I hate to admit this out loud, but I know only a fraction about content marketing for the web.
I learned this flaw last night, as I watched the webinar Andy Crestodina is doing for us on Thursday – Build the Perfect Web Marketing Storm.
He talks about five weather systems in building the perfect storm: Blogging, email marketing, search engine optimization, social promotion, and writing.
Before I watched it, I went through that list and thought, “Surely I have all of this down, right?”
WRONG!
I also learned I’ve just been lucky with Spin Sucks and SmartTalk, but that I really could be much more strategic and smart about all of it and, perhaps, drive even more traffic.
He begins with a content marketing template. As I watched him explain it, I thought, “Come on. You don’t really use this for every piece of content you write, do you?”
And then he showed why he does. And, I’m pretty sure it works the way he demonstrates.
Blogging
If you attend the webinar, you’ll receive his template as part of your registration fee. He uses it to show you how to complete each of the five weather systems in order to create the perfect web marketing storm.
For blogging, some of those things include:
- How to write complementary blog posts and newsletters
- How to write exclusive content for different parts of the web because of the Google Panda update, which docks you for using the same content in several places on the web (which I just did yesterday when I ran my weekly Crain’s column here – oy)
- How to do keyword research the right way, using the Google keyword tool
- How to set up a profile picture so it shows up in Google search results
- How to get traffic on one blog post for the lifetime of the site
- How to use Google insights, trends, and forecasting on keywords
- How to write titles, meta descriptions, permalinks (yes, you can change them), and which graphics to use
Email Marketing
Andy is a big believer in email marketing (me too … though many marketers forget about it) and spends a few minutes talking, not about how to write copy that is valuable and educational (please do that), but how to drive traffic and, ultimately, conversions from your efforts.
He discusses:
- How to find words that higher click-through rates for your email marketing, and a list of the most reported subject line words
- How to write excerpts for your newsletter so people have to click through to one of your web properties in order to read the rest (he said it makes him sad to see full text in newsletters)
Search Engine Optimization
Under the SEO section, he discusses why sites rank, based on trust/authority of the site, link popularity, anchor text, keywords, traffic, social use, hosting data, and more.
He talks about how to build your authority by guest blogging, which is very central to digital PR.
He also shows you:
- How to find sites with high domain authority
- How to check sites to know whether or not you’ll get value by blogging for them
- How to determine the right authority number (Spin Sucks is 73 so you’ll quickly discover you want to guest blog for us)
- How to find content ideas through trending topics
- How to write anchor text (something not many people do the right way)
Social Promotion
For most of us, using social media to promote our content isn’t new. But I’ll bet some of the tools he gives you are. They include:
- How to use Manage Flitter to find people you already follow who are interested in your content topic
- How to use Filter Tweeps to find people outside your network who might be interested in your content
- How to mention the people you find so they’re more likely to RT you
- How to use hashtags and quotes appropriately
Writing
Then he gets into writing, but not around emotion or voice or branding (which most of us can already do). Rather, he discusses how to get a lot more traction out of a single piece of web copy.
In his writing tips, he includes:
- How to write for both humans and search engines (six tips)
- How to assemble web copy, instead of just writing it (five tips)
- How to link to Google+ in your bio so it shows what you’ve authored in your profile and provides your avatar next to the link in search results
Measurement
At that point, I thought we were finished, but he adds one more thing about building your perfect web marketing storm.
It’s measuring results, which I was very happy to see.
He talks about how the entire point of web marketing is to convert visitors toward one of 10 goals and how to outpace business capacity if you’re using content marketing correctly. I imagine most of you want to do that, no matter where you are in your content marketing life.
This webinar is a must attend event. It’s Thursday, March 22 at 11 a.m. CT. It is $50, but I promise you’ll take away so many ideas it’ll be worth your time and investment.
Click here to register now.
If you’re still not convinced, you can watch Andy discuss the topic in the video in the upper right-hand corner of the blog (or by clicking here).
If you can’t attend live, we’ll have a recording of it that can be downloaded, and watched, at your convenience.
Hope to see you on Thursday!