In the last few years, as ambitious business owners and marketers, we have all had to come to terms with the changing landscape within business as a whole. The world is shifting into a global digital hub with less and less buying decisions being made face to face in favour of internet purchasing and doing business online.
Just think about it; how many times in the last month have you had a problem that needed to be solved and headed online to seek a solution? You’re thinking of a high number.
This is why the vast majority of successful businesses now invest a large amount of their time and talents into how they can increase website visitors- and once they have visited the website-how they can use content marketing to pique interest, create trust and eventually change those buyers into customers.
So, sounds easy right? Well, it is if you have the right tools at your fingertips and you know your audience.
Below, we’ve put together a list of the tools we believe make up the comprehensive Content Marketing toolkit when trying to increase visitors to your website.
Now, small disclaimer here; we’re not saying you need to use all of these; for every tool, we describe there is a long list of many other tools that are similar or perform some of the same functions. But we’ve found these to be standouts and can say that every tool listed is something we have personally used- and we can’t give a better recommendation than that.
Increasing Website Visitors with Content Marketing for the 21st Century
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Low cost, high reward
In simple terms, content marketing is a process that involves several key stages.
Firstly, determine who your target buyer is; who you are trying to sell your products or services to. This will help you to produce content that they are interested in consuming. This will involve research and analysis into types of content, how to distribute it and how to get it seen by the right people.
Secondly, create content that engages them; using the research you have done, create content that is educational, informative and targeted to the correct audience. This will depend on where your visitor is on the buyers’ journey- have they come to your website to find out about a problem? Or do they know the solution and are investigating which solution is best? This will influence what content they are likely to be interested in.
Thirdly, analyse performance and make changes accordingly; content marketing is a constant process of evaluating performance and changing your strategy to improve results. The marketplace is always evolving. What is trending in your section of the business world today might be entirely different tomorrow. It’s up to you to keep abreast of what your buyers are interested in.
Luckily, there are several handy tools that can help you figure this all out.
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a great tool for researching what content is popular and trending to buyers as it allows visitors to look up any topic and view the content that is already out there regarding that subject. It is also useful if you wish to view what content a competitor is producing and how successful it has been.
Buzzsumo is also very useful for analysing how to distribute a piece of content and what platform to use- as it gives up to date statistics on the social performance of content, meaning how much engagement it is getting on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest.
This tool can also be used to determine which online influencers are having success with their content and provide data on the content they are producing. This helps with researching the topics you might cover in order to avoid running too close to the most popular content already being consumed.
In Summary:
- Research on trends
- Analyse competitors
- Increase social reach
Hubspot
Hubspot is very useful for a large variety of tasks; but it particularly excels in marketing automation, reporting and the creation of more complex inbound marketing strategies. This is achieved by giving users a one-stop shop for creating, monitoring your content and evaluating how it is influencing your website visitors.
Hubspot has become one of the leading platforms for marketers and business owners to produce content marketing strategies by also offering a fully resourced academy program, designed to pool knowledge and educate users on how to use content to increase lead generation and boost website traffic and engagement.
Within the dashboard on HubSpot there are tools for managing the visitors to your website; creating personas for different types of buyer which are incredibly valuable sources of information on what piece of content to target them with and where to do it in order to generate the most interest.
In Summary:
- Useful to educate yourself
- A creation tool for many types of content
- Reporting and monitoring visitors
Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a very useful tool for insights into what people are searching for; essentially what they content they want to read and consume and what they are interested in. It gives the user the ability to search for any term that might enter into a search engine, such as Google, and find all the related keywords and search terms that have been entered into it.
For example, putting in the term, ‘playstation’ will create a detailed results page giving details as to what terms have been entered with the word ‘playstation’ in them. This could be ‘which PlayStation to buy’ or ‘can PlayStation play DVDs’. This gives the user some ideas as to what long tail keywords are most commonly associated with their main keyword that they wish to produce a piece of content around.
With its easy to navigate tool system, Answer the Public also allows users to gain knowledge and ideas of what search engines are searching for when ranking their content; therefore gaining a better understanding of how to rank higher and increase the likelihood of buyers visiting their website.
In Summary:
- Insights into search engine keywords
- Insights into content titles and body
- A never-ending source of ideas
Neilpatel.com
If you want to educate yourself on all things content marketing, Neil Patel is a fantastic resource. Neil is an author, entrepreneur and marketer who has dedicated himself to providing up to date and relevant knowledge on a variety of topics relating to digital marketing and content strategy.
His easy to use portal, neilpatel.com has all sorts of helpful tips and tricks to increase the effectiveness of your content; including a library of videos, guides and blogs to help you along the way to success.
Within his website, Neil has compiled guides on many of the more complex topics within content marketing, including SEO analysis, marketing checklists and competitor analysis and breaks them down into bite-size chunks that are easy to digest.
In Summary:
- A library of tutorials and guides, both text and video based
- Insights into strategy and content optimisation
- Helpful tips and tricks for SEO & Social Media
Ahrefs.com
Ahrefs.com is a comprehensive tool for all things data, research and analysis. It houses a large database of information regarding keywords for search engines and rank monitoring, which allows users to keep track of exact keywords that either they or their competitors are using.
Their dashboard includes traffic data, the volume of searches for a search term along with a host of information on the users searching for certain keywords. This might be their country of origin, the exact URL of the website being shown in the results or when the content was last updated.
This vast mine of information is a critical tool when doing research into what keywords to build relevant and engaging content around as the data they provide is both accurate and up to date; which can be a stumbling block for many other sources of research data on website visitors and search terms.
In summary:
- An in-depth source of keyword data and analysis
- Website rank tracking resource
- Great competitor research tool
Time to get started!
When planning a digital strategy for your business, it is crucial that Content Marketing is a key factor. It is the best (and some say cheapest when compared to other methods) way of increasing website visitors and keeping those buyers engaged with your brand over the long term; eventually converting them into customers.
Content Marketing is a many-headed beast- and it is always changing and evolving, bringing about new ways to engage your audience and delight them into consuming your content. however, with these tools at your disposal, we are confident you will hit the ground running.
BY SEAN REDFEARN