Three Content Marketing Techniques That Deliver Huge ROI

More and more businesses are turning to content marketing to drive qualified traffic and leads online. For anyone unfamiliar with content marketing, it's best described as creating and sharing content to engage and acquire potential customers. Content marketing falls under the larger inbound marketing umbrella, which includes blogging, SEO, social media efforts and email marketing.

Move the Needle with Content Marketing

One of the key reasons content marketing is growing in popularity is because Google has been very aggressive in their continued attempts to clean up rampant Web spam by devaluing many link-building techniques. So as cheap, low-value SEO techniques no longer work, companies are turning to content marketing to move the needle. Great content -- that is well promoted -- can generate many of the signals that Google values, such as links, shares and coverage from authoritative publishers. But producing great content isn’t just about grabbing links or catering to Google. It’s also about educating people and building trust in your brand.

In addition, content marketing can be highly scalable tactic which allows online business owners to build valuable “Web assets” that drive passive traffic and leads for the life of a document versus, say, renting traffic with tactics like paid search. Finally, content assets can generate some of the highest ROI for a company and help draw users into all levels of your sales and marketing funnel.

So if you’re a business owner or in-house digital marketer, you might be wondering “What are some of the most cost-efficient content marketing tactics I can leverage, and where should I invest in my marketing dollars for the best return?”

To answer those questions, here are three high ROI content marketing asset types, the benefits they offer and tips on how to create them:

Blogging

Publishing useful content on your blog is a highly effective way to build your audience and engage them. It’s also a great way to position your company as an authority in your niche and build brand awareness. As for return on investment, according to ZAGG, a mobile device accessory provider, their blogging yields 172% ROI.

From an inbound marketing perspective, blogging can help you generate valuable inbound links (which helps raise the “SEO value” and visibility of your website in the search results), as well the range of content you produce helps your site rank for a broad basket of keywords that are relevant to your product or service.

Some examples of high ROI content types you can publish on your blog include:

• Interviews and Group Interviews: Conduct an interview with a respected blogger, thought leader or industry luminary. Interviews are a great way to scale your efforts since they help build relationships in your industry and its “user-generated” content since you’re collecting and publishing their answers. You can also conduct “group interviews” with multiple people in your industry at even greater scale and publish all the responses in a single article. Some examples of group interview include this piece with Alzheimer’s caregivers and this massive group interview with 30 SEO experts.
• Keyword-Driven Topics: Letting keywords that are relevant to your business guide your blog topic selection is a tried and true content strategy. There are a number of ways to find keywords you can target on your blog that leverage Google data and are 100% free. Those methods include using the Google Keyword Tool (to discover monthly keyword search volume estimates and related keyword ideas) and Google Trends to discover which topics are gaining popularity in your niche.
• Weekly Roundups: These are curated content types that you can run each week. Weekly roundups feature the best content from around your niche or industry for the past week. Benefits include building relationships with other bloggers in your industry or niche, among others. For reference, you can find examples of weekly roundup blog posts from different industries here, here and here.

Blog Strategy Tip #1: One of the keys to blogging is to be consistent and publish regularly, so try and set up an editorial calendar, adhere to it for six months and evaluate your investment in blog content. Also, don’t overdo it with the SEO. Definitely use keyword strategy to drive topic selection, but don’t try to work every keyword modifier and variation into your blog posts. Let it happen naturally and avoid “SEO copywriting.”

Blog Strategy Tip #2: If you feature a site or blogger in a weekly roundup or group interview, make sure you let them know about it. Send them an email and @ them on Twitter. Many times these folks will be flattered and will reciprocate by helping promote your content and your blog to their audience and followers.

Infographics

According to Wikipedia, infographics are “graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.” A well-done, compelling infographic will generate social shares, natural link activity and trusted brand signals from authoritative publishers -- all of which are highly valued by Google.

If you’re unfamiliar with infographics, you can find some excellent examples here, here and here from a variety of niches, as well as some of the best collections of graphics from 2012.

When it comes to creating infographics, one cost-effective approach is to do it yourself, and there are a ton of useful, free tools and tutorials out there to help you research and design your own infographics. As for promotion, you can conduct outreach to sites that might be interested in publishing your infographic. You can also submit your graphic to a range of infographic curation websites which are likely to run it on their sites for free.

Infographic Tip #1: If you don’t have the time, patience or internal resources to create and promote an infographic yourself, there are a number of excellent infographic vendors out there who specialize in research, design and promotion. When working with an infographic vendor, be aware that they don’t always handle everything from end-to-end. As a client, make sure you know what the infographic company owns and what you’re responsible for upfront, so there are no surprises come launch day.

Infographic Tip #2: Another way you can reduce costs on infographics is to find another organization to co-sponsor your content. Here is a perfect example of an infographic that was cosponsored by a little known company in the music sharing space and MTV, who split the costs and published it on their site helping the less known brand gain exposure to the MTV audience and get valuable links back from a trusted source as well.

Guest Posts

Guest blogging is a highly effective strategy that allows you to publish your content on other blogs or websites in return for brand exposure and a link back to your site. Many Web publishers are constantly hungry for fresh content, so they’re willing to run your articles on their site and you get a chance to promote your company in an author bio in your guest article.

The benefits of guest posting are many and include:

• Building relationships with authoritative publishers
• Building brand awareness
• Exposure to a wider audience
• Positioning you or someone in your organization as an expert on a topic
• Building new traffic channels via referred visits
• Opening up new business opportunities
• Increasing “SEO value” for your website with editorial links

The cost to your organization is the content and the time to find sites willing to publish your free content. Typically, that “free content” is written by someone in your organization, be it an in-house marketing person or a thought leader in your company. However, you can also outsource this content generation if need be to online marketplaces like eLance and even Craigslist.

Guest Posting Tips

The one nagging question that many website owners and even marketers have time and again when it comes to guest posting is “How do I find sites to publish my content on?” Here are some tips.

Use advanced search operators:  Advanced search operators allow you to get very specific and exact with your searches in Google. The quotes tell Google to ONLY show the exact match for this search.

Some excellent search operators include:

"submit a guest post"

"submit a blog post"

"submit an article"

"write for us"

"become an author"

"become a contributor"

"contribute to our site"

To get even more specific, include your niche, a topic or your target keywords with an operator, such as [finance “submit a guest post”], if you’re looking for finance sites to publish guest posts on.

Use tools: There are some really slick tools you can use to uncover guest blogging opportunities that automate much of the process for you. For example, a tool like Citation Labs is amazing at finding guest posting opportunities in your niche.

Join a community: There are some great guest blogging forums and marketplaces online that connect bloggers and website owners, like My Blog Guest. Here you’ll find content-hungry site owners who are soliciting opportunities to publish your articles on their sites for free.