PUT MOBILE FIRST!

“Refocus content to appease the mobile user first. For a long time, we’ve been creating content solely for the desktop, which generally meant long-form content. Going into 2019, we have to put the mobile user first.

The types of queries mobile users are looking for are fast, trendy and actionable. So ask yourself, is your content satisfying those requirements?”

I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase “Content Is King”. Well, there’s a reason why!

Content marketing is all about creating and distributing valuable content to attract, retain and ultimately, convert your audience. From bringing in prospects, improving your SEO to establishing brand expertise – quality content is paramount to the success of your business.

In 2019, few businesses doubt the power of content marketing, but sadly, only a few marketers are executing it with the skill and expertise truly needed to make an impact.

Which is exactly why we bring to you 10 actionable content marketing tips by experts themselves. Dive into the following list of actionable tips and prepare to be enlightened. (cue in some dramatic music!)

1. Ashley Ward, Digital Marketing Strategist at SEMrush

Put mobile first.

“Refocus content to appease the mobile user first. For a long time, we’ve been creating content solely for the desktop, which generally meant long-form content. Going into 2019, we have to put the mobile user first.

The types of queries mobile users are looking for are fast, trendy and actionable. So ask yourself, is your content satisfying those requirements?”

2. Rand Fishkin, Content and SEO in 2018

Use Twitter Trends for Content Ideas.

“If you can, log out and look at Twitter’s trends because they’ll be non-personalized and non-geo biased. And then consider some of the things that you could write and create that tie those things together.”

3. Matthew Brown, Content Strategy for Publishers

Train Your Writers to Understand Search Results.

“So for organic search, if I bring up something, I’m like, “Okay, let’s look at all of the search results we can see about Nike.’ You can literally generate just about any type of search result possible with different configurations of Nike – local results, news results, shopping results, depending on how you structure your content.

So if you can get a content creator or a writer to understand, if you’re covering a topic, here are all the SERPs that you should be able to compete on, and here are SERPs you should stay completely away from. That will change how they view the topic that they’re writing about, maybe more so than if they’re trying to sift through data from a keyword tool or something that you show them how to do.

If they understand that, I feel like over time they instinctively learn how to frame the topic they’re writing about or an article to capture organic search, other than just, ‘I wrote it and I don’t rank.’

So I would spend almost an hour with the content team and literally just be like, ‘Let’s look at what Google is doing today and how it changes how you view a topic.’”

4. Sonia Simone, Co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Copyblogger

Tell Quick Stories.

“This is a powerful one, but in a lot of ways, it’s the hardest one to bring in, and that is to tell a good story. You can tell a good story right off the bat, or you can lead into it. They’re both very, very powerful. Your ability to tell a quick, relevant, punchy little story is something that can do more for your content than probably anything else you’ll ever learn how to do. If you want to get some ideas about how to tell these quick, effective stories, look at jokes. Look at the way that jokes are constructed and the way that they’re told, especially fast jokes, quick jokes.”

5. Brian Dean, YouTube SEO

You Might Not Need Long Videos.

“The big thing about YouTube or any platform, you want to be the exception, not the rule. If everyone’s doing 3-minute videos, you do 18-minute videos, right? If everyone’s doing 18-minute videos, you do 3-minute videos.

Right now, everyone’s doing short videos, so longer videos can help. That said, that 18 minutes, for that to work, it needs to be really well done and really tight, moving really quickly.

So it’s the same thing with written content, right? Like, anyone could put out 4,000 words or 5,000 words. The hard part is making something people would actually want to read.

It’s the same thing with a video. It’s somewhat easy to make a long video, but it’s hard to keep people watching anything, keeping their attention for that long.”

6. Matt Heinz, CEO of Heinz Marketing

Focus on your customers.

“Listen to your customers. Find out what makes your buyers tick. Address issues that they have in their business right now.

Focus on making them smarter, better. Help them reframe questions or issues or challenges they have right now. The more your content directly addresses those issues, the more valuable it will be.”

7. Brian Clark, Founder, and CEO of Rainmaker Digital

Don’t put AI before human connection.

“If you’re paying attention to the world of work, the news is unavoidable. Everyone is bracing for a tech-induced transformation — and it’s already started.

As a solo or small business person, technology allows you to do things that used to require scores of employees and tons of capital — and that ability will accelerate with AI. But it’s the human being at the center of it all that will ultimately determine if you succeed or fail.

It’s no different with marketing. Despite all the powerful tools, we now have to amplify ourselves. You can’t put automation ahead of connection or efficiency over empathy. In other words, the tools have to work for the human, not the other way around.”

8. Neil Patel, Co-Founder at Neil Patel Digital

Stand out by Experimenting with New Topics and Formats.

“The blogosphere is competitive. There are over a billion blogs. That’s one blog for every seven people. How are you going to compete? Don’t regurgitate the same information over and over again. People are tired of reading 12 SEO tips that’ll double your traffic. There might be different variations of that number but there are  probably hundreds of articles on that subject. If you write something new, fresh, that hasn’t been seen before, you’ll more likely get traffic, rankings and even social shares. Try creating video and audio based content, it has a much better connecting value.

Want to try using personalized, interactive content? Calculate your ROI on using Outgrow!

9. Nadav Dakner, Founder and CEO of InboundJunction

Monetize your Site without Spamming.

At the risk of stating the obvious, nobody likes spam. The question is, How can you monetize your site without becoming a spam lord or creating something new? There are tons of native, unobtrusive ways to monetize your existing site. Give financial life to your images, take advantage of other people’s content, make every word count. You just have to find the right combination of techniques and tools that work for you.

10. Cyrus Shepard, Google Ranking Factors

Do More Than Just Update the Date on Your Content.

“The cheap and lowest quality of freshness is just putting a new date on the post, which a lot of people do and that might work like, you know, a smidge. Actually updating the content is obviously the most helpful, but what people need to consider is what they’re updating.

Are they updating, you know, links at the bottom, or are they updating content that’s more towards the top and front and center above the fold? Because that’s going to carry a lot of weight.

But the biggest thing I see people, sort of, not taking advantage of, and this is listed in Google Patents and I’ve seen it work myself on sites, is the cadence of freshness.

So, a lot of people just update their post once a year, or if it’s, you know, a major piece of content, you know, that’s all they’ll do, but if you’re updating your important pages every month and set up a regular cadence, that is much more effective. And that sends a signal that you’re paying attention to this page all the time.”

Check out this blog to find out how to get more out of your existing blog posts!

Conclusion

Whether you want to bring in referral traffic or simply create brand awareness, these content marketing tips by experts will definitely come in handy. Practice them all and you just might be ready to proclaim yourself the king (or queen!) of content marketing. Do let us know how many of these content marketing tips by experts  you already practice or if you have some tips of your own to share. Happy Creating!