5 Content Ideas to Help Boost Your Rankings
Regardless of what business you’re in, you have competition online. Therefore, you need strategies to draw eyes to what you offer and bring in new customers. Content marketing is one of the best ways to attract new customers, but the competition is intense and destined to grow. There’s already a glut of blog posts and videos out there. When you add another one, it becomes another fish in a sea of content. You need content marketing ideas to help boost your rankings and distinguish you from the pack. The quality of your content matters, but so does the type of content you offer. If you’re ready to attract more ideas to your content and your business, try these five less common, but effective, forms of content marketing.
Infographics
Infographics are a feast for the eyes. They tell visual stories and convey information in a way that engages the eyes and both sides of the brain. The information customers glean from infographics is more memorable than reading the same information in an article, and the infographic format allows you to make your content succinct and to the point. Because infographics tell a visual story, people are more likely to share them on social media than they are an article or blog post. Studies also show that the brain favors visuals over text. All of this means you should use them to educate, tell your story, and build your brand. The cool thing about creating an infographic is that you don’t even have to come up with a new topic. You can just repurpose old content to create an infographic. There are free infographic services you can use such as Canva. Not all of Canva’s infographic templates are free, however, but the ones that are free are still pretty cool.
Quizzes and Surveys
Articles and videos are all over the internet. What you see less of are quizzes and surveys.
How can quizzes help you find customers and build your brand? Everyone likes to test their knowledge and you can include quiz questions that will help build your brand. If you’re marketing a nutritional supplement, post a quiz about healthy eating habits or test your audience’s knowledge of vitamins. You’ll gain valuable information about your customers’ knowledge and that will help you better target and engage them in the future. Most of the information you receive from your customers will be unique. And unique content is one of the main ingredients needed to achieve higher rankings in search engine results.
Another bonus: Quizzes capture more engagement than dry articles do because readers actively participate. It takes time to complete a quiz, so it increases time on your site. From the quiz, you can direct them to articles that give more information about the items covered in the quiz. Plus, you can ask for an email to get their score. Your quizzes can also make product recommendations based on how they answered the quiz. Sounds like an excellent marketing strategy, doesn’t it? Don’t miss out.
Surveys also help you peak into your customer’s mindset. To get the most out of a survey, you should focus your questions on uncovering any pain points or frustrations your customer might have. You can find out where your competitors’ content falls short and you can then fill in those gaps by addressing your audience’s concerns and needs.
SlideShare Presentations
How about designing a presentation about your products using PowerPoint or Keynote and then share them on SlideShare? This is another underutilized but effective tactic for educating and gaining customers. Make sure your presentation is visually exciting and educates and entertains your customers Then, use it to build your brand and get email subscribers. On the last slide of the presentation, offer something free for an email address and watch your email list grow.
The key is not to skimp on quality. Make sure your presentation stands out with strong graphics and easy-to-read text. Streamline the presentation and don’t include too much text or crowd too much text onto a slide. Keep it concise and use lots of action words and graphics to convey points. You can even take the high points from a blog post and use them for a SlideShare presentation.
Free Apps
Here’s a content marketing tactic not many people or companies are using – free apps. You can pay someone to design an app that’s relevant to what your company does. Maybe you want to include discussion board for your site so your customers can interact with each other. They can offer advice, ask questions or share information about your products or services. In turn, this strategy can also help you boost your site’s rankings since your customers are creating content for you for free.
No matter the type of app you create, you can let your customers download the app for free, while include advertising for your products or other relevant products on the app. Your customers will appreciate the fact that your app is free, and you’ll be thankful for the extra business it brings in.
Webinars
People like to learn, and webinars are a great way to do that. Webinars are a great way to reach new customers and expand your customer base. This format also offers lots of opportunity to show your company’s knowledge on a particular subject. Companies are increasingly incorporating webinars into their content marketing strategy year over year. To make a webinar, draw from previous blog posts and other educational materials you already have on hand. If you create the webinar from scratch, repurpose the content you create as blog posts, SlideShare presentations, videos and more.
The Bottom Line
Do what your competitors aren’t doing. Most are marketing through traditional blog posts, video, and on social media channels. Distinguish your company from the pack by venturing into less used content marketing media like slide presentations, webinars, quizzes, infographics, and apps. Content marketing is an effective way to improve SEO too. A well-designed quiz or infographic are just a few ideas to help boost your rankings, increase traffic and strengthen your brand. If your business doesn’t have an active content marketing campaign that uses these tactics, what are you waiting for?