4 Trust-Building Steps that Get Your Prospects to Eat Out of Your Hands

Are you scaring away your best prospects?
When you’re new to content marketing, you might inadvertently send a frightening message to your potential customers and clients.
Your heart is probably in the right place. You’re trying to provide value and put your best offers in front of people — but your approach might miss the mark.
And that wrong approach might cause terrible conversion rates for your opt-in forms and low sales of your products and services.
Want to know how to stop scaring off your prospects, build trust, and start attracting tons of subscribers and sales?
The key is learning how to get birds to eat out of your hands.

Why content marketing is like ornithology

Let’s say you have a cute little group of finches in your backyard, and your dream is to get the little fellas to eat birdseed out of your hand.
The trick to earning the trust of the birds is to move slowly and quietly, so you don’t scare them off. Stand next to the tree or bird feeder where they gather, and let them get used to you. Demonstrate your trustworthiness and let them know you’re not going to hurt them.
Then continue to take tiny steps toward your goal, all the while being careful not to scare them. Let the birds discover you’re a source of yummy food by sprinkling birdseed on the ground and hanging out nearby while they nibble.
If you are infinitely patient, take baby steps, and don’t frighten them, eventually you can train the birds to eat directly out of your hands.
Here’s what you don’t want to do:

• Scream “I HAVE BIRDSEED!” at the trees where the birds hang out
• Shove your hands in their little faces to show them what you’re offering
• Wave your arms around to get their attention
• Anything else that makes you look scary, aggressive, risky, or alarming

How this bird story affects your content marketing

If you never plan on trying to get finches to eat from your hands — who cares?
But this story has an important lesson for all content marketers: Your prospects are just like birds.
They are highly risk-averse and hypervigilant, constantly searching for a reason to take flight and leave your website.
If you offer too much too soon or shove your paid products in their faces, they’ll fly away.
And you’ll be left alone, holding a handful of birdseed, wondering what happened.

Building relationships the bird whisperer way

How can you frame your offers to avoid scaring away your prospects?

1. Start slow. Patience is essential when you’re building relationships with your audience. Be sure to establish trust before you ask for anything. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.
2. Provide value first. When your website is new, it’s critical that you establish yourself as an expert (and build trust with your audience members) by giving away free value before you present your audience with an offer for your paid products and services. Start with a free report, educational video, or content library, and gather feedback from your audience on that content before you make your next move.
3. Don’t ask for multiple actions. Whether you have an email list opt-in form or free registration page for your site, one major mistake new content marketers make is trying to do too much with a single page. If you present paid offers on the same page or form as your free content, you might confuse your prospects and they won’t take any action at all.
4. Send emails with useful content to build relationships and increase trust. Once a prospect has signed up for your email list, you still need to proceed with caution. To build relationships, send consistent content notifications or email newsletters to prove your authority in your niche and provide value to your community members.

Win your prospects’ trust with a steady, consistent approach

When you approach your prospects carefully and consistently over time (and prove you’re a safe person), they’ll eventually feel comfortable buying from you.
So take small and steady steps, and don’t overdo it with aggressive sales messages. Your prospects will learn to trust you, and they’ll be far more likely to buy your products and services.
A little birdie told me you (and your prospects) are going to be a lot happier with this approach.


Source

3 Surprising Stages of Successful Landing Pages

 Landing pages support content marketing.
The tricky thing is … landing pages are not home pages. They’re not blog posts, cornerstone content, white papers, case studies, product description pages, or even sales pages.
And you can’t treat them like they are.

High-converting landing pages consist of three action-driving stages: before, during, and after.

Tragically, when many content marketers build landing pages, they focus on just one stage: during.
But if you don’t invest effort into what happens before and after you present your landing page, it doesn’t stand a chance of achieving the results you want.

1. The “before” of landing pages

While landing pages are not about you — your company, your product, or your service — the “before” stage is because you first have to establish your goal.
As Demian Farnworth said:

“[Landing pages] force readers to focus on one thing — and one thing only.”

Determining that one thing is the only time you get to be self-centered in this process. The best way to set your goal is to complete this sentence:

I want my visitor to …

• Like my Facebook page
• Subscribe to my email newsletter
• Watch my demo video
• Register for my content library
• Make an appointment

Naturally, there are plenty of other actions that might be the goal of your landing page. Whatever you select, your goal should be singular: the one desired action will guide everything else.
For example, let’s look at InvestorCarrot’s landing page for their SEO Keyword Bible.
The crucial thing to notice isn’t what’s on the page, but what’s left off the page.

There’s no header navigation, no footer, no social media icons, and even their logo in the top left corner isn’t clickable.

Essentially, there are two roads out from this landing page: “Get My Free Report Now” or “No thanks, I’ll pass on this opportunity.”

InvestorCarrot knows exactly what they want their visitor to do and they eliminate every other navigation option.
The result of this singularity — along with other factors I’ll address in the next two stages — is a whopping 45.89 percent conversion rate.
Take heed: when it comes to planning your landing page — the before stage — select one goal. Remove anything that doesn’t support that goal.

2. The “during” of landing pages

The “during” stage of your landing page consists of five on-page elements.

1. Headline

The headline of your landing page is arguably the most crucial on-page element. Why?
Because while 8 out of 10 people read the headline, only 2 out of 10 will read the content that follows.
So, how do you create a headline that grabs, compels, and drives action?
Easy. You don’t.
Instead of trying to create the perfect headline, steal it.
First, steal the heart of your headline by building it around your audience’s own keywords.
Whether you drive visitors to your landing page with paid advertising (PPC) or organic search, your headline must include the words your audience uses.
This is precisely what makes our previous example so compelling. Instead of including vague keywords about SEO, the headline targets a specific audience: Simple SEO ‘Hacks’ To Help Real Estate Investors Get More Traffic & Leads.
Next, steal successful headline templates.
Copyblogger’s How to Write Magnetic Headlines ebook is a great place to start.
You can also steal from my own 25 heaven-and-hell-themed headline formulas or go even more in depth by diagnosing your audience’s “state of awareness” and then systematically crafting breakthrough headlines from inside your market’s mind.
For instance, Yoobly’s webinar landing page — “The $100K Case Study: How to Generate New Rockstar Prospects & Explode Your Downline Without Selling Friends & Family” — leverages a host of proven headline ingredients:

The landing page:

• States the big benefit (“$100k Case Study”)
• Appeals to those who want to learn (“How to”)
• Offers useful information enlivened by verbs (“Generate” and “Explode”)
• Uses direct language (“Your”)
• Makes contrasting statements against common approaches (“Without Selling Friends & Family”)

2. Subheads

With all the information that bombards us on a daily basis, most of us scan content.
Enter the subhead.

The subheads on your landing page should not only structurally guide your reader through your major points, they should stand alone and relentlessly focus on the benefits of your call to action.

Remember that what the headline does for the page itself, subheads do for each section.
This means making your subheads enticing, bite-sized nuggets of “I just gotta keep reading” copy.
A fantastic strategy for building compelling subheads is to make a list of all your product or service’s features … and then transform those features into audience-centered benefits.
Henneke’s A Simple Trick to Turn Features Into Benefits (and Seduce Readers to Buy!) makes this transformation process easy by asking one question, “So what?”

“The oven preheats quickly.
So what?
It’s quickly ready to start cooking your lasagna.
So what?
Your food is on the table sooner.
So what?
Life is less stressful. There’s less hanging around the kitchen waiting for the oven to get ready. And you don’t have to worry you might forget to preheat your oven.”

3. Body copy

Just like every other on-page element of your landing page, effective body copy does not come from you … it comes from your visitor.
Your aim should be to unearth the very words your audience already uses when they talk about your product or service.
How? By digging into user-generated content from:

• Amazon reviews
• Comments on blog posts
• Customer FAQs
• Email responses
• Social media posts
• Forum sites
• Question and answer sites
• Qualitative surveys

4. Proof

I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying “People buy with their hearts, then justify it with their heads.”

So while you must speak to the heart of your visitor, you also need to provide proof for their heads.

Testimonials are the primary way you provide that proof. Unfortunately, testimonials are often too general and fail at providing proof in one of two ways:

1. They aren’t framed in a problem-then-solution format.
2. They don’t highlight measurable results.

A shining example of the problem-then-solution format is Chris Brogan’s testimonial for the Rainmaker Platform:

Brogan’s testimonial nails exactly what’s wrong with most content management systems — the problem — and then explains exactly how the Rainmaker Platform addresses those deficiencies for him — the solution.
How do you generate your own proof-producing testimonials?
Ask for details.
Instead of just soliciting bland reviews (or waiting for them to roll in), reach out to your customers and clients and ask them to tell you about:

• The problem they were facing
• How you helped them find a solution
• The results (real data) that back up that win

5. Call to action

The call to action (CTA) is copy that asks your visitor to take your desired action. CTAs will commonly appear throughout your landing pages and at the very end.
To write your CTA buttons, you can follow Joanna Wiebe’s masterful advice.
Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes, and your call to action button should state how they’d finish the following sentence:

I want to _____.

That little trick is how we design buttons that say unique phrases like “Find Out How to Ride a Bike” and “Make Sense of My Finances Fast.”

3. The “after” of landing pages

So far, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground. However, we’re not done yet.
Why?
Because even if you create a high-converting landing page with all the right on-page elements relentlessly driven by your own all-consuming and singular goal … and even if people are actually taking the action you want them to take, the job of your landing page isn’t finished.
In fact, if you stop there, all your work could be for nothing.

The most neglected element of every landing page ironically isn’t even on your landing page itself.

It’s what comes next — the “after.”
When standard “Thanks for signing up” pages and “Click here to confirm” emails are off-putting, they squander the momentum you’ve worked so hard to create.
What should your follow-up look like? Here are two examples.
Let’s look at InvestorCarrot’s landing page again. After signing up for the SEO Keyword Bible, the new lead is redirected to the page featured below, which offers immediate access to the report itself. 

Immediate access is vital to keep the landing page’s momentum rolling.
In addition to offering immediate access, the page also presents the user with two videos about the report as well as the opportunity to deepen her relationship with InvestorCarrot by signing up for a live webinar.
Your own follow-up doesn’t need to have as many options.
Whenever someone signs up for my Content Creation Checklist, I send him this conversational follow-up that includes tons of white space, one link to click, and ends with a question.

Whichever method you adopt for your own follow-up:

1. Give your visitors immediate access to whatever they’ve just asked for.
2. Write to them like one human communicating to another.

Don’t ignore these two landing-page stages

When you build landing pages with these three stages, they are hinges that transform visitors into actual leads: real people with real problems in search of real solutions.
Don’t make the mistake of just focusing on what’s on the page: the during.
Start by selecting one goal and one goal alone: the before.
Then, don’t drop the ball after all your hard work. Customize your follow-up and keep it rolling: the after.
Oh, and be sure to share in the comments if you’ve got a tip or landing page of your own you’d love for me to check out. However, be careful … I just might actually take a look.


Source

What Is Content Marketing?

Listen. If you are even remotely connected to the business, marketing, and advertising world, then you’ve probably heard the phrase “content marketing.”
You’ve at least been exposed to it through:

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Search engine optimization
• Email autoresponders
• White papers
• Copywriting
• Social media
• Landing pages

But what exactly is content marketing? Glad you asked, because I’ve got answers for you. One short answer, and one really long. Here’s our official definition:

Content marketing means creating and sharing valuable content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you.

Which brings us to another question: how do you actually use content marketing?
Well, even if you consider yourself a seasoned practitioner or you’re a fresh-out-of-the-box beginner, this handy, systematic, and exhaustive guide — loaded with 100 articles that cover content marketing essentials for building a viable money-making platform — is at your finger tips.

How to use this content marketing reference library

Content marketing can be simplified into the convergence of three spheres: your audience’s interests, your brand story, and your unique perspective or content medium. Combine these three to achieve content greatness.

The 100-article list below reaches back to November 2008 and goes all the way up to the present. It contains 10 categories:

• Content essentials
• Content strategy
• Content research
• Idea creation
• Content creation
• Content promotion
• Traffic generation
• Content marketing case studies
• Content auditing
• Content business building

Yes, I read all 100 articles. It took me 15 hours over six days. I recommend you do the same — but work through it at a pace that’s right for you!
First, bookmark it. That way, it’ll be easy to find when you need to answer a question or reference one of our articles in your own content.
Then, you could:

• Study one of the 10 categories each week, creating your own 10-week content marketing course
• Read one-to-three articles each day
• Identify the categories you need to brush up on the most, and make a note on your calendar to review them when you have free time

Side note: This list makes for perfect Twitter content … drip out just one article each day to your followers over a 100-day period, and you’ll look like a content marketing genius. 😉
This guide will fill in the gaps in your knowledge. It will help you become a content marketing expert in your industry or company.
And with that, I give you Copyblogger’s Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing.

Content marketing essentials

The Future of Content Marketing
New York City should have been destroyed 33 years ago. Because of massive amounts of horse manure. Here’s the lesson you can draw about the future of content marketing from that failed prognosis.

What’s the Difference Between a Professional Writer and a Content Marketer?
Five elements that separate high-quality content marketing from material that’s well-written but might not deliver the same business value.

What’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Digital Commerce?
We’ve been talking a lot lately about “digital commerce.” This article for is anyone who’s wondered: “I thought content marketing was digital commerce: what’s the difference?”

The 3-Step Journey of a Remarkable Piece of Content
Remarkable content takes a three-step journey. If we keep this journey in mind, we can craft a profound experience for our readers. Pamela Wilson walks you through you each step.

Agile Content Marketing: How to Attract an Audience That Builds Your Business
How do you create a content marketing strategy that actually works? The first step is to get your head right.

The First Rule of Copyblogger
Great content marketing begins here. Those who obey this rule share content that’s worth reading with an audience who is hungry for it. Long-term gains in traffic, leads, and profits follow. Those who break this rule might experience short bursts of traffic, leads, and profits — but not for long.

What’s the Difference between Content Marketing and Copywriting?
When you combine great content with great copywriting, you end up with a powerful marketing platform that can launch you into the realm of the world’s greatest content producers.

The Three Essentials of Breakthrough Content Marketing
The glut of content on the web means that the market is crowded and cluttered. Your content needs to rise above that confusion. Here’s how to do it.

Why Content Marketing Doesn’t Suck
As the saying goes, “Haters will hate.” Don’t let them talk you out of the benefits that content marketing can deliver over a long period of time. This episode of The Lede (when it was still hosted by Robert Bruce) will show you what Procter & Gamble, soap operas, and content marketing have in common. And then some.

The Two Vital Attributes of Quality Content
Ever wondered what makes some blog posts funny, vigorous, and meaningful? You know, the types of blog posts you not only share — but save. Print out. Study. Wonder no more.

Everything You Need to Know About Creating Killer Content in 3 Simple Words
Try this sticky formula — one that basically consolidates what every guru, expert, and pundit has been saying about persuasion, usability, and web marketing — that will make creating compelling copy easy.

Content marketing strategy

Content Marketing: A Truly Winning Difference
A simple lesson about learning how to accentuate the positives in your marketing from a little story about Claude Hopkins and Schlitz beer.

10 Content Marketing Goals worth Pursuing
What do you want your content to accomplish? You do have goals, right? If not, start with these 10.

How to Build an Agile Content Marketing Team
Eric Enge provides nine tips on how to build an agile content marketing team in a way that might just make the size of the task a lot more manageable.

A Content Marketing Innovation Cheat Sheet
Successful content marketers often have deceptively simple cheats for churning out effective online publishing on a regular basis. Let’s take a look.

Digital Sharecropping: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Content Marketing Strategy
We’re professional content marketers — not subsistence farmers — and our work doesn’t involve 12-hour days in grueling conditions. So, is sharecropping still dangerous? Yes.

A Simple Content Marketing Strategy for Creative Folks
How do you display your work while making it easy for prospective clients to learn about who you are? The conclusion is simple.

A Quick-Start Guide to Measuring Your Content Marketing Efforts
Your job as a content marketer is to show your boss the money — not traffic, not links — mon-naay. Mike King talks about how to get started effectively measuring your content marketing efforts.

5 Steps to Revising Your Content Marketing Strategy to Attract and Retain Future Customers
Whether you already have a product or are just getting started, here are five steps you need to take now to attract and retain future customers of your product or service.

How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Marketing Strategy
Eighty percent of businesses say they are delivering an excellent customer experience. But only eight percent of customers believe these companies were actually delivering. That’s a huge discrepancy. Why such a big gap?

13 Simple Questions to Help You Draft a Winning Content Strategy
Square away an afternoon, ask yourself these questions, and document the answers in a notebook, on a whiteboard, in Evernote, or in the handy PDF we’ve created for you.

How to Create a Visual Brand and Fight the Dark Forces
What can we learn about building a visual brand from Star Wars? Grab these top visual branding tips from Rainmaker Digitals’s Lead Designer Rafal Tomal.

The 5 Keys to Content Marketing Mastery
If you’re happy being an average content marketer, then you can ignore this post. But if you want to be a content marketing master, tap into these five strategies of “deliberate practice.”

The Old-School Content Marketing Strategy that Scores Freelance Writing Clients
While the Internet is more effective and efficient in many ways, you won’t want to throw this approach to getting more freelance clients in the marketing dustbin — it still works. And marvelously.

Content marketing research

Research Ain’t Easy (But it’s Necessary)
What good research does for you and your readers. The first article in a three-part series by Beth Hayden.

A 6-Step Content Marketing Research Process
What should your research process look like? What steps can you take to gather the best possible data on your target audience? Beth Hayden answers those questions.

Become a Content Marketing Secret Agent with Competitive Intelligence
Using slick online snooping techniques and a little sweat equity, we can all find out what our competitors are doing well, what they could be doing better, and how we can adapt their best techniques to improve our own businesses.

A 3-Step Process for Painless Keyword Research
How to stay focused when doing your research and how to avoid getting bogged down in the stuff that doesn’t matter. Because you will.

How to Find the Keywords that Work for Your Content Marketing Goals
Accurate keyword research helps you optimize your website for the search engines, and it also allows you to shape your content strategy. So it’s vitally important that you use smart tactics to help you do your research in a fast, efficient way.

5 Ways Listening to Community Data Can Expand Your Content Marketing Strategy
When talking about content marketing, discussions often focus on decisions about topics, headlines, platforms, and distribution. But how much do you consider the data that supports these decisions?

Why Content Marketing is a Long Game (and How to Play It)
Whether or not you know it, you’re playing a long game with content. Let’s take a look at just a few ways to improve your online strategy.

How to Determine the Potential Size of Your Content Marketing Opportunity
Are readers already displaying a passion for your space? Are they looking for the type of content you’re producing or want to produce? Are they sharing it? Eric Enge explains

Don’t Create Your Content Strategy Until You Research These 6 Things
Here are six areas you should research to avoid a content strategy that’s DOA (Dead on Arrival), so your content marketing gets — and holds — your audience’s attention.

Empathy Maps: A Complete Guide to Crawling Inside Your Customer’s Head
The media you create can attract an audience. As that audience grows, you must learn their needs, wants, hopes, and fears. That information helps you learn about a customer’s worldview.

Tap Into This Psychological Driver to Create the Ultimate Message
Want to overcome content shock? Then you need to understand your audience’s outlook. In other words, you need to tap into their worldviews.

Idea creation

Surviving “Content Shock” and the Impending Content Marketing Collapse
You and I both know that there is a hell of a lot of content out there. Here’s why Sonia Simone is not worried about it.

Conquer Content Shock with Illegitimate Ideas
An illegitimate idea is one that is unnatural — a mongrel. We don’t know its origins. It comes out of left field and is so surprising and disruptive that we halt and pay attention to it.

49 Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing
Build a membership website. Yellow page ads that look like a blog post. Address popular objections. And 46 more ideas to help stoke your content creativity.

How to Use Content to Find Customers
What do birthday cakes and content marketing have in common? More than you think.

The 10-Step Content Marketing Checklist
Sonia calls this blog post a “checklist” for building a solid content marketing platform. I prefer “law” or “commandment” because if you break one of these rules, you’ll pay.

The Powerful Resource You’ve Always Wanted When Presented with Creative Challenges
Avoid producing copycat content and discover how to create not-to-miss, valuable, unique online content that helps you achieve your business goals

Zen and the Art of Content Marketing
Content marketing in the 21st century might seem like an endless high-speed car chase. But it doesn’t have to be. Not when you apply the simple principles of quality used by this world-renowned Japanese sushi chef.

Why Content Marketing Is the New Branding
Your content defines you. And it becomes the vehicle in which you communicate promises and expectations to your customers. Check out the nifty infographic from PRWeb on different options for sharing your brand online.

How to Brainstorm Brilliant Ideas for Your Blog
You probably know what brainstorming is. But do you know how to do it correctly? Do you know what you need to do before, during, and after the event to make it actually successful? I didn’t. Not until I read this article.

How to Write 16 Knockout Articles When You Only Have One Wimpy Idea
Are you struggling to write articles for your blog? It’s time to get creative. Stefanie Flaxman describes 16 different types of blog posts that you can apply to any niche.

Content creation

Is Content Marketing a Hamster Wheel You Can’t Escape?
Here is a technique that — in exchange for some bursts of intense hard work — will bring you long breaks from the content creation hamster wheel.

The Unstoppable Rise of the Digital Content Creator
Software and digital content creators have become a powerful pair.

3 Components of a Content Marketing Editorial Calendar that Works
Are you strategic about your content creation? Or do you wing it, publishing content with a short-term view? One will help you be successful for the long-term. The other will stunt your growth.

A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week
Want a beautiful four-step procedure for creating a drop-dead gorgeous blog post each week? One that draws out the process leisurely over four days? And lets you do it in your slippers? Read on.

58 Ways to Create Persuasive Content Your Audience Will Love
You want to be a great writer. Seduce readers. Climb above the competition. If that’s you, then start with this step-by-step guide to creating ridiculously good content. Henneke doesn’t disappoint.

The Copyblogger “Secret” to Creating Better Content
Content marketers use content to advertise a product, service, or idea. You want to attract attention. Create desire. Stoke interest. But you also want readers to actually do something. Here’s how.

22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue
It happens to the best bloggers and content marketers. Idea dry spells. After dipping into the well every day for months … you come up empty. This infographic is a fast and helpful tool that jump-starts the content creation process.

A Crash Course in Marketing With Stories
Stories are easily the most powerful tool in the content marketer’s arsenal. People love good stories. Stories communicate complex ideas simply. And stories stick in people’s minds. But if you don’t know how to write a good story, then they won’t help you.

How to Constantly Create Compelling Content
Where are you supposed to get all your ideas for content? The answer can be found in a little-known intersection that artists, scientists, and songwriters have been crossing for centuries.

The Simple 5-Step Formula for Effective Online Content
Effective content marketing comes down to two things: education and personality. The right combination of these two elements will lead to leaps in traffic, subscribers and — ultimately — customers.

The 3-Step Cure for Boring, Useless Content
If your business could benefit from content marketing, the worse thing you could do is avoid it. The second worst thing is to create lame content. Geoff Livingston tells you how to make sure that never happens.

The 7 Essential Steps to Creating Your Content Masterpiece
Johann Sebastian Bach — one of the greatest composers who ever lived — had one of the most grueling production schedules one could imagine. And that, my friends, is one of the reasons he cranked out so many masterpieces. Mark McGuinness explains.

How to Craft a Marketing Story that People Embrace and Share
Storytelling isn’t limited to a blog post or a sales page. Storytelling works for your overall position in a market. So, how do you write a story? Use these three steps.

Master This Storytelling Technique to Create an Irresistible Content Series
Since your competitors are likely writing about similar topics, storyboarding is a technique you can use to craft a special experience readers won’t find anywhere else. Check out this storyboarding tutorial.

Content marketing promotion

The 7 Essential Elements of Effective Social Media Marketing
Here are the seven essentials that will turn your social media marketing from an annoying time-waster to an effective bottom-line booster.

Launching a New Product? These 5 Tips Will Get You the Testimonials You Need
If your content, product, or service is new, then you’re likely wondering how to get testimonials. I show you a smart way to gather proof with these five tips.

Content Marketing Is Easier When You (Partially) Delegate These 12 Tasks
These are partial delegation workflows you can assign to someone else that will either give you back the most time or help you with activities you’ve been meaning to do but don’t get to.

How to Create an Agile Content Marketing Strategy (and Stay Sane Doing It)
Pamela Wilson admits: “I spent so much time this past year creating content that I didn’t make enough time to read. And reading is important when you’re a content creator.”

The Proper Way to Automate Your Social Media Activities (and 5 Other Best Practices)
Automating some of your content may be beneficial for both you and your audience. Keep these six automation tips in mind as you set your social media strategy.

Why Content and Social Media are a Powerful Match
It’s not enough to create jaw-dropping content. You need to take that content to your audience members, who are sitting around those digital campfires (think social media). They’re waiting for you.

The Must-Have Social Media Tool Every Content Marketer Needs
Introducing the ultra-powerful, infinitely flexible social media tool that allows you to publish effective content without holding you to any arbitrary rules. It’s not what you think. Promise.

Are You Someone’s User-Generated Content?
The dangers of failing to build a digital asset that you own are real. Casualties abound.

Traffic generation

The Right Way to Think About Google
Google is going to shift. Sometimes abruptly. You don’t need to go along for the ride. Develop a sustainable approach, and leave the panic attacks behind.

5 Ways to Get More Traffic with Content Marketing
We all want it: more traffic. But how do we get it? It’s the most common question new bloggers ask. And it’s the question seasoned bloggers never stop asking. Try these five strategies for solid, proven results.

No Blog Traffic? Here’s a Simple Strategy to Seduce Readers and Win Clients
Do you have the right building blocks in place to seduce readers and win clients? If you want to create a simple blog plan that will help you win more readers, fans, and clients, answer the five critical questions in this post.

How to Make Winning Infographics Without Risk
Research suggests that publishers who use infographics grow in traffic 12 percent more than those who don’t. This is because an infographic, unless it’s completely awful (and they exist), will more than likely go viral. Discover the best ways to create them for your content marketing.

8 Incredibly Simple Ways to Get More People to Read Your Content
Most content marketers are fighting a losing battle with obscurity. They write, publish, and promote — and get nothing out of it. That’s painful. To make matters worse, this goes on day in, day out. Follow Pamela Wilson’s advice and that will change.

Should Your Content Aim for Traffic or Conversion?
Cosmopolitan and The New Yorker approach content marketing in two entirely different ways. Both approaches are super-successful. And anybody can combine and use these approaches to create killer results.

Content marketing case studies

Our monthly Hero’s Journey feature taps the collective wisdom of our community members to bring you reports from the front lines of the content marketing world. Here are five inspiring case studies:

• How One Entrepreneur Grew a Digital Business to Fit Her Life
• Guiding Online Dreams (and Dreaming of a New Community)
• From a Hidden Niche, an Empire Is Born
• How to Play the Long Game to Bring Your Idea to Life
• An Advocate Who Helps People Change the World with Content Marketing

What The New Yorker Magazine Can Teach You About Content Marketing that Works
In a few moments, you’ll know how to not only write content that engages but that also positions you as an authority in your space and dominates in the search engines.

How Chris Brogan Built His Content Platform
Look at Mr. Brogan now and you might think he’s a “master of social media.” He rules over one of the most recognizable independent content publishing empires. But life was not always easy for him. In fact, he struggled for eight years to get 100 subscribers. Here’s his story.

5 Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from a Weird “Real World” Business
Ideas are good. They are even better when they actually work. Here’s a content marketing case study of a business that creates high-end beauty products — for dogs. Weird, but true.

What to Do When You Absolutely, Positively Must Know if Your Content Will Rock
Predicting what content will resonate with readers is tough — if not impossible. You simply cannot know unless you do this one thing. Indie band Wilco did and discovered the truth. So will you.

The Grateful Dead 4-Step Guide to the Magical Influence of Content Marketing
I can hear you now: “Are you serious? An elderly, endlessly touring hippie band can teach me something about effective content marketing?” Yes, they can. Jerry Garcia was a genius. Or should I say “guru?”

Content auditing

5 Powerful Ways to Keep Building Authority Once Your Content Has Matured
In order to keep the early momentum of your blog launch and deepen that influence, you’ve got to adjust your content strategy to reflect the new demands of your audience.

8 Conversion-Boosting Ways to Personalize Your Content
People love to get personalized content. Sadly, that message doesn’t seem to be getting through to marketers fast enough.

4 Ways to Identify Site Visitors (and Why It Matters)
“With adaptive content we are supposed to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. But how do you even know who is on your site?” I asked. In his exquisite English accent he said, “You could start with cookies.”

A Brief Guide to Fixing Your Old, Neglected, and Broken Content
There are a number of good reasons why you shouldn’t ignore old, broken, and neglected sections of your website. Here are three benefits of attending to expired content.

Is Content Marketing Worth the Effort?
Let me be frank with you: content marketing is work. It is hard work. Hard work like laying bricks or teaching middle school children. But for the practitioner who loves the work? It’s a turn on.

Why Nobody Cares about Your Content (and What to Do About It)
Glen Allsopp of ViperChill explains how to build your personal brand and authority by giving your readers everything they want — and never once talking about yourself.

Are You Creating Meaningful Content?
Ever think to yourself, “What does this content mean? Does it even matter? Is it significant? Do my readers care?” Those are good questions to ask yourself. And here’s the five-step framework to help you answer them.

How to Beat “Invisible Content” Syndrome
I’ve got some bad news for you: every new blog is born with a disease. Professionals call it Invisible Content Syndrome — or ICS. Others call it obscurity. The good news is you can conquer it. Here’s how.

The Foolproof Cure for Weak Content: 4 Ways to Get Some Perspective
You have a sweet idea for a blog post. You pop out of bed and hammer out the first draft. When you are finished, you read what you wrote and think that sucks. Don’t worry. That happens to all of us. And there are four great ways to fix it.

The Force that Powers Persuasive Content (And 3 Ways to Intensify It)
Bet you didn’t know this, but character building and content marketing go hand in hand. There’s a person behind every piece of content. Is that person honest, credible, and an authority? If not, then here are three ways to improve those essential components.

Content business building

How to Build a Business Using Paid and Free Content
Sonia will tell you how to raise your content marketing game by creating a platinum version of your content.

How to Decide Which Content to Sell and What to Give Away for Free
Not sure how much you should give away for free? Chris Garrett helps you find the line between freely available content and content that is locked behind a paywall.

The Key to Innovative Business Ideas: Cross-Pollination
No content marketer is an island. We all know this. But we don’t always take the initiative to strategically collaborate to generate the best content marketing ideas. Pamela Wilson reveals how you can get started.

Why Content is No Longer King (And Who’s Taking His Place)
Why would a novelist claim that content is not king? I mean, come one, this guy makes his living off of huge chunks of content. Check out his surprisingly good argument.

How to Use Ebooks Strategically and Reach Your Content Marketing Goals
Have you written an ebook yet? Some of the most respected content marketers have embraced ebooks for marketing their businesses and as a source of income.

Educate to Dominate Your Competition
Want to spark the buying process in your readers without resorting to a hyped-message? Dream of making your products so irresistible that customers hardly notice your sales offers? Then use the six psychological shortcuts of influence.

How to Succeed at Content Marketing Even if Your Content Skills Suck
Still a little weak in the knees about this whole content marketing thing because, well, you just don’t have any confidence in your skills? No sweat. Half the battle is doing this one thing.

Your ultimate guide to content marketing

Remember to bookmark this post and keep it as a resource to answer all of your content marketing questions!

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Attraction Content: The Foundation of a Smart Content Marketing Strategy

This article is part of our series on the 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs. Make sure to get your special free bonus at the end of the article.

Let’s start at the beginning: you need to attract people to your content.
Creating Attraction content is the first step in a successful content marketing strategy and the focus of our first lesson.
Here’s a working definition of Attraction content:

Attraction content is freely available on the web for social sharing and for search engines to index. Your goal for this content is for people to consume it and spread it.

In other words, this is the content that drives traffic — ideally, a lot of traffic. Let’s look at a few examples of Attraction content.

List articles

Some like to call these articles “listicles.” Others like to call ’em “rubbish.”
Call them what you will, but creating a high-quality article around a numbered list like the 109 Ways to Make Your Business Irresistible to the Media simply works.
And, yes, you will typically see better results from higher numbers (as long as you make each point a beefy, satisfying item).
But Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well or The 7 Things Writers Need to Make a Living prove that short list articles can also be popular.

Infographics

The most-shared piece of content on Copyblogger is an infographic called 15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly.
We’ll dig into why it works so well — and why it doesn’t — below.
In the meantime, here are two more examples of successful infographics:

• 11 Essential Ingredients Every Blog Post Needs
• The ABCs of Landing Pages That Work

Both of these infographics were large drivers of traffic and social shares the year they were published (2014).
And check out these articles if you are interested in learning how to make winning infographics without risk or transforming your ho-hum infographic into something extraordinary.

Downloadable assets

Give people resources to make their lives easier and they will be happy to share them with others. That’s the purpose behind downloadable assets like worksheets, checklists, and inspirational posters.
Definitive guides and content libraries fall into this category, too.
Definitive guides are resources like QuickSprout’s The Complete Guide to Building Your Personal Branding or Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
These are monster resources that pile up the inbound links, generate thousands of social shares, and dominate the top rankings in search engines.
Content libraries like My.Copyblogger accomplish the same result, but instead of focusing on one topic, we offer 15 different ebooks on topics ranging from copywriting to content marketing to landing pages.
And yes, in exchange for one email address we give you access to all 15 ebooks. If you are interested, you can read up on the results of this approach in a report published by MarketingSherpa (spoiler alert: the experiment was a smashing success, in more ways than we imagined).

SlideShares

Another method for attracting new people to your content is creating slide presentations and publishing them on SlideShare. On Copyblogger, we publish a new post with a SlideShare presentation embedded in it, like we did with 10 Rules for Creating Content People Can Trust.
By doing it this way, we drive our Copyblogger audience to view the SlideShare, which then (we hope) raises the number of views to a point that it gets featured on the SlideShare home page.
Since all of our slide presentations point back to Copyblogger, this additional exposure potentially introduces us to new audience members.

Surveys and stats

Sometimes you don’t have to create all the content by yourself. You can ask your audience to provide the raw material for you. That’s the idea behind surveys.
A survey is also a great way to establish yourself as an authority in your industry by becoming the go-to source for the latest research on a particular topic. In fact, we used a survey to launch our native advertising series, and that survey attracted a number of links.
The SEO software company Moz elevates its authority and visibility in the market by releasing its annual search ranking factors report. Surveys are a reliable way to attract links.
Stats are another way to reuse content (whether they are yours or someone else’s) to drive traffic to your site and attract links. For example, take a look at NewsCred’s 50 Stats You Need to Know about Content Marketing downloadable report, which is also a SlideShare.

Attraction content mashups

As you can see, and as you will continue to see over the course of this week-long series, Attraction content can embody a number of different formats and mediums.
You can also transform one piece of content into different formats and mediums. Almost two years after we published Stefanie Flaxman’s 30 Quick Editing Tips Every Content Creator Needs to Know, we updated it and turned it into a SlideShare presentation.
In another case, an infographic became a series of podcasts and then eventually became a series of articles. And don’t forget, you can always republish old blockbuster articles to expose them to a new audience.
Now let’s discuss a common problem with Attraction content.

The problem with Attraction content

As I mentioned above, a great example of Attraction content is our 15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly. This is easily our most popular post. It’s generated a ton of links and social shares.
In addition, it’s driven a lot of traffic to our site. But there is one problem with the traffic. And it involves delivering the right value to the right type of person.
Unfortunately, many of those people who find Copyblogger through Grammar Goofs are not part of our target audience, so they tend to drift away. They care about grammar, but not content marketing.
This is not always an entirely bad thing. Traffic surges can lead to surges of free publicity. Let me explain.

When bad traffic can be good

In their early stages, Buffer published hugely popular posts on body language and happiness. They were great posts, but I always thought it was strange for a social media app company to write about these topics.
Until I understood what they were doing.
See, those popular posts were getting picked up by big-name media sites like TIME and The Huffington Post, which drove a ton of traffic back to Buffer via the links embedded in the articles.
As expected, the conversion rates were low, but Buffer got publicity from these articles.
This is (sometimes) the beauty of content syndication.
Eventually, though, Buffer narrowed its content focus to attract the right audience. Once they reached a critical mass of visibility and traffic, it was time to focus on conversion.
The same was true for Copyblogger. Attraction content is now typically part of our content mix about once or twice a month.

When to use Attraction content

Let’s close with a couple of thoughts about when you should use Attraction content.

1. New websites. Your new website will need a heavy dose of Attraction content to get attention and links. If you publish twice a week, for instance, you could publish Attraction content once a week. This ratio is a good starting place because it’s not easy to predict which piece of content will become a stellar performer.
2. Mature websites. In general, it will take you anywhere from six months to two years to start seeing your content rise in the search engines, regularly get shared, and routinely pick up links. Once you reach that point, you may want to publish Attraction content about once or twice a month.

It’s comforting to remember that it’s quite easy to blend your Attraction content with other content types, like Authority and Affinity. This way, you not only drive a lot of traffic to your site, you also attract the right type of traffic.

Get your free ebook: 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs

Build a content strategy based on the four content types in this series! Get your free ebook, 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs.


Click to get the free ebook

Over to you …

Do you have any questions about Attraction content? Drop us a line in the comments section below.

And let us know about your favorite piece of Attraction content (whether you or someone else created it).

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Action Content: Turn Fans into Customers [Plus a Free Bonus for You]

This article is part of our series on the 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs. Make sure to get your special free bonus at the end of the article.

So far, we’ve covered Attraction, Authority, and Affinity content. Now it’s time to turn your fans into customers with Action content.
And this is where all the work you’ve done as a content marketer starts translating into revenue for yourself, your clients, or your organization.
The good news is that Action content is probably the easiest type of content to understand. But the bad news is that it can also be some of the most difficult to produce.
We’ll dig into the reasons why shortly, but since we are in the habit of defining each term before we get started, let’s do that here for Action content:

Action content is content designed to get somebody to take an action.

How about that for easy?

The marriage of copywriting and content marketing

Content marketing is a new kid on the block in some ways, surging in popularity in the last five years.
In other ways, content marketing has been paired with advertising for quite some time. Take John Deere’s 118-year-old magazine, The Furrow, as an example.
The Michelin Guide, first published in 1900, is another great example of classic content marketing.
However, what I’m talking about here is the marriage between copywriting and content marketing.

A marriage between copywriting and content marketing helps you attract attention, increase engagement, and then ultimately, persuade someone to take action.

Types of actions

When you create content, you should have an action in mind that you’d like the reader to take. Actions could include, but aren’t limited to:

• Asking your readers to comment on a blog post
• Asking your readers to share an article or podcast
• Asking people to participate in a poll or survey
• Encouraging people to download a free video training course
• Persuading people to subscribe to your email newsletter
• Convincing people to follow you on social media
• Enticing people to hire you
• Getting people to buy your product

Naturally, you’ll want to start off with small requests. Get people used to taking your advice and following your instructions.
You first want people to say, “Hey, I want to pay attention to this person (or this company, or this brand) because it’s really relevant to my current challenge and the journey I’m on.”
You get people to warm up to you and trust you — step by step — until the sale, and then the repeat sale or the recurring sale.
Let’s look at some successful pieces of Action content.

Examples of Action content

The most obvious piece of Action content you will create is promotional — sales copy that you publish and run for the duration of the offer. After the sale is over, we recommend you remove the post from your site.
Action content also includes landing pages, like this one on content marketing that encourages visitors to register for Copyblogger’s content library.
In addition to those two cases, your best content will combine all four types of “A” content. Here’s a stellar example: What’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Copywriting?
What makes it so great?

• It’s useful. The headline suggests you are about to learn something important. The question-style headline also helps attract attention. People wonder whether or not they do indeed know the answer. They think, “This might be too important to miss.”
• It’s authoritative. Sonia Simone’s years of working in the copywriting and content marketing world turned what could have been a shallow answer into an extended clinic in effective writing.
• It takes a stand. The content exposes people to one of our core philosophies at Copyblogger: Really good content is unsurpassed at building rapport, delivering a sales message without feeling “salesy,” and getting potential customers to stick around.
• It’s laced with action. You might not see it at first blush, but this piece of content motivates readers to check out the educational resources Copyblogger has to offer — from the My.Copyblogger free membership site to the paid offers like Authority and Content Marketing Certification.

The success of this content wasn’t accidental. There was a plan: the content primes people for when we actually do make an offer.

How to write Action content

Writing something interesting to fill space and keep people reading won’t cut it here.

You need to pair your content with a business goal.

That’s not as complicated as it might seem, because all you have to do is ask yourself this simple question before you write each piece of content:

What is the action I want my audience to take?

Now, getting people to actually take that action requires some skill. Like I said above, this is the hardest type of content to master. It takes time to learn copywriting skills, and it also takes time to master them.
The following resources can help you:

• Copywriting 101: How to Craft Compelling Copy
• The Copyblogger Conversion Series
• How to Be a Copywriting Genius: The Brilliantly Sneaky Trick You Must Learn
• 9 Classic Must-Read Direct Response Copywriting Books
• The Ultimate Guide to No-Pain Copywriting (or, Every Copywriting Formula Ever)
• The Ultimate Copy Checklist: 51 Questions to Optimize Every Element of Your Online Copy [Free Poster]

Once you’ve worked through that list, the next best thing you can do is to practice. Write. Then write some more.
And on that note, let me close with a little encouragement.

Keep your chin up

When I first got into copywriting, I threw myself into it whole hog.
I devoured every book I could get my hands on. Tore through successful promotional pieces. Listened to a legion of cassette tapes on the art of direct response copywriting, human psychology, and negotiations — yeah, this was way before podcasts. Wrote a mountain of sales letters, emails, and text ads (and then watched mentors tear them apart).
This went on for years. I thought I knew my stuff. However, it wasn’t until about Year Five when things clicked … when I turned the corner and all that head knowledge became heart knowledge.
The moral of this short story is that if I can learn how to write Action content, so can you. But it’s going to take time. Don’t expect too much of yourself too soon. Just start learning, publishing content, measuring results, adjusting, asking for feedback, and so on.
You can do it.

Get your free ebook: 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs

Build a content strategy based on the four content types in this series! Get your free ebook, 4 Essential Types of Content Every Marketing Strategy Needs.

Click to get the free ebook

Over to you …

What’s your favorite example of Action content?
Drop us a note in the comments section below to share your thoughts.


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