Content Marketing

• Overview

• Conversion

• 300%

• RSS

• Rent Or Own

• Summary

  STEU

 Overview

November,  2024

To establish a content marketing plan means understaning your existing workflow to produce content, and then setting a gaol for results you want to achive in a new content publishing camaign. 

Content marketing is geared to bring more people to your website where your content will engage them so that they take some degree of action, which you can see, or measure, in your anlaytics.

Your plan organizes production of types of specific which relies on goal(s) of s new content marketing campaign. Your content distribution must be sustainable to see measurable results.

 Visitor Conversion

The function of content is to engage website visitors to they take and action. That action is the conversion. The method of the “action” they take is the design of your content marketing plan.

Another way of visualizing this process is as a funnel that. you design. You will find many educational articles and videos on how to design a “sales funnel”.

"50% of all homes in the U.S. are podcast fans, and 112 million people (40% of the U.S. population) have enjoyed a podcast (up from 36% last year). Sixty-seven million people listen to podcasts at least every month, and 42 million listen to podcasts weekly."
Source: ShareThis

 300%

There is only one measurement for content marketing and that is seeing improved visitor engagement in your analytics.

It could be that a new visitor becomes a subscriber. Or, a visitor watches a video or emails you a question. Or, of course, the holy grail - some one makes a purchase at your site. Engagement is some level of activity on your page(s) in engagement.

Internet surfers are swimming in a sea of content on the web. Ever since Google decreed that content is king, content marketers have been churning it out like their jobs depended on it. Some of it is stuffed with value and oozing with insight yet the vast majority is worthless fluff.

As Malcolm Gladwell said in his insightful book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. What hour is your content marketing on?

A. Make A Plan And Keep It

Lay out a plan for yourself that you know you can accomplish. Maybe that plan comes down to writing one article a week. Block off a couple hours in your schedule every Tuesday to focus your attention on this task. In your mind, make this time as important as a client meeting. As the weeks pile up, you'll slowly foster that habit as it becomes ingrained in you.

Your loyal readers will know to expect an article from you every Tuesday and show up on your doorstep eager for the next installment. If you have the chance to write two or three times during the week, that is simply icing on the cake. Regardless, always focus on the quality of the writing and make sure the article is well researched. If you have to nibble on it throughout the week, one great piece of content will always overshadow three hastily thrown together articles.

B. Step Out Of The Herd

Before you begin writing any article, take a step back and ask yourself, “why would I read this - or would I?”

This should show you the extremely limited window you have to capture that reader's attention. Your headline is critical in selling your content. Is it addressing a need? Is it invoking a reaction? The headline is everything; with the zip of a glance you are going to capture that quick attention span.

Getting the reader into the content is only half the battle. Now you have to keep them engaged and keep those eyes moving down the page. Tell a personal story to make that connection with your reader, construct a narrative where the reader has to find out how it ends, buck the status quo to kick up some controversy or thumb your nose at a conventional way of thinking.

C. Make Connections

Be sure you are using the optimized times to distribute your content. For example, most blog posts are read in the morning before 10 AM. Don’t just flush your sweat equity content into the social media tubes. Release it with perfect timing.

Your 300% return arrives when you create one piece of content and distribute it at least three times. As an example. you create a short article or video. You then place that on a blog that links to your website page, in a social media channel with a link to your website page, and thirdly in your RSS feed. As always, don’t forget to SEO the content.

  RSS

RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is a web feed format that allows users to receive updates from websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. This technology enables users to aggregate content from multiple sources into a single interface, often referred to as an RSS reader or aggregator. Some of the readers are free and others have a fee.

You can create your own RSS feed by establishing a RSS feed file and publishing it in your website files. Or, you can pay a service to host your RSS account. One example is RSS.com.

I asked AI for a list of RSS readers and below are some of those results.

• Feedly: A web-based RSS reader with a clean and simple interface, offering a free plan that lets you follow up to 100 sources.

• NewsBlur: A free RSS reader that lets you subscribe to up to 64 different feeds, read full-text content, and save stories to read or access in the future.

• Inoreader: A free RSS reader that lets you follow up to 150 websites, categorize and organize your feeds into folders or tags, and offers seamless compatibility across various devices and operating systems.

• Feeder: A free RSS reader that lets you follow up to 200 feeds, offering a straightforward and efficient RSS reading experience.

• Vivaldi: A browser that integrates RSS feeds, offering efficient tools for managing and organizing your RSS feeds, and cross-platform compatibility.

• Feedreader Online: A free, web-based RSS feed aggregator that lets you read your content with ease, offering advanced filtering and different viewing modes.

• Good News: A free RSS reader that comes with 12 different visual styles, offering a personalized news stream.

• FreshRSS: A free, self-hosted RSS feed aggregator that offers powerful filtering and saved queries.

• Feedbro: A free Chrome extension that functions as an in-browser RSS reader, offering powerful filtering and a fully functional interface.

• NetNewsWire: A free, open-source RSS reader that offers a great set of features, including AI-powered features like article summarization and content filtering.

Typical when you here RSS today you think of podcasts. But RSS has been used for decades to distribute articles. In the footer of this web page is a link to my RSS feed showing my website pages. RSS is your powerful publish tool - I hope that you use it in your marketing. This is link to test RSS feed once you publish it.

Three characteristics of an RSS

Content Delivery Method
RSS feeds provide a way for websites to distribute frequently updated information such as news articles, blog posts, and podcast episodes without requiring users to visit each site individually.

XML Format
RSS is based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which structures the data in a way that can be easily read by computers. Each RSS feed contains metadata about the content, including titles, publication dates, and links to the full articles.

Real-Time Updates
When your publish new content on your site website, add it to your RSS feed file.

If you have an account where you pay to have them admin your RSS, like RSS.com, the corresponding RSS feed is updated automatically. Anyone on the internet can can subscribe to any RSS feed, including yours, through a RSS reader. By the way RSS readers automatically check feeds you have added to your account for new content.

The screen shot below is an actual RSS feed, a XML file, that you can create and edit in any text editor software. Every <item></item> is conisders a post. Each post has a title and description and link. You can add more content to a post, there are many ways to design a RSS feed file.

The screen shot below is old older RSS feed of mine. You see it includes a channel on iTunes. If you want some help setting up your feed in iTunes send me an email.

A more simple RSS apporach is skipping iTunes and just publishing it with intent of being picked up by RSS readers. This is link to my current RSS feed, you are welcome to add it in your reader.

 Rent Or Own 

Content marketing is a significant effort to time and money. It’s worth remembering that you have two choices with your content and channels: rent or own.

You own your website.

You do not own social media or other media channels.

I encourage clients to make the website a hub, thus making all the social media channels link back to the hub.

A dear friend as hundreds of followers in YouTube channel. But, no way to get them to visit his website. A simple fix for that is going back to all the YouTube posts and adding his website link into the text describing the video.

But, what happens if YouTube shuts off his channel? Nothing, he is left with nothing.

As business owners we all strive to be visible in high trafficked websites - channels - like YouTube. At the same time, have a strategy to get viewers in your channels to visit your website.

This is the golden nugget in content marketing: converting a website visitor into a subscriber or paying customer. The Tools is using Call To Action methods that I talk about in online marketing.

Lastly, SearchEngineJournal is reporting, "social media networks drive 0.8% – 12.2% of a website’s traffic, with news and informational websites receiving the most social media traffic.”

That info makes it meaningful to give your website visitors at method to share your content with friends and family. it’s easy to place content sharing buttons on your website, which should be a component of your content marketing plan. There are several services out there and I am currently using ShareThis.

 Summary

My intention is that you learned something to benefit your business website operations and online marketing knowledge with this article. If this content was not helpful to you, send me an email and tell me.

Steu Mann