As you know, WordPress is one of the world’s most popular website creating and open-source platform.
It is the system thanks to which bloggers developed the best experience for their audiences and an advanced Content management system (CMS) which balances between functionality and aesthetics.
Speaking of content marketing in the WordPress environment, we can’t neglect blogging. Users seem to have embraced the principle of delivering high-quality and reader-friendly content, as it is the main tool that can help them attract interest and followers to their website. Competition is strong, but aspiring bloggers still manage to lead their niche only because of their top notch content.
Online content marketing is gaining momentum – offering skill-based services people need and can’t handle alone is the same as teaching them and sharing knowledge, which is why learning management systems are revolutionizing training, and turning random blog posts into invaluable knowledge sources.
You may have a number of newsletter subscribers and a 1000+ knowledge base, but that won’t mean you have all customer information you need. It takes some deep drilling to understand who your visitors are, which device they’re using, or where they are coming from. Their names can’t really reveal these facts.
Knowing this, it is easy to understand why content marketing has become imperative for every business, both in the marketing and business sense of the word. Many users, however, don’t know the meaning of content marketing, neither do they realize what it can do for their growth and development.
Explained in the simplest way, content marketing refers to sharing content online in order to accomplish your marketing mission. It involves the way how you draft, create, and distribute your content, and the strategies you use to attract and retain readers.
By content, we refer to every single piece of information that delivers a message, be it a long media post, product description, or an email. What content marketing aims to do is not to attract as many visitors as possible, but to engage with them in order to drive profit. Here are some facts you probably don’t know:
- More than 50% of today’s marketers consider content marketing to be their main priority.
- Content marketing is applied by approximately 86% of all companies operating online.
- Content marketing reduces traditional marketing costs by more than 60% (it eliminates the need to advertise with flyers, posters, TV commercials, newspapers, and so on).
- Even if it is not a real lead generation, it will increase leads three times as much as traditional marketing can bring.
As you can see, it is easy to like content marketing, as it doesn’t really ‘care’ about the scale of your business, or the industry you’re operating in. The budget needed to obtain it is moderate, as we like to put it.
The advantages of content marketing
- Brand awareness and brand-centered business
- Reliability and customer satisfaction
- Unexpected traffic rates
- Outstanding SEO for leading SERPs
- A higher number of customer conversions
Obviously, the miracle of obtaining all benefits won’t happen at ones, especially if you’re running a small team where few employees do all the heavy lifting. Content marketing, however, triggers a spillover effect between these benefits, as better SEO invokes better traffic rates.
WordPress content marketing: Essential How TOs
Step 1: Plan your marketing strategy in advance
The first and most important step in marketing is planning, and that’s something every professional in the area will confirm. It is not a game of chance, and you can’t just jump on an opportunity without being sure you can afford to do so.
This is particularly true for content, where you simply can’t write whatever and let it go viral unless you are not that concerned whether readers will like it or not. Thinking about your actions is the only way to succeed, the content being at the center of the process.
Besides, the market is piled with digital organizers and usable editorial calendars which can organize your content better than you do. First of all, you can use software to examine the readability of your piece, and schedule it for a particular day in order to post it automatically. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?
Step 2: Produce some content
Success in content marketing depends on the wow-effect your content does or does not provoke, which is why you should be extremely careful with the pieces you’re creating.
The basic rule is to make it useful, easy to digest, and engaging, and to pay attention to the specific needs customer have (otherwise, there is no point for them to read it). These are the basic tips to have in mind:
- Write with the subject in mind
- Use facts and accurate information
- Engage your audiences
Step 3: Drafting email contact lists
The purpose of contact lists is to let you send information automatically to directly connected users, or such who already proved to have an interest in that topic, and would like to receive related content on their email.
In order to do this, you have to make people subscribe for your content, either with an inspiring message or direct CTA (call to action). If the CTA message is strong enough, the subscription popup will not cause the usual annoyance effect, and it will do wonders for your website.
As a matter of fact, irresistible content will do this itself, as the better you become, the more people will hear about you and be interested in subscribing and accessing your posts. By irresistible, we mean attractive and action-ready, but most of all tailored to the needs of your audience.
Step 4: Make it visible on social media
Nowadays, a lot of users’ actions and reactions are inspired by social media, not just because of the fact they use it for personal statuses, but also because they familiarize with brand updates, and the content great websites have to offer.
The easiest way to build a strong and growing audience is to use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and to enable direct conversions to drive more traffic to your website.
In order to make the social media strategy even more effective, consider facilitated sharing options embedded on your WordPress site, because it will eventually be users who are going to popularize your posts. To make matters even better, you can trigger the same strategy to revive old, but quality content.
Step 5: Do the analytic heavy lifting
We all hate analytics, but without them, your content marketing strategy would be hopeless. Many bloggers neglect the importance of proper analysis, even if it takes one hour per week to drive content in the right marketing direction.
The same as other strategies, analytics won’t bring instant results, but you have to be patient and monitor every trend that may indicate the need for modifications.
The analysis doesn’t have to be performed using complex software – an Excel sheet with few important metric columns (page views, traffic, conversions, bounce rates, and so on) will be enough to distinguish interested users from immediate bouncers. When choosing the metrics, think of the specific goals your website’s content is trying to achieve.
We highly recommend Google Analytics and powerful WordPress plugins, as they handle incredible amounts of data, and tackle numbers you can’t measure yourself (social media indicators, online store conversions, and much more).
Google Analytics is definitely the leader for website estimations, as it reveals the full picture of how your content marketing strategy can be driven towards success.
Marketers’ must-have WordPress plugins
Jetpack
Jetpack is a one-stop-shop content marketing solution, where you will be able to use out-of-the-box features involving mobile themes, analytics, content editing tools, and much more. Jetpack is more than open for customization, meaning that you can tailor it to suit the exact needs of your business.
Just Writing
Just Writing revolutionized WordPress’ Distraction-Free Writing Mode (DFWM) in a way which allows bloggers focus solely on their content, and skip essential formattings such as paragraph styling and spell check.
Google XML Sitemaps
Thanks to Google XML Sitemaps, you can create an XML sitemap to index your blog in a way which reveals your whereabouts to leading search engines. The plugin is incredibly easy to use, in particular for Yahoo and Google which crawl the site’s structure to extract relevant information, and are promptly notified of every post or content modification.
Leadin
Leadin is great for marketing automation purposes, as it tracks visitors and their actions, and reveals priceless conversion opportunities for you to grab on time. Once your visitors have converted, Leadin includes them in your current contact lists, and records every of their actions in a history database.
FD Word Statistics
Slightly less known, FD Word Statistics is used to boost post readability, and uses thereof a number of well-known readability analyzing methods. Smart marketers like it because it works with both the Flesch-Kincaid and Gunning Fog writing score formula to deliver information such as the education of your ideal readers.
Broken Link Checker
As it can be concluded by the name, Broken Link Checker revises ready posts to depict broken links and let you know that you have to fix them. You can either use it so skip complex manual modifications, or to simplify the process of removing these links from your posts.
Proofread Bot
You may think that you don’t need a proofreading plugin, but we all end to make mistakes out of negligence or when working in a rush. WordPress developers thought of this too, and delivered a helpful plugin called Proofread Bot which stylizes content, and identifies grammar and spelling mistakes. It can also detect plagiarism, and notify you of it with the popular red flags.
Title Experiments
Title Experiments enable bloggers to perform A\B testing, both for entire posts or titles. Thanks to it, they can detect trends for boosting click-through rates, and select the best content fit in every occasion.
As a marketer, you are probably aware of revenue-boosting opportunities your most loyal customers can provide, as for instance creating active product communities, and engaging newcomers to check out your website. In case you’re running a Learning Management System, this is probably the very skyrocket hint that will break down usability records.