo can tell you which platforms are most appropriate for your sector.
On the “Content Analysis” tab, check for “Average Shares By Network.”
Here’s what I received for the Internet of Things:
The most shares are clearly coming from Facebook, followed by LinkedIn and Twitter.
In that sequence, I’d probably want to concentrate on those networks.
For digital marketing, here’s what I got:
Twitter is the most popular social media platform for this business, followed by Facebook and LinkedIn.
You get my drift.
The only caveat is that you can only utilize these five networks since BuzzSumo doesn’t yet support Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, or other social media platforms.
However, it’s still a useful tool for determining which large networks are worth your attention.
Conclusion
Take a step back if you ever feel overwhelmed or confused while working on your content marketing strategy.
Someone has done it before, no matter what niche you’re in or what sort of company you operate.
This means you may study them, learn from them, and use what you’ve learned to conquer any barriers in your path.
I looked through 12 lessons from 5 fantastic content marketing case studies in this piece. These are principles that may be applied to almost any content marketing plan.
I also offered you 23 additional lessons that I’ve picked up over the years, giving you a total of 35 content marketing classes to study.
I realize it’s a lot, but I highly advise you to put these teachings into practice as soon as possible.
As a result, you’ll be able to achieve your objectives more quickly.
Quick Sprout is a blog that has been around since 2005. It’s one of the most popular blogs in the world, and it’s also used by many marketers to learn marketing lessons. Reference: quicksprout digital marketing.
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