Category: Content Marketing

Why You Should Repurpose Your Content

Why You Should Repurpose Your Content

nettsolutions

What is repurposing content? It’s simple: you take existing content and transform it into something new.

An in-depth blog post published a few years ago, for instance, may become the basis for a series of short videos for social media.

But why should you go to the time and effort of repurposing content? In this post, our Orange County SEO agency pros explore four key benefits.

4 Benefits of Repurposing Your Content

Get More Value Out of Old Content

Older blog posts and articles on your website may attract a tiny number of visitors each month (if any). Those pages could be used for content that has more of an impact instead.

By repurposing content, you have an opportunity to really make it count. That means:

  • Adding more keywords
  • Incorporating valuable inks
  • Using more relevant data

Repurposing is particularly beneficial if your early content was rushed and doesn’t match the quality of your recent output. It may help attract great backlinks, too, and make users less likely to leave your site without converting.

Give Search Engines More Fresh Content

Adding fresh content to your site is crucial to achieve a solid SEO ranking. It gives crawlers new content to index and can help your business appear higher up search engine result pages (SERPs).

Repurposing content creates an opportunity to add fresh material to your site in multiple formats, such as:

  • How-to videos
  • Webinars
  • Ebooks (for generating leads)
  • Podcast episodes

When repurposing old content, prioritize high-performing pieces first: if it achieved great results before, it may do so again (even in a different format).

Ensure Content Aligns with SEO Strategy Changes

Your SEO strategy may be far different today than it was when you published early content. By repurposing it, you can target new keywords and audience segments, and bring it all in line with your current branding for greater consistency.

Repurposing content is also a terrific way to source material when branching out into popular new formats. For example, the number of podcast listeners in the US is estimated to be around 113 million by 2029. You can start turning past material into entertaining podcasts today and potentially reach a whole new audience segment.

No Need to Start from Scratch

One of the most obvious benefits of repurposing content is that you don’t need to start from scratch. Even when transforming one piece into a totally different format, content repurposing may reduce the amount of research and planning required.

This can help you create more content in less time than usual and populate your site with more material sooner rather than later.

Conclusion

Repurposing content can be a powerful way to add more high-quality material to your site, explore new formats, and expand your audience. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s definitely worth adding to your strategy.

Want to upgrade your SEO strategy and increase your online visibility? Make it quicker and easier for yourself —- let the professionals handle it.

Our Orange County SEO agency has the talent, tools, and techniques to help your business climb the SERPs. To learn more, get in touch with our specialists today!

 

Preparing a New Content Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business

Preparing a New Content Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business

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Content marketing is as crucial to businesses as ever, and investment remains high. One 2024 survey revealed that 45% of organizations intended to increase their content spending in the 12 months ahead.

However, if you run a small business and have little to no content marketing experience, developing a strategy can be tough. Where do you start? And what types of content should you focus on?

To help you start building your strategy, our Orange County SEO pros share four ideas below.

Define Who Your Content is for and How It Will Help

Before you start creating content, you must know who you’re writing it for, why they need to read it, and the value it’ll offer.

For example, you might publish certain types of content to capture data and generate leads. Invite users to submit their name and email address in exchange for a well-written ebook on a compelling topic.

Other types of content — such as blog posts and webinars — may be created to:

  • Demonstrate thought leadership
  • Build credibility
  • Encourage engagement (e.g. comments, ‘likes’ on social media)
  • Boost site traffic
  • Add valuable keywords to your site

When preparing a new content marketing strategy, outline the goals you want to achieve and keep those in mind when creating your content calendar.

Include Multiple Content Formats in Your Strategy

Your content marketing strategy should include multiple formats to cater to users who consume content in different ways. Options include:

  • Videos
  • Blog posts
  • Podcasts
  • Guides/how-tos
  • Case studies
  • Infographics
  • Whitepapers
  • ebooks

Some types of content have a bigger reach than others (more than 100 million people in the U.S. listen to a podcast weekly, for instance), but they all have their own benefits and suit particular goals.

Podcasting can help you increase brand awareness, create an ongoing conversation with your listeners (e.g. through emailing or calling into the show), and establish your business as a thought leader. And it can do all that while your listeners are taking out the garbage, walking the dog, or riding the train to work.

The more content formats you incorporate into your strategy, the more opportunities you have to expand your reach and position yourself as an authority.

Study Content Published By Your Favorite Brands

Starting out on your content marketing journey can be tough. You may not know what voice or style you want to use in your content. But one simple way to generate ideas is to analyze other businesses’ work. Even if they’re not in your industry or niche, you can still take inspiration from other companies’ content.

You might love the long-form blog posts that your favorite clothing brand publishes each week because they combine in-depth, original insights with a fun voice. While you may write on completely different topics and for different readers, you can use their work as a jumping-off point for your own.

Ready to Take Your Small Business Further Online?

Content marketing is a critical part of boosting your online visibility, along with SEO, social advertising, retargeting, and other powerful techniques. Our Orange County SEO agency is here to help you reach your target audience with a comprehensive strategy tailored to your small business.

To chat with our SEO specialists, get in touch today!

 

Content Marketing Strategy Do's and Don'ts for Better Results

Content Marketing Strategy: Do’s and Don’ts for Better Results

nettsolutions

A solid content marketing strategy will help your small business increase brand awareness, generate valuable leads, demonstrate thought leadership, and build trust. But if you’re not sure where to start, creating an effective strategy that suits your company, goals, budget, and resources can be difficult.

In this post, our Orange County SEO specialists share four do’s and four don’ts to help you get your content marketing strategy right.

Do Create Content for the Right Audience

Whether you’re working on a blog post, press release, whitepaper, or anything else, understand who you want to read it before you put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).

Otherwise, you risk publishing content that has no clear purpose and fails to make an impact.

Don’t Put SEO Above Value

Optimizing content for search engines is essential to ensure it’s indexed and ranked properly. A key part of this process is peppering keywords throughout your content, but don’t take it too far.

Why? If you’re too eager with your keywords, you could affect the quality of the reader experience and be penalized by search engines.

Do Explore New Formats to Reach More Customers

If your content marketing strategy mainly focuses on blog posts and articles, a little experimentation could bring you to a bigger audience.

You can choose from plenty of content types, including:

  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Guides
  • Infographics
  • Social content
  • Case studies
  • Ebooks

Some types are more popular than others — for example, 42% of people surveyed in the U.S. had listened to a podcast in the previous month. But creating a podcast is one of the more complicated, time-consuming options, so it may be best to experiment on a smaller scale initially.

Don’t Focus on Your Own Products and Services Too Much

It’s fine to mention your own work, but don’t let your content become a thinly veiled promotion. If you push your business too much, people may leave your site without converting to look for content that offers more value.

Do Invite Feedback

Encourage readers, listeners, and viewers to share their thoughts on your content. Feedback could reveal flaws and oversights that help you continually improve your output.

Don’t Post New Content Sporadically

Publishing new content regularly helps maintain audience engagement, gives search engine crawlers fresh pages to index, and demonstrates your dedication to producing quality material.

Stick to a content calendar and prepare each piece in advance. This will make it easier to publish new material frequently and check its quality before publication.

Do Monitor Performance

Track performance to identify your strongest and weakest content. You can learn from your best posts, understand where you went wrong in others, and continually hone your work.

Don’t Forget to Promote Your New Uploads

How is your audience going to consume your new content if they don’t know it exists? Take to social media to promote your latest posts and encourage followers to check them out.

Conclusion

Building a great content marketing strategy can improve your visibility and help you reach the right prospects.

Along with high-quality content, a comprehensive SEO strategy will help you achieve a stronger position on results pages, too. Our Orange County SEO agency will create a tailored SEO strategy for your small business that aligns with your goals.

To find out more, contact our SEO experts today.

Content Marketing Tips to Engage and Grow Your Audience

Content Marketing Tips to Engage and Grow Your Audience

nettsolutions

Content marketing matters now more than ever, especially for businesses looking to grow and engage their audience. Estimated global content marketing revenue rose from $72 billion in 2023 to $82 billion in 2024. And it’s expected to reach $107 billion by 2026.

But creating effective content that grabs the right people and interests them in your business isn’t easy. To help you engage prospective customers and build your audience, our Orange County SEO agency shares five valuable tips below.

Prioritize Quality and Value

Bashing content out and publishing it daily isn’t enough. Sure, search engines love fresh content, but they also know bad content when they see it.

Focus on constructing content with a clear message, audience, and goal. You should publish content regularly and according to a schedule, but create a checklist of points your criteria your content must meet. Whether it’s a blog post, podcast, or video, good quality is paramount.

Engage Your Audience with Stories

Try to include stories in your content. That might be an anecdote about an event, the background of your business, or a case study of a client you’ve helped.

Storytelling can engage users, connect with them emotionally, and keep them on your site for longer.

Try to Make Content Evergreen

Evergreen content stays on your site and remains relevant for years. You might need to update it from time to time, but it won’t have an expiry date unlike topical content.

Popular examples of evergreen content include guides, case studies, checklists, and FAQ pages. Promote these in social media posts regularly, as part of your social media marketing strategy, to attract new visitors.

Use Your Own Research and Insights

Adding research and links to authority sites is important to support points in content. But building content around your own research will make it unique and original.

Sharing a fresh perspective can provide readers with more value than content that primarily relies on other people’s findings. If you do it regularly enough, it can also position you as a thought leader in a specific area.

Avoid Clickbait Headlines

It’s tempting to use catchy headlines that might not exactly reflect the contents of a blog post, podcast, or video. But don’t give in to that temptation. Otherwise, you could lose visitors as soon as they realize what you’ve done. And many will know clickbait when they see it and avoid your content altogether.

Create eye-catching, engaging headlines that honestly align with subject matter. Your audience will likely appreciate that more than headlines that are exciting but misleading.

Conclusion

Creating high-quality, high-value content is fantastic for marketing your business. But bringing more people to your website and satisfying search engines demands more than just great content.

Effective SEO is vital for securing a strong position on results pages, and our Orange County SEO agency can help you with bespoke packages. To find out how we can build your site’s online presence, get in touch today!

How to Create Your Content Marketing Strategy

How to Create Your Content Marketing Strategy

nettsolutions

A clear content marketing strategy is a must for any business trying to engage and expand its audience. But a survey by the Content Marketing Institute revealed that only 40% of B2B marketers have a clear strategy. Meanwhile, 33% had an undocumented one, 20% planned to set one up in the next year, and 7% had no such plans.

So, do you have a strategy for your content marketing?

If not, or if you’re looking to develop a fresh one, our Orange County SEO agency has a few helpful tips.

What is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy covers the planning, creation, and distribution of your content. It encompasses everything relevant to how your business uses content to reach customers, grow your audience, and achieve your objectives.

Building a detailed strategy will clarify how you can help readers, viewers, or listeners better than anyone else.

Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy

Confirm Your Content Marketing Goals

What do you want to achieve with your content?

Identifying your goals can be a time-consuming process, but when you know what they are, rank them in order of priority. That will make it easier to create the right content for your business (and ideally your audience) in the short and long term.

Research Your Audience

To create the most valuable content for your audience, you need to know who they are. What types of content do they enjoy? How long do they prefer blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other content to be? And what content do they want but struggle to find?

Answering questions like these will equip you with the information you need to craft high-value content. You can use the following methods to research your audience :

  • Surveys
  • Social listening tools
  • User behavior analysis
  • Focus groups

Developing a content marketing strategy without research may be a little faster, but you’re more likely to miss the mark.

Brainstorm Concepts, Topics, and Exciting Ideas

Use your marketing goals and data gathered through your research to brainstorm content ideas. You can try various techniques, such as a mind map: write a topic in the middle of a whiteboard and surround it with anything that comes to mind.

Create Personas

Personas can help you create targeted content that’s more relevant and engaging to specific audience segments. They include concise information on a fictional reader representing a group, such as 30 – 40 year-old professionals with lots of disposable income and no kids. In-depth audience research is essential for building accurate personas.

Build your Content Calendar

Setting up a content calendar will enable you to stay consistent, organized, and aware of upcoming topics. That’s ideal if you need to research a subject or book a space for filming a video. It’s also helpful for promoting content via social media and email before it’s published.

Good content is fundamental for any digital marketing strategy. And if you need help with your digital marketing, including SEP and retargeting, leave it to our Orange County SEO agency.

How can we boost your online visibility? Get in touch to find out!

 

Create Better Content with Personas

Create Better Content with Personas

nettsolutions

Personas are a popular tool in digital marketing. A software business, for instance, might build user personas to understand who their new product is for. That can reduce the risk of launching a new program that fails to deliver the features that the target users need most.

Similarly, creating a persona for content marketing can help you bring the right information to the right people. You’ll find it easier to build content that engages the relevant audience segments and remains consistent.

But how do you create a persona for your content? Our Orange County digital marketing agency shares some tips to help you get it right

Research Your Audience

To create a persona, you need to know as much about your audience as you can. Here are a few ideas to keep in mind:

  • Send surveys to customers asking their opinion on your current content, the content they like to read, and what they find least appealing about content in general.
  • Chat with sales and support staff about common pain points. What drives customers to contact your business? What issues do they face? These insights can help you develop accurate personas.
  • Check your leading competitors’ content. What types of blog posts published on their site achieve the highest engagement? Which formats do they use most often, and how do readers/viewers react? You might learn more about what your shared audience likes and dislikes.
  • Pay attention to social media conversations related to your industry, business, and content. Social channels give you a direct connection to different audience segments, and can be vital when building personas.

When you gather information on your audience and how they engage with content, you can start crafting your personas.

Consider Your Target Readers’ Goals and Challenges

Use the information you gathered through your research to build a brief character study of your target reader, viewer, or listener. A content marketing persona should include essential details such as:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Occupation (mainly for B2B companies)
  • Goal (what they’re looking for when they come to your content)
  • Challenges (what’s preventing them from getting what they want)
  • Social media channels

You only need to provide basic details in each area — personas should give you and your team at-a-glance breakdowns of the target individual.

Understand What Each Persona Needs at Different Stages of the Customer Journey

Content is important throughout the customer journey, so bear that in mind when planning your publication schedule.

For example, a potential buyer will find certain blog posts invaluable at the start of their journey (the awareness stage), such as a concise overview of a specific product or service.

Your content marketing personas can help you understand different readers’ goals and challenges at each stage of their customer journey. Consider how your content can engage them and encourage them to become loyal buyers. Brainstorm content ideas for each stage of the customer journey across your audience segments.

Our Orange County digital marketing pros are here to boost your business’s visibility on search engines through SEO, SEP, retargeting, and more. Contact us today to get started!

5 of the Best Ways to Repurpose Your Content

5 of the Best Ways to Repurpose Your Content

mwon

Do you struggle to create content that engages your target audience and helps you climb the SERPs?

If so, you’re not alone: 65% of marketers feel the same.

But a successful content marketing strategy isn’t just about producing new material — it’s knowing how to make the content you’ve already created go further too.

How?

Here are five ideas for repurposing your old content and making it fresh.

Collect articles, interviews, or case studies as ebooks

Gather content on a similar theme (e.g. hiring employees, sales techniques) and collect it into an ebook. You can use articles, interviews, or case studies — just make sure there’s a clear reason to bundle them together.

When you’ve made an ebook, you can offer it as gated content to generate leads.

Build a podcast from old blog posts

Around a quarter of the U.S. population listens to a podcast each week, with 16 million Americans describing themselves as “avid podcast fans”. That’s why a podcast can be such a fantastic addition to your content marketing strategy.

Whether your business has an existing podcast or you want to produce a one-off episode, your blog posts are a terrific place to source material.

But don’t just read them aloud into a microphone: look at the posts with fresh eyes and consider how you can break them down into an audible format.

And invite one or more people on to make the podcast into an engaging, insightful conversation rather than a monologue.

Expand and refresh existing content with new data or perspectives

New research may have been published on a specific subject since you wrote a blog post or article on it. Your work might appear outdated or even irrelevant to a newcomer looking for reliable information.

But you can fix that by updating old content to align with the latest insights. You won’t need to start from scratch, and you can keep inaccurate information off your site (which could harm your credibility).

Transform data into shareable infographics

Infographics convey information (such as statistics or tips) in a visual format, so they’re quicker and easier to digest than a blog post or article. And they’re highly shareable on social media, especially when they cover material your audience will value.

If you have stats or other data from research, bundle them into a colorful, eye-catching infographic. Bloggers or other businesses may use it and add a link, driving traffic back to your site.

Make a Q&A video from social interactions

Videos are a must for any content marketing strategy, and can help you improve engagement on your site.

You should find ample inspiration for videos in the questions visitors ask on social media or in comments on blog posts and videos. A brief Q&A video will provide useful information in a quick, visual, shareable way.

Want to take your content marketing to the next level?

Our Orange County SEO agency is here to help. Get in touch to find out how we’ll build the right content marketing strategy to increase your business’s visibility, reach, and engagement!

Link Building The Do’s and Don’ts You Need to Know

Link Building: The Do’s and Don’ts You Need to Know

mwon

Link building is one of the most important parts of any effective SEO strategy, and it looks set to stay that way: more than 90% of marketers expect links still to feature in Google’s ranking algorithms in 5 years.  But getting external sites to link to yours can be tough, especially if you’re experimenting with link building for the first time. That’s why our Orange County SEO team has created the following list of 4 do’s and 4 don’ts for successful link building.

 

4 Link Building Do’s

Create High-Value Content Other Site-Owners Love

Good content is a must to generate links and boost your ranking — you need to give site-owners a reason to direct their visitors to your site.

This might be:

  • A thought leadership post that establishes you as an authority
  • A well-designed infographic featuring original research
  • A comprehensive white paper offering detailed tips or insights
  • A professional video featuring an interview with an industry leader, a tutorial, or anything else of value

 

Write Guest Posts for Relevant Sites With a Solid Audience

Creating guest posts for industry websites or blogs relevant to your business, products, or services is a simple but effective tactic.  This will introduce your brand to an established audience likely to have an interest in your brand.

 

Source Links from Satisfied Clients

If you run a B2B business, ask satisfied clients to link to you: for example, they may mention that your web design agency built their site or that you supplied IT hardware for a key project.  A reputable company endorsing your services helps build trust and credibility.

 

Focus on Quality First

Prioritize building links from respectable sites that have good reason to connect to yours — even if this means a slow-and-steady approach. Set a realistic target for building good links and stick to it.

 

4 Link Building Don’ts

Don’t Write Content for Irrelevant Sites

Remember when we recommended writing guest posts for relevant sites?  That’s crucial to reach prospects likely to visit your site, but don’t write for sites with no relation to your products or services just to place a link.  If your business specializes in men’s shoes and you publish a post for a blog covering French cuisine, readers won’t be fooled. You may waste your time and energy on a task that leads nowhere.

 

Don’t Experiment With Black Hat Tactics

 Engaging in black hat schemes to build links and climb the SERPs is always a bad idea. Avoid paid links, cloaking, injecting links, and anything else that could put you in Google’s bad books.

 

Don’t Give Up Before You See Results

Link building for SEO takes time, commitment, and patience. You can’t expect your ranking to improve instantly.  Stick with it and be willing to adjust your strategy as new opportunities arise.

 

Don’t Spam Blog Posts or Forums with Links

 Never write comments on blogs or forums just to leave a link. Users and search engines will see right through it. You could damage your reputation and face penalization.

 

Follow these 8 tips to hone your link building strategy and achieve better results. Want to know more? Have no idea how to build a better linking plan?  Our Orange County SEO specialists are here to help — get in touch now!

4 Simple SEO Tips to Optimize Your Site

mwon

A solid SEO strategy can increase your busines’s visibility and drive traffic to your site. But actually putting one together can be tough if you’re new to search engine optimization.

In this post, our Orange County SEO experts explore four simple SEO tips to help you optimize your site and reach a bigger audience.

Take Advantage of Video

Video is a key element of most successful marketing campaigns today, and you can utilize it to boost your SEO. It’s estimated that 80 percent of all online traffic will be video by 2021, and it’s an easy way to increase a page’s ability to engage visitors.

Try to create how-to videos, product demonstrations, roundtable discussions with industry experts — content that offers real value. Just make sure you keep the quality high.

Optimize your video content by creating keyword-rich meta titles and descriptions. And don’t just upload them to your site: share them on social media and create a YouTube channel too.

Keep your content well-organized and easy to read

One of the most important parts of any effective SEO campaign is getting your content’s structure right.

Keep your content easy to read and scan. Users don’t want to wade through blocks of dense text, and they’ll click away if they can’t find the information they’re looking for.

Use plenty of whitespace and make paragraphs short, usually just four of five sentences each. Headers (H1, H2, H3) create a clear hierarchy and enable search engines to understand your content better.

To return to our first point, include videos to elaborate on text content in a more dynamic way (e.g. showcasing a product you’ve described).

Optimize Your Content for Voice Search

Voice search is increasingly important as more and more people use their mobile devices to find products or services. It’s actually the second-most popular way to conduct searches on a mobile device.

These are often phrased as questions, such as “where is the nearest Mexican restaurant?”. So, implement questions and answers into your content to increase your visibility.

If you run a local business, include geo-targeted terms to target prospects who might be looking for the exact products or services you offer. They could be around the corner from your company with big money to spend!

Target Mobile Users

Google’s mobile-first indexing means websites optimized for smartphones and tablets are more likely to rank higher than those that aren’t.

That’s no surprise: think how often you use your own mobile device to shop, find information, etc. Make sure you use a responsive web design to provide visitors with a positive user experience on any device, and run regular speed tests to understand how long users need to wait before pages load.

Follow these four simple SEO tips to optimize your website and boost your visibility. Want to work with Orange County SEO experts and discover the benefits of a tailored search engine optimization campaign?

Contact our team today to learn more!

How can Your Business Build Brand Awareness with Content Marketing?

mwon

Building brand awareness can be tough for small businesses, but an effective content marketing strategy makes it a little easier.

And in this post, we explore four great options that any company can try.

 

Write Guest Posts

Guest posts can introduce your brand to an existing audience, help your business earn more credibility, and demonstrate thought leadership.

But your guest posts have to be valuable and relevant to the site’s audience to be effective. Apparently, 79 percent of editors feel content written by guests is “too promotional”, and if yours falls into that category, it might not be published at all.

Take the time to find blogs related to your industry, products, or services, and look at the level of social shares their posts achieve. Sites accepting guest posts tend to offer detailed submission requirements and guidelines, so read these carefully before pitching.

 

Launch a Podcast

Podcasts are everywhere. More than half of the United States’ population has listened to at least one, and there are more than 550,000 active shows out there. And people who listen to podcasts are more likely to follow businesses on social media, too, which means you could gain another valuable touchpoint.

So, why not create your own show?

This gives you a chance to become a thought leader and present your business’s human side. Find out if any of your competitors run a podcast and make sure your ideas don’t overlap with theirs. Try to recognize what makes your favorite shows work, too.

Perhaps record a few practice episodes before releasing your first. This lets your host(s) get used to the process, establish a voice, and build a format without feeling under pressure to be entertaining from the start.

 

Take Advantage of Email Marketing and Newsletters

Email marketing is around 40 times more effective at helping companies acquire new customers than Twitter and Facebook.

You can capture visitors’ email addresses by offering gated content on your website, such as an ebook, whitepaper, or maybe even a podcast. The content has to offer real value to prospects, though. They’re pretty unlikely to submit their email address for information or advice they could find somewhere else.

Marketing emails and newsletters should be tailored to subscribers, with content that’s relevant to their interests or buying history. Personalize subject lines to include recipient names, as this can take open rates from 15 percent to more than 18 percent.

 

Share Content Across Social Media (Even if it’s Not Your Own)

Every piece of content your business generates should be shared across all of your social channels, not just Facebook. Encourage followers to comment with their opinions, suggest ideas for future content, and share posts with friends who might find them interesting.

Interact with followers who comment and show that you value their insights. And don’t be afraid to share content from high-authority blogs or sites, as long as it’s not written by a competitor.

 

An effective content marketing strategy will help build brand awareness and bring your business to a wider audience. Follow these tips to start making an impact.

Want help from a professional digital marketing team? Our Orange County Marketing experts can help you increase your company’s visibility and engagement with a tailored strategy. Get in touch for your free marketing analysis today.